Oh no! I missed the college deadline, now what?!
They moved the application deadline? They can't do that, can they?
AZ College Planning has been saying things for years. Such as HELOC's are not good sources to pay for college. Last year when banks started to freeze accounts parents were left stranded, and they had to scramble.
Likewise, AZ College Planning say to apply to the colleges of your choice 6 to 8 weeks early, preferably some time in October/November.
With all the chaotic gloom and doom the trickle down affect has hit colleges. Budget crunches and slashes underwritten by state officials have smacked colleges square between the eyes.
The California State University system is one of the first to announce that because of the budget cuts they are cutting the number of new Freshman seats. As a result the deadline for admittance applications has been bumped from February 1st to January 9th.
(It sounds counter intuitive to me, less seat means fewer students attend which results in less income for the college. The same goes for applications, as this is one form of revenue for the colleges.)
Be forewarned, other colleges will follow and change the game midstream as well. Like chess you have to stay two steps ahead of your opponet.
January 14, 2009
College Abruptly Moves Up Deadline for Applications
By TAMAR LEWIN New York Times
College-bound procrastinators, beware: When state budgets get tight, application deadlines can tighten up, too.
At Fresno State, part of the California State University system, the original deadline for freshman applications was Feb. 1. But last Friday, the university stopped taking freshman applications, three weeks early.
"The first I heard of it was an e-mail yesterday morning, when we got back from vacation," said Ron Howard, a college counselor at Redwood High School in Visalia, Calif., where about a quarter of the senior class applies to Fresno State. "Since each Cal State has its own deadline, I have no idea whether others are going to move their deadlines up, too. Welcome to our world."
It was no secret that the Cal State system, with 23 campuses and about 450,000 students, has been under financial pressure. The system announced in November that because of budget pressures, it would have to reduce enrollment next year by 10,000. Fresno State, which had about 22,600 students this fall, will have about 22,100 next fall.
Vivian Franco, Fresno State's director of admissions, said the university receives 85 percent of its applications by the systemwide priority deadline of Nov. 30.
"When we decided to stay open through Feb. 1," she said, "we said on our Web site and our materials that the date was subject to change, and we reminded counselors to have students apply early."
Most college counselors did what they could to make that happen.
"When we got that forewarning, we hustled, hustled, hustled to get kids to file," said Diana Rodriguez, a counselor at Sunnyside High School in Fresno. "I really feel that if we'd known this Jan. 9 thing was coming, we could have saved more souls of kids who are falling through the cracks, but our district was on break until the 12th, and we had no idea this final slam-bang deadline was coming."
Clara Potes-Fellow, a spokeswoman for the system, said that nine C.S.U. campuses - Sonoma, San Luis Obispo, Fullerton, Long Beach, San Diego, Poly Pomona, San Jose, Northridge and Channel Islands - had closed most freshman applications on Nov. 30, and that San Francisco State had set a Dec. 10 deadline.
But now, deadlines at some other campuses are becoming a moving target. The chancellor's office expects several campuses will follow Fresno State's lead.
"Each campus knows their target, and they're closing as soon as they believe they have enough applications to meet their target," Ms. Potes-Fellow said. "So Fresno was planning to close in February, but they believed they reached their numbers earlier. Chico is in the same situation, and could close applications any time. Stanislaus and San Marcos said their deadline would be March 1, but they'll probably close before that."
Ms. Potes-Fellow said it was too soon to say exactly how the shifting deadlines were affecting students.
"This is new for all of us," she said. "We are coping with the budget crisis and learning in the process. And we can't say when the last ticket will be sold."
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