Julia Lopez is a high school senior at Roosevelt High School in South Minneapolis. She is a good student with a cumulative GPA of 3.4 and an active participant in school clubs and theater. One September day, she receives a letter from Augsburg University telling her that she has been admitted to the university for the following fall semester. “How is this possible?” she wonders. “I did not apply to Augsburg, and I certainly didn’t believe that I would be accepted if I did apply.” In fact, none of Julia’s family had ever attended college, and she was sure that her life after high school would be filled with working in the family restaurant.

A few days later, Julia receives a personal video from an admissions counselor at Augsburg, congratulating her and inviting her to visit campus in the next few weeks. She calls the counselor, who assures her that she has been accepted to Augsburg and that she is just the sort of student Augsburg hopes to enroll in its next class. Throughout the next few months, Julia visits campus a few times, meets with faculty in the theater department, learns about financial aid opportunities, auditions for an arts scholarship, and works with her counselor to get registered for classes.

The next fall, she enrolls at Augsburg and becomes part of the largest and most diverse entering class in Augsburg’s 155-year history, as her family cheers her on at the university’s Opening Convocation. Julia is now a college student, the beneficiary of Augsburg Applies to You, the university’s initiative to turn the enrollment business on its head.

Why Augsburg?

Augsburg University is a medium-sized university, enrolling about 2,300 traditional undergraduate students, 700 graduate students, and 200 adult undergraduate students. The university is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and is located in the heart of Minneapolis. Augsburg, like many regional universities, is enrollment-driven and serves students primarily from its geographic region. Without a large endowment, it relies heavily on support for students from the federal Pell and SEOG grant programs, and from a generous Minnesota State Grant program. In recent years, it has become one of the most diverse private institutions in the country, enrolling more than 75% BIPOC students in its entering class each year. Almost 60% of its students are first-generation, like Julia. Its mission, “to educate students to be informed citizens, thoughtful stewards, critical thinkers, and responsible leaders,” is lived out with deep commitments to equity, inclusion, and social justice—values that have been critical to Augsburg for more than six decades.

In many ways, it was the intersection of Augsburg’s urban location, its diverse student body, and its historic values that led the university to embrace direct admissions and its Augsburg Applies to You initiative. As Robert Gould, Augsburg’s Vice President for Strategic Enrollment Management, comments, “We’ve changed the way students experience the admissions process, the way counselors experience the admissions process, and, really, what the admissions process means.” (Osterman, 2024, 2)

How Does It Work?

Augsburg was an early adopter of direct admissions nationally, having launched Augsburg Applies to You when recruiting its entering class for fall 2023. Though there are varying definitions of direct admissions, Augsburg has embraced the basic two-fold idea that animates this effort: proactively informing students that they qualify for admission and reducing to an absolute minimum the steps that students must take to receive and confirm admissions offers. (EAB, 2024, 5) There is, however, a helpful back story that led to the decision to implement direct admissions.

As Augsburg’s student body became more and more diverse, we learned from our students the many barriers they often faced in imagining themselves in college. The university has a robust program known as “Auggie Basics,” which provides assistance for housing, food, and textbooks. We have organized a variety of student support services aimed at meeting students where they are, academically and socially, and ensuring their success. We have raised scholarship and emergency funds from alumni and foundations to provide needed financial assistance. And we have changed policies to remove standardized test scores and letters of recommendation as required parts of the admissions process.

 As Augsburg’s student body became more and more diverse, we learned from our students the many barriers they often faced in imagining themselves in college.   

Augsburg Applies to You, then, was a natural extension of this work to make college more accessible to more students. Any graduating senior in high school with at least a 3.0 grade point average qualifies for direct admission. Those who apply directly, through Augsburg’s Slate application or the Common App, typically receive their acceptance letter in a matter of days. Other students, like Julia, are proactively identified through various networks of high schools and application options, or through partnerships with the Minnesota Office of Higher Education’s Direct Admissions program, the Common Application, and the Chicago Public Schools (which reflects an enrollment territory where Augsburg would not otherwise have engaged). These students receive an admission letter in the fall of their senior year, thus allowing them much more time to make well-informed decisions about the right school for them. They then fill out a brief form that can be accessed on their phone and that takes less than ten minutes. Follow-up from an admissions counselor then happens within a few days.

Augsburg also ties direct admissions to financial aid. The university’s Promise Scholarship offers students who are directly admitted to Augsburg full tuition if they are Pell eligible (or have a family gross adjusted income of $80,000 or less) and are a Minnesota resident and graduate of a Minnesota high school. In a normal year (which 2023-24 was definitely not, given the FAFSA challenges), the student will be admitted by October 1, file the FAFSA by November 1, and have a financial aid package by December 1.

Stephanie Ruckel, Augsburg’s director of strategic enrollment management, comments that “with earlier acceptance, direct admissions supports the goal of having more students feeling like they have more choices, and that they’re making well-informed decisions and are choosing the right school for them.” (Osterman, 2024, 2)

Although the university has just two years of experience with direct admissions—and given the unpredictable nature of the 2023-24 school year because of the FAFSA challenges—the early results are most promising. Augsburg welcomed its largest and most diverse first-year class in its history in fall 2023, and both application and admit results are equally strong for fall 2024.

Who Benefits from Direct Admissions?

