The College Process in Quarantine

How to Take the Next Step?

Logan F. ‘20 closely listens to the tour during the annual college trip, Sep. 2019. COVID-19 has brought new challenges to Form VI students for deciding which college to attend. (Sanford Pelz ‘71)

For high school seniors, the college search is usually an exciting and often quite daunting process. For high school seniors in 2020, this process has taken on entirely new levels of stress and uncertainty. 

With colleges and universities across the nation shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic, prospective students have been unable to visit schools to which they have received offers of admission. Traditional admitted student events have been cancelled, and virtual offerings, including tours, student panels, and faculty conversations, have become students’ only means of gathering information as they try to decide which school to attend. Like many of my fellow seniors, I’ve had to make my college decision based not on first hand experience, but on what I’ve been able to learn through my computer screen.

For Browning’s class of 2020, our college journey began in traditional fashion. We went on the college trip as juniors and seniors and visited other university campuses with our families during weekends and over the summer. We took our SATs and ACTs, and we toiled over our Common Application essays. We decided if we wanted to apply early decision, we filled out forms and answered supplement questions, and we breathed sighs of relief when all our applications were complete. 

Some waited anxiously for early decision admits, denies, or waitlists, and many waited anxiously for the regular decision notifications. But before that April decision date, everything about our college journey changed, because the entire world changed due to COVID-19. 

For Browning’s seniors, the next step in our process was supposed to include visits to campuses, weekends designed to showcase the colleges for accepted students, overnights with current students, sitting in on classes, and attending social events. We were supposed to be able to get an in-person feel for the various schools we were considering, and we were supposed to be able to connect with people face to face. Suddenly because of the coronavirus, that was no longer possible, and unlike any other class of high school seniors, we were faced with making our most important decision yet without all the information we needed.

“Although my college search was certainly more difficult at the end because of the coronavirus quarantine, I used all the resources at my disposal to try to make an informed choice.”

For me, having to make my college choice while under quarantine has been stressful, but  I’m one of those lucky students whose ultimate career goals have been clear from a very young age. I want to be a paleontologist, a scientist who studies the remains of ancient life forms. To become a paleontologist, I’ll have to attend graduate school, but first, I’ll need to get an undergraduate degree in geology or earth science. 

With this type of degree in mind, I applied to a number of schools with well-respected earth sciences programs, and I was accepted at five of them. My next step was to determine which program would be best for me based, not only on academic rigor, but on other factors like campus size, location, whether or not the people seemed friendly and inclusive, and whether or not I got a good feeling about spending the next four years there. 

Unfortunately, the pandemic hit, and taking that next step in the decision making process  became limited to recalling my experiences at the schools during earlier visits as well as scouring the schools’ websites to learn everything I could in two dimensional fashion. Even more unfortunately for me, one of my top choices happened to be a school I’d never actually visited, as I’d intended to take a trip there only if I got accepted. So for this school, any assessment of where it ranked in my list of possibilities would be based almost entirely on virtual information gathering.

So I got to work. I researched the faculties and course offerings at each of my five schools. I tried to figure out how many math classes I could avoid in order to get my intended degree. I watched YouTube videos about dorm life, campus traditions, opportunities for research and field work, student to teacher ratios, club offerings, food quality, and study abroad programs.

 I asked family and friends about people they knew who’d attended the various schools and made phone calls to question them about their experiences. I participated in virtual panels during which current students at the colleges answered prospective students’ questions and talked about their own college journeys.

Ultimately, my final decision came down to a connection I was able to make with the chair of the geology department at the College of William and Mary, the one school I’d never actually visited during my college search. I had applied to William and Mary because it has a great geology program, but also because my parents are alumni, and their stories of their experiences there are an important part of our family history. 

I emailed Dr. Rowan Lockwood, the geology chair, to introduce myself and to try to get some input on what my life would be like as a student at William and Mary. I was very excited to learn that she is a paleontologist, and I hoped she might be a good mentor for me. 

Dr. Lockwood replied almost immediately, and we set up a video conference for the following week. During our hour-long conference, she gave me detailed information about her department, and we talked a lot about what a potential career in paleontology might look like for me. I was inspired, and my decision was made.

I have to admit, it was a little sad and even a bit scary turning down the offers of admission at the other four schools. They all had their strong points, and I felt honored that I had been chosen. Even so, I realized that some happy student on their waitlists would be more than ready to take my place, so I said yes to William and Mary, and I’m looking forward to carrying on my family tradition as a proud member of the tribe.

Although my college search was certainly more difficult at the end because of the coronavirus quarantine, I used all the resources at my disposal to try to make an informed choice. Like many of my Browning classmates and other high school seniors across the nation, I missed out on the chance to make meaningful personal connections with on campus visits and admitted student events. However, knowing that other people in our country and around the world were dealing with much greater life and death issues put my situation into perspective. 

I feel lucky to have had the opportunity to choose between some fantastic colleges and universities, and I’m sure my classmates agree. I am proud of my grade. If we can plan our next steps in the middle of a global catastrophe, what can’t we accomplish together?