How Covid Changed Grad School Admissions

In August 2020, I wrote a post called “Grad School Admissions Changes Due to Covid-19.” Since then, graduate school admissions has changed dramatically.

Given the admissions and enrollment trends we track here at Top Tier Admissions, we’re able to gauge how things are changing year over year in admissions. As with many things, Covid threw a wrench in the college and graduate student experience from 2020 to 2023.

GRAD SCHOOL ADMISSIONS: WHAT HAS CHANGED

1. The “Fauci Effect” extended to fields well beyond medicine.

More students are drawn to what I term “Covid fixer fields” —biology, chemistry, biological engineering, and computer science, for example. These students lived through Covid-19 and are ever-mindful of the concerning global biological and environmental crises they have witnessed. They want to be part of the solution. As the 2021 Council of Graduate Schools report noted, health sciences, business, engineering, math and computer science are the top fields for graduate student enrollment, shown in the chart below. As a former teacher with a PhD in Education, I am encouraged that Education is holding slot # 3, especially since we’re going to need 69 million more teachers by 2030, according to UNESCO.

2. Students are playing catch-up with their research.

A recent University of Maine interview-based study found that Covid-19 restrictions significantly affected research activities, general productivity, and mental health concerns amongst graduate students. This catch-up includes data collection, conference attendance and presentations, and publication submissions. 78% of the study’s participants reported reduced research/scholarship productivity, including 83% of tenure-track faculty and 77% of graduate students.

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When access to research sites was limited, labs were closed, and journal review processes were slowed, graduate school applicants and college students were also affected. My students in our College Academic Counseling Program spoke about this often. Publishing in the top peer-reviewed journals in one’s field typically takes two years so, for many graduate school applicants and students, that inability to engage in research is now affecting their 2023 publications and scholarly pursuits.

3. Comfort levels with Zoom, social media and virtual learning opportunities became more established.

Universities had to adapt quickly, flipping campus tours to virtual tours, info sessions to virtual info sessions, classes in lecture halls to online courses. Skype nearly disappeared from our collective vocabularies and Zoom became a verb. Students can now learn about graduate schools (including tours, faculty research, course offerings, the most recently admitted class and more) on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Snapchat, We Chat, YouTube and Vimeo. A quick visit to Stanford’s Visitor Information website shows you how to follow them on Facebook, Twitter, Listen Notes, YouTube, Instagram and Futurity.

Even as the University of Texas is blocking TikTok from campus wifi as of January 17^th 2023, and UGeorgia banned TikTok from school-issued devices on its 26 campuses as of December 21^st 2022, professors at top programs like Stanford’s Dr. Tom Mullaney are connecting with students and applicants via their engaging TikTok videos.

4. Students embraced virtual graduate school pathways offered by top universities.

Online graduate school programs have gained attention and credibility. The following programs are offered by some of the top universities in the world and their fully online programs cater to students who are okay with virtual learning and see its true benefits:

Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education launched a new two-year online Masters in Educational Leadership (EdM) in June 2021.
Brown University launched an online-only, two-year Masters in Public Health (MPH) program in February 2022.
UNC Chapel Hill launched a new online Masters in Applied Data Science via their new School of Data Science and Society in October 2022.
Purdue University launched a new fully online Master of Science in Agribusiness in January 2023.

CARVING OUT NEXT STEPS

Reach out to us to share more information on YOUR college student experience, your targeted graduate school pathway, and the “Covid fixer field” you’re drawn to. We’d love to help you carve out your next steps and make 2023 your best year yet!

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Dr. Kristen Willmott

Senior Private Counselor & Graduate School Admissions Director at Top Tier Admissions

Having worked as an Admissions and Financial Aid Officer for Harvard University for four years, Kristen brings a depth of experience to Top Tier Admissions. She has over 20 years of experience working in higher education. Kristen has a PhD in Education with a concentration in Higher Education from the University of Rochester, an M.S. in Business Management from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and a B.A. in English from Ithaca College. Her PhD dissertation won the International Susan B. Anthony Institute Dissertation Award. In her role at Harvard, Kristen oversaw admissions for 17 departments and was also responsible for distributing funding from the National Science Foundation Fellowships Program and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Student Research Fellowship Program. Kristen has previously worked as a substitute K-12 teacher, as adjunct faculty at three universities in MA and NY, and as an educational researcher having recently (Oct. 2020) published a book on faculty in academia and in academic journals such as the Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs, Academic Leadership Journal, and the American Association of Behavioral and Social Sciences Journal.

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