College Direct Admissions: What to Know

Many colleges aim to increase access and reduce application stress through direct admissions

Under the direct admissions approach, a college makes an offer of admission before a student has even applied – if they meet certain academic and, sometimes, demographic requirements.

Applying to college can be an emotionally taxing process, and hours spent responding to essay prompts and trying to find ways to stand out from peers on paper can cause many students to fear rejection.

To minimize that stress, more colleges, university systems and companies have moved toward a different application process known as direct admissions.

What Is Direct Admissions?

Under the direct admissions approach, a college makes an offer of admission before a student has even applied – if the student meets certain academic and sometimes demographic requirements.

Direct admissions empowers some students to "see themselves as college material ready," says Delonte LeFlore, assistant vice president of enrollment management and director of admissions at Chicago State University in Illinois, one of eight participating institutions in the state's One Click College Admit program. He adds that it encourages them to apply to schools "when they may have not done it before because they may have been nervous about it or have anxiety about it."

Direct admissions is not a new concept, and more colleges have started offering these programs in recent years. That's partly due to the fear of an upcoming enrollment cliff, some experts suggest.

"The number of 18-year-olds (and) the number of college-going students declining, and the sort of sentiment around college and the number of students who are opting out and seeing other pathways to lead to successful adult lives" are some of the reasons behind the growth of direct admissions programs, says Julie Murphy, founder and college consultant at Waverly Educational Consulting. "I think colleges need to compete in new, creative ways and direct admissions is just the latest way that they're trying to compete."

How Does Direct Admissions Work?

The process varies slightly depending on the school, state initiative or company.

For instance, as part of the Common App's Direct Admissions program piloted in 2021, participating schools set eligibility criteria such as a minimum GPA and state of residency. This program focuses on first-generation and low- and middle-income students.

Students who meet these standards are identified through their responses on the Common App. An offer of intent is emailed out by the Common App and dean of admissions from the particular institution. That offer can be accepted only when a student submits an official application and the college verifies the information.

The full-scale program was officially launched in November 2023, with admission offered to more than 400,000 first-generation and low-income students, according to Common App.

The Common App also partners with two state direct admissions programs, such as the Connecticut Automatic Admission Program. This program, carried out by Connecticut State Colleges & Universities system, requires students to have at least a 3.0 weighted or 2.75 unweighted GPA..

"The students that we serve are unfortunately marginalized and minoritized, in many cases, and the signaling is out there that you don't need college," says CSCU chancellor Terrence Cheng. "'The economy is hot, go get a job. Why do you need college? Why do you need a degree?' And I think it's a really unfortunate situation and it does a real injustice to what students experience in higher education."

While many Americans have dwindling confidence in higher education, some research notes that lifetime earnings typically increase with more education.

"It's important for us to just continue to instill the value of higher education," Cheng says.

Schools With Direct Admissions Programs

Over the past year, Common App program participants jumped from 70 to 117 member colleges across the U.S. Some participants are the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Stetson University in Florida and Vermont State University. You can see the full list on the Common App website.

Additionally, more than 100 colleges offer direct admissions through Niche – an education rankings company – including Missouri State University, the University of Wyoming and Marshall University in West Virginia.

However, direct admissions is not for every school. Highly selective schools, for instance, are not using this practice.

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"They want to see a lot more information from students before they can compare them to their applicant pool and make smart decisions," Murphy says. "They want to see application information (and) ... admissions information, but they also want to see financial information, in a lot of cases, if they're not need-blind. They want to know that a student is going to be able to afford coming to college there as well."

How Direct Admissions Affects Students, Colleges

Applying to college can cause anxiety for students and their families, and many experts say direct admissions eliminates that stress.

"I think that all of us who are removed from the college admissions process, it is really easy to forget how very intimidating this process is," says Anna Gagne-Hawes, admissions director at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. "It's exciting and it's super positive, too. ... But it's really intimidating to reach out to schools. It's really intimidating to brag about yourself. It's really intimidating to reach out or raise your hand. So I think that the way that direct admissions really makes that relationship a lot less intimidating is just a net positive and really helps students see opportunity for themselves where they maybe didn't before."

Reducing stress and eliminating barriers like application fees helps diversify the application pool, experts say.

Alaska, for instance, is "50th in the country on college-going rates from high school to college," Gagne-Hawes says. "We work in Alaska with a lot of populations that are first generation or just have a lot of barriers about going to college. Direct admissions really removes some of those barriers and really opens up accessibility for students. It fits in with our mission and it also fits in one of our largest goals, which is just to introduce more students to Alaska and to UAF."

In addition to providing more access to education, direct admissions may introduce students to schools they might not have heard of or originally considered in the application process.

"There are students who think that a private college is either going to be too expensive or they're not going to get in," says Jeffery Gates, senior vice president of enrollment and marketing at Stetson. "Let's take that mystique out of that process and let the students know that it's likely that if they let us know they're interested, that they're going to be admitted to the university. It's an opportunity for us to really take hold of that local market who may not realize that this is a viable option for them, for one reason or another."

However, on the college side, direct admissions can make it difficult to gauge enrollment rates – the number of accepted students who actually attend a school – experts say.

It could also make the college decision-making process tougher if a student is accepted by multiple schools through direct admissions.

"I wonder what (direct admissions) is going to look like in a couple of years and how many offers of admission is a student really going to have to choose between," Gates says. "I'm not saying that's good or bad. It's just going to impact the yield from an institutional perspective and families are going to have to really think about the campus visit, I think, in a more strategic way. Visiting 14 campuses, if you're admitted to 14 schools, is different than seven. It's 14 weekends, if they're not all around each other, versus seven. That's hard enough as it is."

Additionally, depending on the school, not all majors are eligible and some academic fields have additional admission requirements.

If you aren't interested in any of the schools that offer direct admissions, "you're wasting a lot of people's time by saying yes to opting into it," Murphy says. "But if you think you might be interested, why not? Why wouldn't you throw your hat in the ring?"