Details from the Florida Fiesta Tour: 6 colleges in 3 days

Florida Atlantic University: 15,000 students, traditional college experience with school spirit in beautiful Boca Raton. Most competitive major: direct-entry nursing. Unique offering within FAU: Wilkes Honors College: app 800 students, small seminar-style courses, live on campus in Jupiter for the first 2 years. Affiliation with Scripps College. Research in medical science/BS/MD program. New 35 million dollar Brain Institute.

Lynn University: Also in Boca Raton, small but full of opportunities. Block scheduling means one or two classes, 2.5 hrs per day, 4 days a week for a month. Top aviation program with private airfield; student-run PR agency; terrific internship options. IAI Learning Support program helps students learn strategies and skills while integrating to college life, then apply them to real-world challenges.

Florida Institute of Technology: Great option to add to list of STEM majors who want a Florida college. Located on the Space Coast 45 minutes from Cape Canaveral, FIT was founded by a NASA scientist/engineer; buildings funded by top local companies. 3500 students; most engineering majors, with aeronautical most popular; aviation management and meteorology. Top psychology program with the largest autism research program in FL. All programs have 5-year masters except for psychology. Impressive campus with new buildings and lush tropical walkways.

Beacon College: What a surprise…highly selective (45%), small college for LD students in beautiful Leesburg, FL. Exceptional staff of professionals implements a unique method to teach and guide students to academic, social, and career success. Each student is assigned a learning specialist and has a dedicated team of support. Some students find genuine success here for the first time in their lives.

Rollins College: The alma mater of Mr. Rogers and oldest college in FL (1885) boasts a breathtaking campus in upscale Winter Park suburb of Orlando. Known for business programs (esp. Masters), Rollins offers a mix of FL, international and OOS students a liberal arts education, school spirit, and ⅓ Greek life on its small lakeside campus. The luxurious campus must be seen to be believed.

University of Central Florida: One of the largest US universities feels less so on its main campus, which is set in 3 concentric circles around a reflecting pool. Engineering is the largest major and the Knights have an Honors program of 1700. Within UCF, the Rosen School of Hospitality has a beautiful nearby campus full of future theme park, hotel, and senior living hospitality majors. 3 internships required to earn 250 of the 1000 required hours may include trips to Switzerland and France. 97% have jobs at graduation.

You’ve been admitted! You’ve been deferred…

Why do so many decisions come out late on Friday afternoon? Admissions offices send out their notifications and turn off the lights…avoiding calls from a flurry of unhappy students.

But last Friday, as I wrapped up my Florida trip at the University of Central Florida’s Rosen Hospitality School, I got plenty of good news too. The Universities of Michigan, Wisconsin, Miami, and Maryland sent out “Congratulations!” notices (or shared them on the portal) to several of my students. Since these schools were top choices for some, I add these students to the “done” list, along with those who were ED admits to Northwestern, Vassar, Tulane, Richmond, Virginia Tech, Fordham, Fairfield, and Drexel.

So, the news wasn’t all great, but deferrals are not denials. And nearly all the students who were disappointed with deferrals have been admitted to one or more colleges where they would be happy, sometimes even with merit aid. Still, why so many deferrals?

We know that the University of Tampa and the College of Charleston (among many others) are overenrolled…that’s why they defer students with relatively high GPA’s. But one of my strongest students–high GPA, phenomenal extracurriculars, and solid test scores–was deferred by his state university. When he said, “I’m not sure why,” I had to agree. Perhaps they assumed he wouldn’t enroll? The University of Michigan and Clemson deferred nearly all applicants in my local area. The only conclusion is that there just are not enough readers to handle the deluge of applications. Most EA applications wind up being reviewed as RD, a consequence of test-optional policies.

So hang in there till March and April. Write strong Letters of Continued Interest to let your deferred colleges know how well you’re doing (but not for every college…ask me about that). Your deferral has less to do with you personally than you may think.

How Will Admissions Offices Deal with ChatGPT?

Last week, I showed an example of a lackluster college essay presented by Jeff Selingo, author of Who Gets In and Why? Regarding the essay, he wrote:

“I asked admissions deans who already find the essay susceptible to manipulation what they thought of ChatGPT. One dean at a highly selective private suggested it might accelerate an idea floated by some of his colleagues to turn the essay into an independent assessment proctored by a counselor. In such a case, students would be given a random prompt and asked to answer in a specified time period.

I told the dean that I can't imagine counselors will want to do more work in the college application process. “Well, if they really want their students to apply here, then they won’t have much of a choice,” the admissions dean said flippantly.”

My feeling: whatever changes colleges will require, I am glad to do more work to help students write uncommon, human-generated essays. I expect that many students may start with a computer-generated draft: we all use tools to make our lives easier.

That’s the purpose of technology! Since humans began using the five simple machines in the stone age to address basic needs like building shelter and finding food, we’ve created and refined tech to reduce our workload physically and mentally. Think the wheel and the washing machine, the calculator and autopay (which frees up brain space). Then there’s speed. Once machines drove production, markets, wealth, and opportunity grew more quickly. All that adds up to ease.

Our text-generating apps can make writing easier, but they can’t make it better–at least not today. “The right tool for the job” of writing a strong college essay is still the human brain.