>> So during the pandemic, being in college seems like it would be a very different experience than
it was pre-pandemic, but you first have to get there. So let's talk a little bit about how 2020,
how the pandemic has affected the process of applying to college. And joining us to break
it all down is the President and CEO of the Common Application and expert on education.
Jenny Ricard, welcome to the Damage Report. >> Thanks so much, John, glad to be here.
>> We're glad to have you here. So, if you're a prospective college student out there and you're
getting involved in this application process, what has 2020 done to that? How are things different?
>> Wow, well, John, what it has done, it's disrupted the process
from a variety of perspectives. First of all, one of the standards that students have been involved
with over the years is a standardized testing. And standardized testing in terms of the ability for
the testing agencies to be able to administer the exams has been disrupted by the COVID-19.
Which then makes it more challenging for colleges and universities to get
the names of students that they might recruit in that process.
It has also led to more institutions deciding to remove standardized tests from their criteria
given the fact that so many students won't be able to have access to that.
Which is then creating, I think some confusion and speculation on the part of students about,
well, maybe I'll have a better chance of getting into a school if I don't have tests or if they're
not looking at tests anymore. So, the traditional criteria that students have been able to assess
whether they might or may or may not get into a college is changing for them as well.
As they're not going to have that same test score that's in the mix.
>> Yeah, that was very reasonable. What I'm wondering is, do we have
evidence yet where we can say definitively how the disruption itself, the prospect that
you might not be able to actually go physically to college that might influence people's application?
Do we have any idea yet of how much all of this together might be affecting, not just like
how many schools each student applies to, but whether they apply at all? Is this affecting
the number of people transitioning from high school to college this year?
Yeah, well, I'm worried in terms of this application season.
We already know that there are declines in enrolments for this particular year in terms
of students who got admitted last year who may not have enrolled this year or decided to
delay their enrollment. But in the application process, so far this year,
our early numbers at Common Aapp are showing a change and a decline for students.
As of now we have probably about a 5% decline in applicants
for as of right now, which is significant. Because typically we added 40 new colleges to our
membership this year, we have over 900 colleges and universities who are members
of the Common App. And so to have a 4% decline when you've added is significant and this is
also the time of year when we typically have more applications, a higher increase.
Because it's the beginning of the school year
and there are early deadlines starting October 15th and then November 1st that
tend to draw a lot of applicants. >> Yeah.
>> So to see that is showing to us that there are changes. We also have seen
some declines and first generation college students and fee waiver eligible students.
So that we're looking out for that. >> Yeah, I'm glad that you mentioned
that about the fee waiver students, cuz I mean, I remember back a billion years ago when I was
applying to colleges, how expensive the process was. And we not only have the pandemic, we have
tens of millions of people losing their jobs and it's a significant expense.
I know that there has been some education aid that was provided six months ago when the government
last did something about the pandemic. Was there any money that was provided to ease the cost of
going through this process, was that a part of it? >> That's a great question.
And what it would have been up to the individual colleges and universities to decide where they
wanted to allocate that funding. But I do know and I've seen just over the past couple of days,
a number of schools deciding to waive their application fees this year. We don't have the
data yet at Common App of our 900 members, but I do know that about
half of our members already do not charge an application fee, and so the other half do.
And to use the Common App since we're a nonprofit membership organization,
it's free for a student to use the Common App, is the individual schools
that charge application fees. So there was, I don't know if there was not
funding directly to that, but it's up to the institutions to make that decision.
>> Okay, that's a very important distinction to make. Now, I know that there was a change
made to the Common App this year. Could you walk us through that?
>> Yeah, definitely. At this moment of reckoning about race and equity in education,
we are taking it very seriously what our role might be as part of the system
in terms of putting up barriers for students in terms of access.
And so we've been looking at our questions on the application to make sure that
we're not doing that, and if we are doing that, what changes can we make?
And when you look at school discipline, school discipline
disproportionately impacts low income and students of color, particularly black students.
