Concordia partners with local schools for automatic admission
Getting into college can feel daunting, given the many processes, deadlines, and decisions that need to be made before a student ever walks into a classroom. Automatic admission is Concordia College’s latest effort to ease the way for students, allowing many of them to be accepted as Cobbers without needing to either fill out an application or wait anxiously for a response.
“In general, the goal of automatic admission is to broaden students’ college choice set and the post-secondary opportunities they consider possible for themselves,” said Ben Iverson, vice president for enrollment at Concordia.
The automatic admission approach, sometimes called direct admission, means offering students attending partner schools acceptance and scholarships before they apply, based on academic information such as GPA or standardized test scores.
Concordia has signed automatic admission agreements with more than a dozen schools in the region, offering their students with a 3.0 GPA or better by their senior year direct admission and an Excellence Scholarship based on their GPA. Students who qualify will receive a paper letter sent to their home as well as follow-up emails about the program. In order to formally indicate interest, they’ll simply need to complete a form online and provide the college with a transcript.
“We know that some students don’t apply to colleges in general because they think they’re not going to get in,” said Iverson, who has heard even young people with impeccable grades and test scores express anxiety about getting accepted. “Students often just don’t know what their potential is.”
Other students worry about rejection, and avoid the emotional impact of that rejection by not applying at all — potentially missing out on a great opportunity to go to college.
Then there’s the paperwork.
“Although at Concordia we’ve made it really, really simple to apply — all you need to do is submit an application and a transcript and that’s it — the perception is that it’s super complicated to apply to colleges,” Iverson said. “So we’ve removed that barrier too. You don’t even have to submit an application with automatic admission; we already have what we need from your school. We make it as simple as humanly possible.”
The final barrier is around cost. Students often don’t apply to private colleges like Concordia because of inaccurate perceptions around cost. The automatic admission process therefore also includes a scholarship offer, allowing prospective students to get a clearer view of affordability before they’ve even applied.
“We’re just trying to help more students see college as an opportunity,” said Iverson, adding that even if a student got the offer from Concordia and opted to go elsewhere, that would still be a win in his book. “We’d have inspired somebody to actually consider a college experience that maybe wouldn’t have before.”
Current partner schools include the following:
- Barnesville High School
- Bismarck Public Schools
- Central Cass High School
- Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton High School
- Fargo Davies High School
- Fargo North High School
- Fargo South High School
- Fergus Falls (Kennedy Secondary)
- Hawley High School
- Mandan High School
- Moorhead High School
- Northern Cass High School
- Oak Grove High School
- Park Christian High School
- Perham High School
- Shanley High School
- Sheyenne High School
- West Fargo High School
Schools interested in partnering with Concordia for automatic admission should contact Iverson at biverso2@cord.edu for more information.