Dive Brief:
- Some 80 institutions are ready to offer a new online application that will allow students to develop a portfolio throughout high school and build off of that work for individualized questions created by each school.
- Inside Higher Ed reports The Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success could rival the Common Application, and it will move away from the decades-long process of making admissions applications more similar across schools.
- As students can begin engaging in the new application as early as freshman year of high school, institutions expect the opportunity to counsel students who otherwise don’t have good guidance along the way.
Dive Insight:
To be eligible to join the Coalition, schools need to be “affordable” — though there is no definition for what that means yet — and public schools must provide need-based financial aid for in-state residents. Private colleges must meet the full demonstrated financial need of admitted domestic students. There is a mix of public and private schools in the Coalition already, though they are all fairly elite as another requirement is that they have a 70% six-year graduation rate. The portfolio system is set to go live in January with the new application available next summer.