The Impact of COVID-19 on the College Process

By Vivien f. '21

Finding your dream school is no easy task. It is a major decision that heavily impacts your young adult life and beyond. That’s why students must take into account dozens of factors like location or study abroad programs when choosing a school. The college a student picks has the power to influence their friends and even their future job opportunities. This year, COVID-19 has drastically changed the college process for better and for worse. Given the challenges of COVID-19, the college search process has drastically changed, but the stakes are still as high.

The class of 2021 has seen a remarkable shift in the already-confusing college process. Travelling to schools has turned into a series of virtual visits, causing many students to end up applying to schools without ever setting foot on campus. Fortunately, with the use of technology, many students have acquired more information than ever about colleges and universities. Without hosting physical visits, most colleges and universities have opted to hold dozens of virtual information sessions on topics spanning from financial aid to the annual campus snowball fights allowing students to pick and choose what information they deem to be important. “It’s great being able to choose what I want to focus on about the campus when I go on a virtual tour” Lauren M. ‘21. Despite not being able to lay their eyes on the campus, many students can discover a greater number of schools. Looking at various schools in depth can now be done from the comfort of your home rather than a trip across the country or maybe even out of it. 

Virtual visits may provide a greater range of information, but they do have their downsides. Many are not as interactive as a campus visit would be. They can be repetitive and it is hard to make a final decision about which way to apply, and eventually which school to attend before getting an in-person feel for the school. Applying Early Decision to a school is a massive display of commitment given that it is a binding agreement. It is such a display of commitment that it requires the student, their parents, and the students college counselor to sign off. Without visiting the school, how can a student tell if it is right for them? Virtual visits can give a great sense of certain aspects within a school, but they are much more staged compared to visiting a campus. Over Zoom, many interactions feel forced, and getting comfortable enough to unmute can be difficult. The discomfort in these virtual sessions is even more apparent in online interviews with an admissions representative, “Over zoom it was really hard to catch the emotions of the interviewer” Meron A. ‘21. Although the interviews no longer require any travelling, the natural silence or body language expressed in physical conversation feels awkward and hard to display virtually. 

The drastic modifications of the college process brought about by COVID-19 reap many upsides and downsides, and it will be interesting to see how the virus may permanently change the college process.