Our counselors reflect on how the pandemic has affected college admissions at Pace and beyond
COLLEGE COUNSELING IN THE COVID ERA In
a March 2021 Wall Street Journal article entitled College Admission Season Is Crazier Than Ever. That Could Change Who Gets In, authors Melissa Korn and Douglas Belkin discuss the impact of highly selective colleges and universities’ decisions to waive standardized test requirements in light of the COVID pandemic’s impact on students. The change resulted in “an unprecedented flood of applications and what may prove the most chaotic selection experiment in American higher education since the end of World War II,” Korn and Belkin write. “The question hanging over higher education… is whether this influx will permanently change how colleges select students and, ultimately, the makeup of the student population.” The question of how college application processes would be affected by new testing policies was just one of many chal-
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lenges that arose for the Pace Academy Office of College Counseling at the height of the pandemic. When Pace transitioned to virtual learning in March 2020, a majority of seniors had made their college choices. “In terms of our operations, the Class of 2020 wasn’t severely impacted,” explains Associate Director of College Counseling BEN WESCOTT. “The Class of 2021, however, is a different story.” As Pace shuttered its campus in March 2020, so too did colleges and universities in the U.S. and around the world. Visiting colleges during the spring and summer of junior year as is typical simply was not possible, so when the Class of 2021 returned to Pace for the start of their senior year, few had solidified their top choices. That sense of indecision and unpredictability characterized the year, reports Director of College Counseling JONATHAN FERRELL.
What was not up for debate was the team’s commitment to supporting Pace students and families. “We had to quickly wrap our minds around what was going on and determine how we were going to walk through this and serve our kids,” Ferrell says. “We didn’t get to shut down. Instead, we adapted, and we adapted well.” In a normal year, the Office of College Counseling provides student and parent programming for grades nine and 10; the official search process kicks off during junior year when students are assigned a college counselor, take the PSAT, attend college fairs, meet with college representatives visiting Pace, register for and take standardized tests and participate in college tours. Senior year is equally busy—filled with essay and application workshops, family meetings, and additional college fairs and visits.
