Direct Admissions Pilot Makes College More Attainable

This past December, 45,000 seniors from 230 randomly chosen public high schools across Tennessee received a letter from a pilot initiative called TN Direct Admissions. The personalized letter included a list of in-state colleges and universities that were offering them early admission — automatically. No application to fill out. No fee to pay. No mystery. If a student was interested in attending a school on the list, they just scanned a QR code and claimed their spot. The initiative sends their student information to the college for them. 

For almost half of that group, the letter also let them know upfront how much state financial aid and college-based merit aid they could get, based on grades, test scores, and other criteria.

The goal of the pilot, run by the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, is to make the process of applying to college more equitable and informed — and less daunting.

Mark Photivihok, the project manager for the initiative, said his son was visibly relieved when he received a letter.

“We have had many conversations about college throughout his time in high school, but he was still so overwhelmed,” Photivihok says. “When he got his letter, I could see the stress leave him.”

The Ed School’s Making Caring Common (MCC) has been partnering with the Tennessee Higher Education Commission on the pilot since it was just an idea a few years ago. Their initial work involved actively helping the state formalize and set up the program. This included figuring out the four student treatment groups: get a letter, get a letter with financial aid information, get a letter with financial aid informaion and a series of text messages, and get a letter with financial aid information and “high-touch” advising from a school counselor. 

“None of this could happen without Making Caring Common,” says Photivihok. “They have been there from the start, helping us create this program. Working with them and being able to collaborate and bounce ideas off them has aided us greatly. They have provided us with so many resources, from connections to other direct admissions programs to supporting us in our communication efforts. We are so grateful for their partnership.” 

Trisha Ross Anderson, the college admission program director at Making Caring Common and the liaison to the Tennessee pilot, says that now that the letters have gone out, the commission is analyzing the quantitative data while MCC gathers qualitative data from the treatment groups through a survey and small in-depth focus groups in schools. Eventually, they’ll use the combined data to determine whether direct admissions and early financial information increase the likelihood of college enrollment compared to receiving only direct admissions information, or no letter at all.

“So much of what we’re going to collect is short vignettes and that’s going to paint the picture of what’s going on in Tennessee,” she says. “A lot of this is student reactions to the letter. What did you think when you got this letter? What did you do with this information? Do you think that you’re going to enroll in one of these colleges? How did that financial aid information affect you, if at all?”

MCC also posed additional questions to students who received personalized counseling or text messages, such as did you open those texts and did the texts affect your behavior in any way?

“We want to see the impact of a text message campaign on students to see if that affects how and if they are enrolling in higher ed opportunities,” she says. Even within the group who received texts, there is variation. Some students are just receiving general text message blasts. For others, there are specific messages related to deadlines they need to remember and tasks they need to do. Some parents are also getting texts. “We’re looking at the impact of text messaging students alone,” Ross Anderson says, “versus messaging students and their parents simultaneously.”

The last group, the students receiving one-on-one advising from a school counselor, is touch-model where advisers meet with students in person,” she says. “They send personalized texts where they’re inviting students to meet with them. They’re calling parents to talk about Jason or Jessica and what their choices are.”

A full analysis of the data and feedback they are now collecting won’t be known until later this year, as some students don’t commit to a college until as late as September of their freshman year, but numbers-wise, as of late April, more than 7,000 students who received a letter had completed the TN Direct enrollment form and another nearly 2,200 were in the process of filling it out.

Anecdotally, Photivihok says even before letters went out, he started getting good feedback.

“Since the beginning, there was excitement for the program,” he says, especially among school counselors, and a few of the schools that were part of the control group — their students did not get letters — “were not happy that the randomization left them out.” Encouragingly, Photivihok says they are also seeing students express interest in schools that they had never heard of before the pilot started or that are located across the state.

In an Ed School news story about the launch of the pilot that ran last fall, Ross Anderson said they have their sights set on exploring the impact a program like this could have on students beyond those in Tennessee.

“We want to learn how successful aspects of this project may be replicated in other states,” she said. “We will conduct a series of interviews with administrators and educators across the state who are implementing and impacted by this intervention to understand what aspects of implementation are most useful, effective, and scalable.”

Not long after the letters went out in December, the team started working on a plan for year two. A few changes, Photivihok says, include opening up direct admissions to all high school seniors, including private and home school students, and offering the application sooner, in the spring of junior year. A year-two goal is also to grow the number of higher education institutions participating in the program. During the first-year pilot, 57 colleges, universities, and technical schools participated. TN Direct Admissions also hopes to see the early sharing of financial aid being adopted by colleges and universities in other states. “Having that information early in the process changes everything,” Photivihok says.

Ross Anderson says new pilots like this are critical for student success and fit perfectly into the work that Making Caring Common has been doing for years with their Turning the Tide Initiative, which focuses on promoting access and equity in the college admission process. The TN Direct Admissions initiative is another step in breaking down barriers to admission and financial aid.

“For so long, [higher education] has made this so difficult for so many students, and this initiative is making college accessible for every student,” she says. “It’s taking away the barriers. It’s taking away the fees. It’s taking away a lot of the anxiety about money because so many of these students are going to know exactly, or at least know a part of, the financial aid that they’re going to receive. For so many kids, they look at that price tag of $40,000, $50,000, $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 and they say, no, I can never afford it. But maybe now they’re thinking, oh, I thought it was way more expensive. And that’s essential when we talk about higher education.”

Receiving a direct admissions letter that lists the schools that already want you to attend is also an important signaler to high school students that they are college material.

“Even if they don’t end up going to a particular college [listed in the letter], that message itself is important,” she says. “I have what it takes. Colleges want me. And maybe I can afford this. Those messages are really important.”