Students watching e-mail for college acceptance
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Several weeks ago, Alex Bob got his first college admissions offer.
But the good news that the Quaker Valley High School senior received from American University didn't arrive in his mailbox in the proverbial large envelope.
It came via e-mail -- in his Yahoo spam folder.
"I almost deleted it," he said. "I had this whole image of getting into schools that you'd get this big package and it would be really formal. It's really not anymore with e-mail."
As the college admissions season hits its frenzied peak this week, students are finding the process fundamentally changed by technology. These days, many students submit their applications online, find out their SAT scores by e-mail and, increasingly, get their admissions offers electronically as well.
"The technology is taking over everywhere," said Bob Alcorn, guidance department chairman at Fox Chapel Area High School.
Many schools, including the University of Pittsburgh, Penn State University and Carnegie Mellon University, still mail out their offers in the traditional fashion.
Thus far, most of his students have been notified via the traditional thick envelope, said Mt. Lebanon High School guidance supervisor Peter Berg.
But every year, more schools jump into electronic notification.
Most of the Ivy League schools, for example, announced in advance that they would send e-mails out at 5 p.m. yesterday notifying high school seniors of their decisions.
"God bless them for doing it at 5 o'clock and not during the school day," said Jennifer FitzPatrick, director of college guidance at Sewickley Academy. "Kids can find out at home and not in the school library."
When schools first started notifying students electronically, they would send out e-mails without advance warning, she said. Students would check their e-mail "five times a day" and when a decision came out, it would create a distraction throughout the school day.
Still, there are many schools that don't announce the date they will notify students electronically.
Colleen Hosler, a senior at Vincentian Academy, was going online twice a day to check on her early action application to Case Western Reserve University.
She got an affirmative answer, but still appreciated the package that came in the mail several days later.
"I really liked finding out sooner, but it's like a confirmation once you have it in your hand," she said. "It makes it a lot more real."
Because she applied to schools that either had rolling admissions or early action, she had heard from all of her colleges by January.
For Alex, at Quaker Valley, it was the complete opposite: All of the 10 schools that he applied to were "deadline schools," as college counselors call those that reply on or near the April 1 deadline.
The response from American in March was the first one he received. As of yesterday afternoon, he'd heard from five schools -- accepted at George Washington University, Boston College and American, wait-listed at the University of Chicago, rejected from Georgetown University -- and was still waiting on responses from Columbia, Princeton, Penn, Harvard and Tufts.
At Mt. Lebanon, most students apply to between five and seven schools, said Mr. Berg, though some apply to as many as 18. Both public and private schools have seen noticeable drops in admission rates in recent years, he said, with Ivy League schools now hovering at or below a 9 percent acceptance rate.
Factors making college admissions more competitive include a demographic bulge of the children of baby boomers, the ease of applying electronically to multiple colleges and the fact that a higher percentage of the student population now goes to college.
"There's no doubt about it -- it's more competitive now than five years ago and much more competitive than 15 years ago," said Mr. Berg.
Because of the increased competitiveness, it's even more important for students to have a good sense of which schools are a realistic possibility for them. To do so, students have turned, again, to technology.
At Sewickley Academy, students have access to a Web site with data on the admissions success of students over the past 10 years, organized by grade point averages and SAT scores.
But technology also brings disappointments. Mr. Alcorn said that he heard of one student who got an e-mail from a college that simply said "denied."
Still, the arrival of April 1 should be no reason to worry, said Mr. Berg.
"If kids have done everything that they're supposed to, it really shouldn't be a stressful day," he said.
First Published April 1, 2008 12:00 am
