Goodie bags await prospective students in the Sumers Welcome Center. An unprecedented admissions cycle yielded more applicants, a lower acceptance rate and a higher number of students accepting the University’s offer of admission. (Photo by Curran Neenan | Student Life)

Editor’s Note: This story can also be found in Starting Line, StudLife’s annual orientation issue. You can find some other Starting Line stories here and here.

For the incoming class of 2025, applying to Washington University looked much different than previous years. As students navigated mostly remote learning from the end of their junior year to the end of high school, they also had to adapt to pandemic-related changes in the college admissions process. 

From a new test-optional policy to the opportunity for students to submit a 90-second video to virtual campus visits, the unprecedented admissions cycle yielded more applicants, a lower acceptance rate and a higher number of students accepting the University’s offer of admission. 

With the pandemic making it significantly more difficult for students to take the typically-required ACT or SAT, the University joined more than 1,600 institutions in implementing a test-optional policy for the 2020-2021 application cycle, allowing students to choose whether or not test scores would be considered with their application. 

“We knew that with COVID-19 impacting test availability that a lot of students were not going to be able to take the SAT or ACT or if they had taken it and planned to take it again, they weren’t going to be able to do that,” Assistant Vice Provost and Director of Admissions Emily Almas said.

Applicants like Kendra Williams, an incoming freshman from Houston, Texas, were relieved at the University’s decision to go test-optional.

“The fact that Wash. U. went test optional last year really helped me because I do have testing anxiety, so my scores don’t reflect my abilities as a student,” Williams said. 

Moreover, with 33,634 applicants—the most applicants the University has ever gotten—it was less likely prospective students would have the opportunity to participate in an interview. As an alternative or supplement to interviews, the University created the option for applicants to submit a 90-second video about themselves, allowing admissions officers to see students more personally.

“One student took us on a walking tour of her neighborhood, and she talked about why her neighborhood was so important to her and what it reflected about who she was,” Almas said.

Leena Rai, an incoming freshman from Fulton, Md. said the option to submit a video was a positive addition to the application process. 

“I think getting the chance to have that face-to-face moment with an admissions officer is really important,” Rai said. 

Though Rai prefers the in-person components of the college admissions process, she believes that for some students attending a Zoom meeting is more realistic than flying to every campus. However, after being on Zoom all day for school and then in the evening for college webinars and information sessions, Rai was fatigued from so much virtual activity.

“I would do school all day on Zoom for seven to eight hours and then at 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. I would have these college information sessions,” Rai said.

Williams relied on many of the virtual college tours because financial reasons kept her from being able to visit campuses in person. 

“I did do virtual tours, especially to Wash. U.,” Williams said. “It really didn’t do it justice of how beautiful campus is, and the size, variety of everything.”

In this past year’s application cycle, the University received an increased number of applications and the models used to predict yield rates were not as predictive as normal years. For the University, this resulted in an incoming freshman class larger than typical years. 

“We historically look at data and use models to anticipate how many students are going to say ‘yes,’ and with COVID-19 those models were not as predictive,” Almas said.

Despite an increased number of admitted students, the acceptance rate for the class of 2025 was just 13%, compared to 16% for the class of 2024. Shriya Koneru, an incoming freshman from St. Louis, Mo., believes the pandemic mostly impacted the number of colleges to which she applied.

“I definitely chose to apply to more schools just because I’ve been hearing about how it’s so much harder to get into school now that schools have implemented test-optional policies,” Koneru said. This year, 5,685 more students applied to Washington University than last year.

Not only did the college admissions process change during the 2020-2021 application cycle, but so did some aspects of the financial aid application. The University’s financial aid team created a special circumstances form for both applicants and current students.

“We created a simpler, more streamlined way for students and families to request reevaluation of their financial assistance awards,” Assistant Vice Provost and Director of Student Financial Services Mike Runiewicz said.

With an increased need for reliable technology during the pandemic, in the fall of 2020, the University gave students receiving need-based aid the option to keep their $500 technology grant (if they had one) or use a $1115 grant through the campus bookstore. Incoming freshmen who qualify were given the same options when they were admitted in the spring. 

“Every single student who qualified for need-based aid then received an $1115 computer grant that had to be used directly through the Wash. U. bookstore,” Runiewicz said. 

The larger incoming freshmen class also resulted in an increase of the amount of financial aid being distributed to students. 

“We have more students receiving financial aid this year than we did over the last couple of years,” Runiewicz said. “The average amount of financial aid per student is higher than it’s been over the last few years.”

Many of the changes the University made during the 2020-21 application cycle to adapt to COVID-19 will continue into the next application cycle. 

As some students continue to face barriers to standardized testing, the University extended its test-optional policy to the 2021-2022 cycle. Webinars and virtual events will likely also continue, in addition to in-person campus visits and meetings.

Runiewicz said that students have enjoyed the opportunity to choose whether to attend webinars live or watch recorded webinars on their own time over the last year. In the upcoming admissions cycle, he expects the financial aid office to offer a variety of modalities for meetings and information sessions. 

“I would expect that we will be talking to students face to face, we will be talking to students live via Zoom or via webinars and we’ll be recording content for students to access on their own,” Runiewicz said. 

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Catch up on more news from the summer: 

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Implementation of Public Safety Committee’s recommendations to begin shifting mental health crisis response away from WUPD