Fierce competition for Fall 2021 admissions, if lots of current seniors defer?

[Anonymous]

"From a college admissions perspective, juniors have it worse than current seniors. Current seniors have a choice about accepting for this year or deferring. They've already been accepted and have a spot if they want it. Some are even getting off wait lists because of the lower expected numbers for fall. Your kid is handling it like a trooper because she has three wonderful choices. Parents of juniors are concerned that if too many of this years class defers, their kid will be shut out. That's a very real concern. It's easy to tell juniors to handle this with maturity when your child has three offers in hand. Not having prospects other than cc or lower tier schools because next year's classes are full isn't a little adversity. Have three really good choices and an option to defer is a little adversity. Try to see that perspective and avoid using "snowflakes" to describe kids who have no clue what whether they'll get in anywhere."

Nailed it.

Don't depend on deferrals, people. Colleges can only do so much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone considered that there is no guarantee thats
spring or fall of 2021 will happen either? We don’t know enough at this point. No one knows when the pandemic will and or return.

Fall of 2020 could go on without an issue and then spring of 2021 or fall of 2021 could be online. Then what? You’ve just delayed your kid’s adult life for the same or worse outcome.

Very good point. We don’t know what will happen at this point, if or when second and third waves will happen to force colleges to close campus again. Better to deal with the devil you know than the devil you don’t. Go ahead and get started, keep your spot, and just look at it as paying for your first year of college without room and board costs. That’s what we’re doing.

[Anonymous]

Just a guess, but I imagine admission offices might have some hard number of deferments they are not willing to go over. First come, first served sort of approach. Those 2020 who want to defer should get that done ASAP.

Hopefully we'll know more next week perhaps, for schools with May 1 deadlines.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, I anticipate that this will land heavily on the class of 2021.

Colleges will surely allow deferrals. Class of 2021 is this unknown quantity: no grades, potentially no SAT's, no meaningful AP scores, no achievements. Figuring out whom to admit will be a nightmare for most colleges.

Class of 2020 students that were already admitted were excellent, hence that's why they were chosen. If a sizable portion of the class of 2020 students defer, college will admit off waitlist and be fine. Students at the top of the waitlist are barely different from students who were admitted, everyone knows it. Students who were juuuuuuust a tad below the cut will gladly grab onto the ability to attend a reach school, in person or not, and will not defer because they got an admission they were hoping for, but never really counting on.

Admission for 2021 will be much easier on the colleges; half the slots are already filled with excellent class of 2020 students!

Win-win for everyone except class of 2021, or current Juniors.

As a parent of a Junior, there is nothing I can do to change this layout. Yes it makes me upset. I will suggest that my child applies heavily to safeties in addition to the predetermined state and reach schools.

To parents of 2020 Seniors who just missed the cut to be admitted to the top choice schools - congrats, you pulled out a BANNER YEAR. Wait for those waitlists to move. You won a lottery. Don't miss your chance, recession is coming, it won't be pretty for anyone.

I don't think there will be as much movement in the top 25 schools as the experts on DCUM seem to believe.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, I anticipate that this will land heavily on the class of 2021.

Colleges will surely allow deferrals. Class of 2021 is this unknown quantity: no grades, potentially no SAT's, no meaningful AP scores, no achievements. Figuring out whom to admit will be a nightmare for most colleges.

Class of 2020 students that were already admitted were excellent, hence that's why they were chosen. If a sizable portion of the class of 2020 students defer, college will admit off waitlist and be fine. Students at the top of the waitlist are barely different from students who were admitted, everyone knows it. Students who were juuuuuuust a tad below the cut will gladly grab onto the ability to attend a reach school, in person or not, and will not defer because they got an admission they were hoping for, but never really counting on.

Admission for 2021 will be much easier on the colleges; half the slots are already filled with excellent class of 2020 students!

Win-win for everyone except class of 2021, or current Juniors.

As a parent of a Junior, there is nothing I can do to change this layout. Yes it makes me upset. I will suggest that my child applies heavily to safeties in addition to the predetermined state and reach schools.