Black and Latinx students are or black students in K-12 are four times a
lot more likely to be disciplined than a white student. And that inequity
can persist when you go into the college application process and there's a question
about it. I think about the student who thinks the odds are already stacked against them,
thinking that here's yet another thing and they get to that question and they give up.
Because school discipline has been shown when students are suspended,
they're less likely to graduate from high school, less likely to go to college and
more likely to enter the criminal justice system. So when we did a review of external and
internal data, we found what I just said about the disproportionate impact on Black students.
But also the fact that a Black and Latinx students for the same, disciplinary issue,
are more likely to be removed from school than a white student. And our own data
showed that students who answered the school discipline question were less likely to complete
or submit their application. >> Wow.
>> And the students who answered yesterday question, again,
we're disproportionately Black and Latinx. So from our vantage point,
removing that question from the common portion of the application, is a step towards chipping away
some of this evidence of sort of systemic barriers that we have erected in the process.
So we're looking forward to and hopefully our members can still ask it on their own
applications. But we're doing everything we can to educate them about this disproportionate impact on
students of color and particularly black students. >> That seems to make all the sense in the world,
seems like common sense.
And so in America, my spidey sense goes off, what is the reaction been
since that change was announced? >> Yeah, we just announced it, and
the schools have been receptive, I have not actually gotten any pushback from institutions.
We do have education sessions that we're providing. And our goal, again, is to have
fewer schools, choose to ask it on their supplemental portion of the Common Application.
I can tell you that, last year was the first year after which we had removed the criminal
history question from the application. It used to be, again a common question but we removed it.
And half of our members decided to ask it, so that means half of them chose not to.
And so that's what we're really looking forward to is having more of our members choose not to
ask the student discipline question. Because of the impact that it has on a student even thinking
about going to college and you just can't have that, particularly today.
>> I agree, any other significant changes being discussed going forward?
This pandemic might continue for some time, what else is on the docket?
>> Yeah, we've got a number of things. The terms of changes to the application on the list are
citizenship as it relates to immigration and undocumented students. And how we might be asking
that question in a way that could be having a chilling effect on undocumented students.
And what can we do there, religion is one of the questions, military discharge,
family background, and then also gender identity and expression are some of the questions there.
Also with the pandemic, we added a question this year, for students who may have been impacted
by the pandemic in terms of not having WiFi to take classes.
Or not having a quiet space in their home or needing to actually take care
of siblings rather than being able to focus on their their classwork. Wanting to be able to
give students a place on the application where they could share that information
without them having to use their essays or other aspects of the application to do so.
We also had an initiative that I'm really excited about in terms of what it has done and what the
potential is. In April when we realized that students who'd already been admitted to college,
were going to be dealing with financial aid questions. And not necessarily
knowing what decision they should make, whether the college they're going to
is gonna be able to admit them or continue to give them financial aid?
We partnered with a ChatBot platform, AdmitHub as well as College Advising Corps too. And we
identified a nearly 200,000 students who were first generation, low income or underrepresented.
Or likely to not have school counseling resources to connect them to this ChatBot they could answer
basic questions. But then if they had another question, connect them to someone at College
Advising Corps real life person to be able to give them more personalized advice.
And what we found cuz it's still going on, is we had a 60% engagement rate with that chatbot. And
you think about that it's typically about 15% when an individual college is reaching
out to a student. And so the fact that we have a 60% engagement rate really spoke to us about
the idea of sort of a neutral party providing guidance that is tailored to the student.
And making it very accessible to them right there in text messaging
can really make a difference. So we're excited about being able to have interventions like that,
given the reach that we have. Cuz over a million students apply to Common App every
year using that platform and the third of them are first generation college students.
>> Well, these all seem very reasonable changes, especially considering some of the the massive
challenges that we discussed earlier. So, thank you
for looking into this and helping to make it as easy as possible during the most difficult
year for college applications probably on record. Jenny Ricard ever exactly,
President of the Common Application Jenny Ricard, thank you so much for joining us.
>> Thank you so much, John.