Direct admission offers act as a “nudge” for students to consider college, but paying the bill can still be a challenge, said Jennifer A. Delaney, a professor at the School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. She was one of the authors of both studies while she was a professor of higher education at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “If you can’t afford it, it’s a problem,” she said.
However, some universities and students are enthusiastic.
George Mason University, a large public university in Virginia, offers direct admission through the Common App and through a partnership with local high schools. The university first offered direct admission through the Common App in 2022, when 28 students enrolled. The following year, only six enrolled. This may be because more colleges now participate in direct admission, so it has become more competitive, said David Burge, the university’s vice president of enrollment management. Still, “it’s going very well,” he said, adding, “From our perspective, if it weren’t for the Common App Direct Admissions program, these students wouldn’t be at Mason.”
James Steen, vice president of enrollment management and marketing at Houston Christian University, a private Baptist university with about 4,200 students, including about 2,400 traditional undergraduates, said more than 6 percent of the freshman class that registered for the Fall 2023 came from Niche. Direct admission channel. “Direct admission is ideal for HCU,” he said.
The university began offering direct admissions through Niche in 2022 (for applications for the current academic year), offering scholarships based on various GPA “levels.” (It also began participating in direct admissions through the Common App in November.)
Steven Navarrette, 18, of Manvel, Texas, received an email from Niche when he was a senior in high school, saying that Houston Christian had accepted him. He was initially skeptical, he said, but visited the school, located about 30 minutes from his hometown, and decided to enroll after receiving enough financial aid. He is now in his second semester, majoring in computer science. “The process is less painful,” he said of direct admission.