To parents of 2020 Seniors who just missed the cut to be admitted to the top choice schools - congrats, you pulled out a BANNER YEAR. Wait for those waitlists to move. You won a lottery. Don't miss your chance, recession is coming, it won't be pretty for anyone.

This is exactly why colleges will be happy to fill all of Fall 2020 and 1/2 of Fall 2021 with 2020 grads. They come with data and the colleges know what they're getting.
With the class of 2021 they have no idea. They could be admitting top students, they could be admitting mediocre students. There won't be meaningful ways to distinguish between students.
It's a huge bummer for high achievers in the class of 2021.


But life will go on. The reality is that top students will almost universally be fine regardless of what college they attend. We've all been reading the data that supports this and telling ourselves this for YEARS.
Now we will likely see it play out.

PP here. Yes, we both agree on that point.

This is a game which society as a whole and colleges in particular will win at the cost of our class of 2021, current juniors.

No, they will not recover, although some individuals will do OK.

I am a parent of such a junior. I am considering options and making the best choices in the situation. Class of 2021 as a whole will be at a severe disadvantage compared to class of 2020 or class of 2022.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just a guess, but I imagine admission offices might have some hard number of deferments they are not willing to go over. First come, first served sort of approach. Those 2020 who want to defer should get that done ASAP.

Hopefully we'll know more next week perhaps, for schools with May 1 deadlines.

I was speaking with a relative about this. She is a VP for a very well-known and respected university with a >10% acceptance rate. The colleges and universities will only allow a limited number of deferrals. It is a decision they make for financial reasons. Like all businesses, they need the revenue for this upcoming year, not the year after. They aren't going to hold a vast number of student slots open for 1.5 years from now. That would be like Amazon saying, 'Sure, it's fine. We'll hold your TP for you and deliver it in 1.5 years when you're ready to pay.' Nope, not gonna happen.

[Anonymous]

Save your money folks. With more deferments than usual and no international students to fill the coffers, full pay is going to be more and more important.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just a guess, but I imagine admission offices might have some hard number of deferments they are not willing to go over. First come, first served sort of approach. Those 2020 who want to defer should get that done ASAP.

Hopefully we'll know more next week perhaps, for schools with May 1 deadlines.

I was speaking with a relative about this. She is a VP for a very well-known and respected university with a >10% acceptance rate. The colleges and universities will only allow a limited number of deferrals. It is a decision they make for financial reasons. Like all businesses, they need the revenue for this upcoming year, not the year after. They aren't going to hold a vast number of student slots open for 1.5 years from now. That would be like Amazon saying, 'Sure, it's fine. We'll hold your TP for you and deliver it in 1.5 years when you're ready to pay.' Nope, not gonna happen.

Any idea what the percent of deferrals they'll allow might look like? I imagine in a normal year, the percent deferring is in the low single digits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just a guess, but I imagine admission offices might have some hard number of deferments they are not willing to go over. First come, first served sort of approach. Those 2020 who want to defer should get that done ASAP.

Hopefully we'll know more next week perhaps, for schools with May 1 deadlines.

I was speaking with a relative about this. She is a VP for a very well-known and respected university with a >10% acceptance rate. The colleges and universities will only allow a limited number of deferrals. It is a decision they make for financial reasons. Like all businesses, they need the revenue for this upcoming year, not the year after. They aren't going to hold a vast number of student slots open for 1.5 years from now. That would be like Amazon saying, 'Sure, it's fine. We'll hold your TP for you and deliver it in 1.5 years when you're ready to pay.' Nope, not gonna happen.

There are lots of kids on the waitlist who will pay now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just a guess, but I imagine admission offices might have some hard number of deferments they are not willing to go over. First come, first served sort of approach. Those 2020 who want to defer should get that done ASAP.

Hopefully we'll know more next week perhaps, for schools with May 1 deadlines.

I was speaking with a relative about this. She is a VP for a very well-known and respected university with a >10% acceptance rate. The colleges and universities will only allow a limited number of deferrals. It is a decision they make for financial reasons. Like all businesses, they need the revenue for this upcoming year, not the year after. They aren't going to hold a vast number of student slots open for 1.5 years from now. That would be like Amazon saying, 'Sure, it's fine. We'll hold your TP for you and deliver it in 1.5 years when you're ready to pay.' Nope, not gonna happen.

