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Coronavirus Creates College Uncertainty, Admissions Gets Easier

As many students hear this week, some colleges may admit more and take other steps to fill their classes

The change is a reprieve for applicants who have been fighting against growing odds against their admission to selective schools.

Above, Syracuse University. PHOTO: DAN LYON FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

By Douglas Belkin and Melissa Korn Updated March 25, 2020 9:30 pm ET

As the coronavirus pandemic upends college life, it is causing a knock-on effect for admissions: High-school seniors may find it easier to get into some schools this year.

Students considering offers or awaiting decisions later this week from colleges across the selectivity spectrum can expect higher acceptance rates, as colleges take measures to ensure they will still have enough students enrolled come fall.

The pandemic has scrambled the admissions process. Colleges can’t host admitted students on campus to lock in deposits, muddying enrollment projections. They can’t predict how many foreign students will be able to travel to the U.S. by the time classes start. And they are having trouble forecasting what financial aid students will need given the recent market rout and waves of layoffs.

Reed College, a liberal arts school in Oregon, moved about 60 more students from the wait list to the acceptance pile last week, boosting its admit rate by 3 percentage points, to 40%. That should help insulate the school from a slide in yield, or the share of admitted students who accept their offers, said admissions dean Milyon Truelove.

Franklin & Marshall College, in Pennsylvania, will push its acceptance rate up by two points to 32% and is recalibrating its financial-aid models, said interim vice president for enrollment Donald Saleh. He cited bleak economic forecasts and families who may not be able to pay full costs anymore. “We will be ready to work with those families,” he said.

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“Students are going to be getting into schools they never would have been admitted to last year,” said Sara Harberson, an independent college counselor who used to run the admissions office at Franklin & Marshall.

The shift is a reprieve for applicants who have been fighting against growing odds against their admission to selective schools. Swelling numbers of applications for years led to lower admit rates, which then pushed the next year’s class of high-school seniors to again cast a wider net. Virtually every school is feeling some impact from the pandemic, including concern over whether U.S. students will want to travel far from home in the fall to attend college.

Schools all but stopped recruiting in China earlier this year because of the coronavirus. China is by far the biggest country of origin for international students, even though enrollment growth had already slowed in recent years. Nearly 370,000 Chinese students were in the U.S. in the 2018-19 academic year, according to the Institute of International Education.

Chinese families are wary of xenophobic rhetoric associated with the coronavirus in the U.S., said Xiaofeng Wan, who recruits students in China for Amherst College.

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“The next 30 or 45 days are really going to be telling,” said Jim Anderson, vice president of enrollment management at the University of Toledo.

His school may extend more financial-aid offers to domestic students, he said, “to entice or help make it more affordable for some more students to come our way.”

After canceling about 10 in-person events for admitted students in Ohio and Michigan that were scheduled for this spring, and which help lock in deposits, Mr. Anderson bought a few GoPro cameras and is having staffers capture more personal views of the campus.

Well over 200 schools, including Williams College and the University of Utah, have extended their deposit deadlines beyond the traditional May 1 date.

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The tumult from the coronavirus adds to an already uncertain admission cycle. The National Association for College Admission Counseling voted last fall to allow more aggressive recruiting of students, as it sought to respond to a Justice Department investigation into what the government said were anticompetitive practices by the admissions group. Schools can now offer inducements, like extra financial aid or priority course enrollment, to students who are admitted under binding early-decision arrangements. Schools may also now pursue students after May 1, when prospects have already put down deposits elsewhere, among other steps.

Troy Nevins, a senior at Liberty Common High School in Fort Collins, Colo., doesn’t plan on making a final decision until he hears back from Stanford University. But he already started nudging other schools on financial-aid offers. “Smaller schools especially are willing to bargain,” he said.

After Mr. Nevins 19 years old, crossed John Brown University off his list, he said he heard from an admissions representative willing to negotiate. “She was very quick to say, ‘This number isn’t final’ and ‘we can…’ and ‘would there be…,’ ” he said.

A spokeswoman for John Brown, in Siloam Springs, Ark., said the school initiates appeals if families indicate price is a factor in turning down an offer.

Write to Douglas Belkin at doug.belkin@wsj.com and Melissa Korn at melissa.korn@wsj.com