Higher education 2022: Deny, defer, debt, default

The four D's of higher education today. Either the school doesn't want you, or you don't want them. Then there's the debt, followed by the prospect of default. None of this is good news.

Seeking College-Admissions Edge, More Students Take Gap Year - WSJ.pdf

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Rising rejections at highly-selective colleges and hopes for better luck in a year are pushing more college seniors to take a yearlong pause after high school.

For the 2020-21 academic year, 130,000 students took gap years, according to the nonprofit Gap Year Association, with many of these early-pandemic gap-year students deferring enrollment to wait for the full college experience. That is up from between 40,000 and 60,000 students before the pandemic.

This year, the number of students taking a year off looks to be on pace with or higher than in 2021 largely as a result of low college- acceptance rates, say consultants and college advisers.

Acceptance rates at some highly- selective schools dipped below 4% this spring. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology admission rate for the class of 2026 was 3.9% this year, down from 7.3% two years prior. Emory University’s admissions rate dropped nearly 5 percentage points, and Boston University’s decreased by more than 4 percentage points.