Admission to College, With Catch: Year’s Wait
Jonathan Cohen for The New York Times
Cornell University told Evi Nam it would admit her only if she attended another college first.
By LISA W. FODERARO
Published: April 10, 2011
For as long as there have been selective colleges, the spring ritual has been the same: Some applicants get a warm note of acceptance, and the rest get a curt rejection.
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Now, as colleges are increasingly swamped with applications, a small but growing number are offering a third option: guaranteed admission if the student attends another institution for a year or two and earns a prescribed grade-point average.
This little-noticed practice — an unusual mix of early admission and delayed gratification — has allowed colleges to tap their growing pools of eager candidates to help counter the enrollment slump that most institutions suffer later on, as the accepted students drop out, transfer, study abroad or take internships off campus.
“Life happens — we all understand that the size of the freshman class diminishes as they progress,” said Barmak Nassirian, an associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers in Washington. “This is an attempt at what is called enrollment management.”
But while the practice, known as deferred admission or a guaranteed transfer option, offers applicants another shot at their dream school, it can also place them in limbo, as they start college life on a campus they plan to abandon. And it can create problems for that institution, which is not usually told about the deal the student has struck with a competitor.
Monica Inzer, the dean of admission at Hamilton College in upstate New York, called the practice “borderline unethical,” saying it had the effect of recruiting students from other colleges. “We would allow a student to defer for a year, but never to matriculate full time at another college,” Ms. Inzer said.
No one tracks how many colleges use this admissions option, and some are reluctant to reveal that they do. In New York State, they include Cornell University, Medaille College in Buffalo and several campuses in the State University of New York system, including the ones in Albany and Geneseo. Many others around the country, like the University of Maryland and Middlebury College in Vermont, have long had variations on the practice, accepting students if they agree to start a semester later.
Though deferred admission is not entirely new, admissions officers say the number of colleges offering it has increased in recent years, and they expect that to continue as baby boomers’ children, who created their own demographic bulge, move into adulthood.
“Throughout the Northeast in particular, the number of traditional freshmen will continue to go down, so schools that aren’t already doing something like this are talking about it,” said Gregroy P. Florczak, vice president for enrollment management and undergraduate admissions at Medaille. “You’re going to need to pick up in transfers what you are losing in incoming freshmen.”
Some admissions officers suggested in interviews that deferred admission had also provided an edge in college rankings. Because the rankings are based in part on the SAT scores and high school grade-point averages of freshmen entering in the fall, the scores — presumably lower — of students who are to begin later are not included. Deferring the admission of some students also lowers the college’s admissions rate, making it appear more selective.
William Caren, associate vice president for enrollment services at SUNY Geneseo, said the effect on rankings was not a motivation for his campus’s offering deferred admission, but “a collateral benefit.”
Each college with deferred admissions does them a little differently. Usually, the offers are put in writing, and prospective students are asked to submit a form demonstrating interest. But while the college promises delayed admission, students are typically not required to commit themselves or pay a deposit. Colleges often provide academic advisers to help students choose compatible courses at the institution they will attend first.
Such arrangements are different from the traditional “articulation agreements” that four-year public colleges make with community colleges. In those, the institutions work together to ensure the smooth transferring of credits.
When Evi Nam applied to Cornell two years ago after graduating from high school in Concord, N.H., the first word she got from the university’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations was a rejection. “I was heartbroken,” she said.
A few days later, she received another message from the school: the offer of a spot the next fall as a transfer student, as long as she earned at least a 3.3 grade-point average at another accredited institution.
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“It felt like a gift from heaven,” said Ms. Nam, who attended New York University for a year, earned a 3.8, and started at Cornell last fall. “It’s anIvy League. I was singing when they gave me the option.”
But life was not easy at N.Y.U., where, as fate would have it, she also missed the cut for standard admission. Instead, she was admitted to the university’s Liberal Studies Program, a two-year track for slightly weaker applicants, who are guaranteed enrollment in a bachelor’s program their third year.
Ms. Nam held off notifying N.Y.U. about her intention to leave until the end of her year there — and held herself aloof from campus life.
“I knew that I was going to be leaving in a year, so I didn’t want to make any BFF’s,” she said. “It put me in an awkward position. I had no connections with N.Y.U. — it was just a steppingstone for Cornell. A lot of people at N.Y.U. got jealous and cut me out of their lives. It was messy.”
The dean of the Liberal Studies Program at N.Y.U., Fred Schwarzbach, was critical of students who enter knowing their stay will be temporary. Without commenting specifically on Ms. Nam, he said, “In general, we would not admit a student unless that student were committed to a four-year undergraduate experience.”
Still, the benefits of deferred admission can be attractive for both students and colleges.
For years, SUNY Geneseo was on the receiving end of the phenomenon, losing sophomores to Cornell year after year. “A lot of students who apply here also apply to Cornell,” Mr. Caren said. “When Cornell says it will defer their admission, they enroll here for a year. Then they come to the dean’s office and say, ‘Well, I’m leaving.’ We picked up on this, and we decided to do it ourselves.”
Two years ago, Geneseo, the most selective liberal arts college in the state system, began offering students a guaranteed-transfer admission for the following fall. Those students must receive a 3.0 grade-point average from any accredited institution. Geneseo sent out 200 such offers, but only about 15 students accepted.
A more popular program delays admission until the spring semester for hundreds of applicants who are academically stronger than the first group. Mr. Caren said Geneseo last year offered 500 students the option of arriving in the spring, or the following fall; 178 ended up enrolling, up from 50 seven years ago. Though not required to study elsewhere, virtually all do, and more than a third enroll in a four-year college for a single semester.
“We have a number of students who graduate midyear for a variety of reasons,” Mr. Caren said. “So the spring semester balances out very nicely and we can maintain the residence halls at fuller capacity.”
There are many other variations on the theme of finding room in the future for marginal candidates. Middlebury College asks applicants to indicate their willingness to arrive in February instead of September; about 100 students enroll in the spring, most voluntarily. The University of Maryland has offered 4,400 applicants admission for spring 2012 on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.
Fairleigh Dickinson, in Teaneck and Madison, N.J., promises eventual admission to a few hundred applicants each year if they perform well at one of 16 community colleges in the state.
And next fall, Binghamton University, one of SUNY’s four research universities, will begin a program that puts another spin on the community college route. It has just offered about 600 applicants spots in its freshman dormitories. But those students will enroll at Broome Community College a few miles away, becoming eligible for admission to Binghamton in a year or two.
Asked if housing a subset of community college students on campus could make them feel second-class, Sandra Starke, vice provost for enrollment management at Binghamton, said: “We’re hoping that’s not the case. We believe all students will be inspiring one another to do better.”