Apart from the enrollment results we hope to achieve from this paradigm shift in our admissions work—and those results are critical to our institutional sustainability—there are several other specific implications of the move to direct admissions that are capturing our attention.

First, this is clearly an equity initiative, supporting Augsburg’s deep commitment to access and excellence. As Minnesota Office of Higher Education’s Direct Admissions Coordinator Aaron Salasek comments, “(Augsburg) is really prioritizing equity before enrollment, but that’s sort of a false dichotomy. The two can go hand in hand, and that’s what direct admissions is all about. It’s student-centered, family-centered, and higher education institutions all benefit from this effort…” (Osterman, 2024, 2)

Rachel Farris, Augsburg’s Director of Public Relations and Internal Communications, says that “other institutions around the country are trying to achieve these same goals around access and equity…Admissions is one place where the rubber meets the road in terms of thinking about how our systems work and how our processes either continue or disrupt inequities.” (Osterman, 2024, 3)

Second, direct admissions also transform the role of the admissions counselor. When you consider the traditional responsibilities of a counselor, you imagine long days at college fairs, tracking down those test scores and letters of recommendation, hounding students for deposits, and so forth. Instead, with direct admissions, the counselor becomes a coach, “talking to students about their higher education options, evaluating their support needs, and connecting them with related resources, helping remove barriers to matriculation.” (EAB, 2024, 47) It also frees up counselor time to work with students who may not meet the 3.0 GPA threshold for direct admissions. Augsburg has developed a success coaching program that focuses on intentional relationship building and ensuring students have access to the resources they need to be successful in college, no matter where they matriculate. As Augsburg Admissions Counselor Anna Cox points out, “it really starts to break down the model of admissions counselors being gatekeepers.” (Osterman, 2024, 3)

 But, of course, the ultimate beneficiaries of the direct admissions initiative are the students and families who might not otherwise have even entertained the idea of college.   

But, of course, the ultimate beneficiaries of the direct admissions initiative are the students and families who might not otherwise have even entertained the idea of college. These diverse students—from traditionally marginalized communities, frequently first-generation college students—often find the insularity of the traditional admissions process to be a barrier to even applying, let alone attending and graduating. Given the demographic shifts underway in our country, students from these communities reflect some of the growing trends in college-age populations. These students are the future leaders in our society—as professionals, citizens, and change-makers. We owe it to them and to our democracy to do all we can as higher education institutions to take away the barriers that keep them from fulfilling their full promise in the world. “Direct admissions,” then, as Rachel Farris comments, “is the Augsburg mission through and through.” (Osterman, 2024, 3)

What’s Next?

As direct admissions continue at Augsburg, our most fundamental challenge is to provide evidence that Augsburg Applies to You is not simply an access initiative—it also must support our institutional commitments to student success through retention and graduation. As we deepen the impact of our direct admissions work, we will focus on:

• Empowering students to have more agency in the admissions process, ensuring that they make the best decision about their path in higher education.
• Student success coaching beyond the admissions process, which includes support to make a college decision, but also touchpoints with students during their first year at Augsburg, leveraging the relationship developed during the admissions process to help students navigate the first-year experience.
• Inclusive academic belonging, offering students access to faculty engagement and microsites by academic program that set them up for academic success from day one.
• A new kind of admissions office, creating a “belonging” organization that dismantles the white privilege and oppression in traditional enrollment management practices. This includes an intentional “hire-in, hire-up” strategy to ensure that the team represents the students being recruited.

At the same time, we know that we must respond to the criticisms that direct admissions simply increase the number of accepted students without leading to a stronger enrollment yield. Though our early results do not support this concern, we will want to offer evidence that our yield is proportionate to increased admits. We also know that direct admissions are not the right strategy for every higher education institution, or the only strategy needed for enrollment efforts. It may be that certain subsets of admit pools use direct admissions, alongside a more traditional model for other prospective students. (EAB, 2024, 5)

Finally, we are committed to national advocacy for efforts like Augsburg Applies to You. There is both a moral and a practical case to be made for direct admissions. Too often, the higher education sector worries whether or not students are “college-ready” when our concern ought to be whether our institutions are “student-ready.” Direct admissions come alongside other strategies at Augsburg that are aimed at ensuring that we are “small to every student, and big for the world.”

Sources

EAB. (2024). “A guide to the direct-admission landscape: What radical streamlining of students’ paths to matriculation means for enrollment leaders.”  https://eab.com/resources/whitepaper/guide-direct-admission-landscape/.

Jaschik, S. (2023). “Direct admissions continues to grow.” Inside Higher Education. https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2023/01/30/direct-admissions-continues-grow, accessed on May 8, 2024.

Korn, M. (2022). “More colleges offering admission to students who never applied.” The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/more-colleges-offering-admission-to-students-who-never-applied-11668089120, accessed on May 8, 2024.

Nietzel, M. (2022). “Direct Admissions: How students can be accepted to college without ever applying.” Forbes.  https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2022/11/25/direct-admissions-how-students-can-be-accepted-to-college-without-ever-applying, accessed on May 8, 2024.

Osterman, J. (2024). “Augsburg Applies to You is changing the game.” Augsburg Now Magazine. https://www.augsburg.edu/now/2024/03/15/augsburg-applies-to-you-is-changing-the-game/, accessed on May 8, 2024.