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“Overwhelming.”
That’s how 17-year-old high school senior Alex Zaret described the college admissions process during a tour this fall of Skidmore College — the fourth campus Zaret had visited, with another half a dozen to go.
“It is kind of a full-time job,” Zaret’s father, Owen, said.
He wasn’t joking. With research to do, visits to make and applications and financial forms to fill out, “it’s a lot, and it’s a lot on top of two full-time-employed parents and a very engaged high school student,” Owen Zaret said.
But even in the year or so that the family has been doing this, the Zarets have detected a subtle shift.
“It used to be more an ivory tower approach,” Zaret said, which signaled, “ ‘You’re lucky if you come here.’ And now, I think, for a variety of reasons, that’s changed. It’s more like, ‘We want you to be here.’ ”
As they compete to attract a dwindling supply of students, colleges are striving to transform an admissions process that has often been intimidating, secretive and stressful into an experience that’s open, easier and downright friendly.
“It’s one of those things that’s in everybody’s interest,” said Marc Conner, the president of Skidmore, which has been making a particular push to do this. After all, he said, “we depend on students coming to our campuses and, when they do come, getting them to enroll.”
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