There are lots of kids on the waitlist who will pay now.

The kids won’t, their rich parents will

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Actually this might work out well for my junior. She was thinking of a gap year because she has little idea of what she wants to study and wants to have more purpose when she goes, more maturity to handle the workload and deadlines. Doesn’t want to spend the money we have for college spinning her wheels and having to go longer, spending more money, possibly incurring loans because of it. We were already discussing this as a serious option and for her to take some community college courses to keep a toe in, try out different subjects, decide what to major in. Now with all the upheaval, it will be a much more common thing to happen, our current juniors and seniors taking a gap year or starting locally due to finances as the admissions crisis works itself out over the next couple of years.

So is she planning to apply after taking the gap year or is she hoping to secure admission and then request a gap year? If she's hoping to secure admission first then that is exactly what we're talking about being harder. It's not about how hard it will be for kids in class of 2021 to defer once they're admitted. It's about the actual admission and how much harder it will be to compete for fewer spots.

If she's taking a year off and applying in fall of 2021 for admission in 2022 then maybe that would help.

[Anonymous]

To the contrary, class of 2021 will see higher admission rate because colleges need to make up for the revenue shortfall.

They won't allow more than the typical deferrals for 2020 either. They have a big revenue shortfall in 2020. If any, they will move more students off waitlist for 2020 to make up the lost revenue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just a guess, but I imagine admission offices might have some hard number of deferments they are not willing to go over. First come, first served sort of approach. Those 2020 who want to defer should get that done ASAP.

Hopefully we'll know more next week perhaps, for schools with May 1 deadlines.

I was speaking with a relative about this. She is a VP for a very well-known and respected university with a >10% acceptance rate. The colleges and universities will only allow a limited number of deferrals. It is a decision they make for financial reasons. Like all businesses, they need the revenue for this upcoming year, not the year after. They aren't going to hold a vast number of student slots open for 1.5 years from now. That would be like Amazon saying, 'Sure, it's fine. We'll hold your TP for you and deliver it in 1.5 years when you're ready to pay.' Nope, not gonna happen.

There are lots of kids on the waitlist who will pay now.

+1 Yes, thank you for adding that. I didn't include it when I posted but that is exactly the same thing my relative said. I was just trying to be brief and left out 90% of our conversation.

Here is more of what she said. The colleges and universities gain nothing from accepting deferrals. They've got a crop of ripe and ready 21s eager to apply so the colleges and universities don't need to accept the deferrals and see that it actually would work against them to do so. So they'll take what they get and then start going through the wait list. The wait list isn't kids who didn't make the cut, they are just kids who didn't meet whatever demographics they were looking for. As seniors bow out, the schools will start filling in the empty slots.

Now my relative also said that some of the borderline places will accept deferrals, probably for a fee. That may sound like good news but you have to view it realistically. There will always be colleges and universities who are happy to take your money. Not only the for-profit places but almost all of the places just getting by. As long as you know what you're paying for, though, then it all comes out in the wash.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just a guess, but I imagine admission offices might have some hard number of deferments they are not willing to go over. First come, first served sort of approach. Those 2020 who want to defer should get that done ASAP.

Hopefully we'll know more next week perhaps, for schools with May 1 deadlines.

I was speaking with a relative about this. She is a VP for a very well-known and respected university with a >10% acceptance rate. The colleges and universities will only allow a limited number of deferrals. It is a decision they make for financial reasons. Like all businesses, they need the revenue for this upcoming year, not the year after. They aren't going to hold a vast number of student slots open for 1.5 years from now. That would be like Amazon saying, 'Sure, it's fine. We'll hold your TP for you and deliver it in 1.5 years when you're ready to pay.' Nope, not gonna happen.

My DD is in at 3 schools with >10% admit and has talked to them each about deferring. None of them have a problem with it and all have said they have greatly expanded this option for admitted students knowing the uncertainty of the times. She has accepted 1 deferment already and may do another in a few weeks.

[Anonymous]

If the college offers deferred admission to the class of 2021, it should offer early admission to the class of 2022.