Click here for the PDF version of this topic
The issue of common notification dates was raised often in SSATB membership meetings in spring 2010 as an area of mutual concern. Yet, admission and financial aid notification is a broad topic and discussing notification in a national context perhaps makes it an even more unwieldy subject. An earlier notification may be beneficial to a small school that prefers to confirm/enroll new students in order to satisfy institutional operating budget needs. However, earlier notification may compromise some schools’ ability to accurately assess financial need with the most current information. Regional pressures make the notion of a national common notification date untenable; catholic/parochial schools typically follow an earlier and different timeline, creating pressure region by region. Last, revisit days are a significant piece of the annual enrollment cycle.
Pressures/Issues:
Recommendations:
- A common notification timeframe should be established. It was agreed that if schools were to advertise that notification occurs for independent schools, for example, between February 1 and March 10, then this statement would offer a degree of clarity to families if they receive some decisions earlier than others. This timeframe would seemingly span the spectrum of issues facing schools as operating and financial aid budgets vary greatly school to school.
- A common response/reply date is the more significant date to keep consistent, allowing families, both full-pay and financial aid recipients, to consider all the options that are available. Discussion of this date should be focused at the regional level, given the range of factors inherent region to region.
- School sponsored revisit days should be a part of the annual enrollment cycle at the discretion of individual schools.
RELATED RESOURCES
NESCAC, a group of small colleges in the northeast, includes a statement of notification range (amongst other things) in their group admissions statement.
Atlanta Area Independent Schools’ Principles of Good Practice
The Triangle Independent School Consortium is composed of admission professionals from the Triangle area schools in North Carolina. This website explains the benefits of and criteria for membership. This consortium “evolved out of the desire of the member schools to work collaboratively in an effort to ease and enhance the admission process for the students, families, and other schools involved.”
ISAAGNY (Independent School Admission Association of Greater New York) provides principles of good practice “intended to provide common ground for the interaction of students and schools, parents and schools and schools with schools, understanding and appreciation of the interests and obligations of each will help ensure orderly and professional admission procedures.”
"The best way to understand the dramatic transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life," writes Malcolm Gladwell, "is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do." Although anyone familiar with the theory of memetics will recognize this concept, Gladwell's The Tipping Point has quite a few interesting twists on the subject.