An in-depth look at how COVID has impacted Luther College's admissions process

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced everyone to approach things with new ideas and perspectives.  In this in-depth editorial piece, Luther College's Vice President for Enrollment Management Derek Hartl highlights how the admissions process has been impacted, in both positive and negative ways, and what the college is doing to make the best of the changes.

"In pre-COVID years, the summer is typically filled with multiple preview days and open houses, as seniors continue the process of narrowing down the list of schools to which they intend to apply. As the school year begins in the fall, colleges and universities send admissions representatives to high schools and college fairs in an effort to share information about their institution with students seeking to further establish their list of potential colleges. Additional preview days and interest-specific visit events (ex. Education Visit Day; Science and Pre-Health Visit Day) are also scheduled on campus throughout the fall. Luther College operates on an Early Action admissions process, which allows for students that apply by November 1st to receive an earlier admission decision, and earlier financial aid award. This process is non- binding, so it does not commit a student to attend Luther if they go through this process. At Luther, students begin to be admitted the first week of November and are then admitted on a rolling basis every week from that point on. Financial aid awards begin to mail to admitted students in mid-November.

Over the next several months we invite students to campus for a variety of visit experiences that may include overnight stays in the residence halls, athletic events or music concerts, class visits, and conversations with individuals from across campus. During the late winter and spring, we focus on connecting students to those individuals at Luther who can help them solidify their college choice. As students make their decision to attend Luther, they submit an enrollment deposit and begin the housing and registration process.

The above description is a simplified version of a complex process. Luther's recruitment process is very individualized to the needs of each student.

There are a number of dramatic changes to this year's process, but I'll focus on just a few key issues. While Luther has remained open for individual campus visits, we are unable to offer large group visit events. Additionally, our counselors are not making in-person visits to high schools, and all college fairs have been held in a virtual format.

In order to compensate for the lack of in-person visit opportunities, we have shifted much of our focus to offering engaging virtual visit opportunities. This continues to be an area of strength for our enrollment efforts, as we're able to engage with students from all over the country and all over the world with compelling department-specific and activity-specific offerings.

Additionally, it's quite clear that high school students have seen their worlds turned upside down as a result of the pandemic. The school year has looked very different, with many students trying to navigate remote learning, dramatic changes to school, church, community, and social functions, and the loss of a "normal" senior year. High school seniors are definitely operating on their own college search schedule, and this year it doesn't seem to be matching college and university schedules.

Finally, as ACT and SAT test dates have been cancelled or rescheduled, and as many colleges (including Luther) have moved to a test-optional admissions process, it's causing colleges to rethink how they acquire the names of college-bound students. We are inventing new ways of finding students who might be interested in attending Luther College so that we can communicate with them and build awareness of what Luther offers.

We are certainly relying more on our website and other digital communications to provide information about the campus and town. Students were already getting much of their information about Luther from our website, but considering their inability to visit in person, their use of the website has grown significantly.