Ndilei Lukulay was skeptical when an email from Western New England University offered her admission — and a scholarship — before she had even submitted her application.
“Common App was still saying that my application was pending,” said Lukulay, who grew up in Springfield, Massachusetts. “So I was like, ‘Is this a scam? Is this real?’”
It was real. This year, Western New England offered admission to her and more than 2,000 other students before they had even applied, and 210 — or about 12% — accepted the offer.
The university is part of a growing number of colleges offering direct admissions, a little-known practice that gives students a fast-track to college, bypassing essays, recommendation letters and sometimes even the application itself. The practice is gaining steam among colleges hoping to balance their enrollment in a time when higher education is facing a skeptical public and fewer high school grads are going straight to college.
“The movement is growing,” said Angel Pérez, CEO of the National Association for College Admission Counseling.
Rewriting the college admissions process
Traditionally, college admissions have prized exclusivity and complexity, but direct admissions flips that script. Colleges use criteria such as grade point averages or intended majors to proactively tell students they would be instantly admitted, skipping many of the steps that make applying to college daunting.
Lukulay, whose mother came to the United States from Sierra Leone, said Western New England’s offer to directly admit her made all the difference because she felt nervous about applying to college. “I didn’t know where to start, and I was very stressed about the whole thing,” she said.
Direct admissions has been adopted by at least 10 schools in Massachusetts, including Hampshire College, Lasell University and UMass Boston, as well as state systems across the country, from California to Georgia.
Advocates say the model simplifies an often intimidating process, especially for first-generation applicants.
“All of us in higher education agree that the process is cumbersome. It’s complicated,” said Pérez. “The way to ensure that we have more students in the pipeline to higher education is by removing some of the barriers.”
With declining birth rates 20 years ago leading to fewer high school graduates today, colleges are getting creative to attract students. This fall, after the federal government’s delayed rollout of the revamped Free Application for Federal Student Aid, four-year public and private colleges saw a 6% drop in enrollment among 18-year-year old freshmen, according to the National College Attainment Network.
And while some schools take pride in their selectivity and boast low acceptance rates, most don’t share that luxury: 87% of non-profit four-year colleges accept at least half of their applicants, according to a recent analysis by the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute. In 2022, only 31 schools had acceptance rates lower than 10%.
“Frankly, there is more supply than demand,” said Luke Skurman, CEO of Niche, which helps colleges, including Regis College and Merrimack College in Massachusetts, implement direct admissions.
Skurman said Gen Z students crave transparency and immediacy.
“This is a generation that’s used to Uber to show up at their doorstep and not wait for six to nine months for an admissions acceptance letter,” he said.
For colleges, the urgency is real. A record 80 colleges closed in the U.S. last year.
“The student is in the driver’s seat,” said Jenny Rickard, CEO of Common App, which recently
added a direct admissions option for 120 colleges across 35 states. “We’re trying to make it as straightforward as possible, trying to find students who oftentimes might not even start the process or think about continuing in the process of applying to college by showing them upfront that they are both worthy and welcome at a college.”
Does it work?
The results are mixed. A study of Idaho’s statewide program, which was the first of its kind when it launched in 2015, found that direct admissions increased full-time undergraduate enrollments 4-8% and in-state students by 8-15%.
“Having a bird-in-the-hand in Idaho meant that you stayed in Idaho for school and you didn’t go out-of-state,” said study author Jennifer Delaney, a higher education policy expert at the University of California-Berkeley.
“Admissions isn’t enough [for low-income students],” Delaney explained. “You’ve got to be admitted and be able to pay for it.”
That’s why more schools like Western New England are adding direct financial aid offers, too.
Ndilei Lukulay, who is studying pharmacy at Western New England, said she suffered from sticker shock after seeing some colleges’ sticker prices.
“When you see the prices going up into the six-figure range for the total of four years, I was like, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to be able to pay that off,’” she recalled.
Michelle Kowalsky Goodfellow, the university’s associate vice president of enrollment management, said the goal is to make college more accessible to first-generation and low-income students, who make up 35% and 38% of the school’s population, respectively.
Kowalsky Goodfellow said many applicants with the grades and grit to succeed doubt whether they’re college material.
“There’s just not this confidence of where they are in comparison to other people because there’s so much that is in the media and in the news about the Harvards and the places like that where it is super selective,” she said. “We just have to get the students over that first hurdle of feeling like, ‘Yeah, I can apply and actually be admitted there.’”
First-year psychology student Marykate Agnes is one of more than 200 students who accepted Western New England’s direct admissions offer this year. She said the program eased her anxiety about applying to college.
“I think it’s an awesome thing, and it takes stress off the students,” she said, adding that her coursework is just as rigorous as her friends’ at more selective, brand-name colleges.
For Agnes and other students here, it’s not about where you go, but how you go to college.
Produced with assistance from the Public Media Journalists Association Editor Corps funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private corporation funded by the American people.
