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Send you an admission notice without applying? American universities are no longer decent.

Author: This station Release date: 2026-09-14
This fall, millions of American high school students are experiencing a wonderful adventure of "getting admitted": they haven't written the paperwork, haven't standardized the examination, haven't paid the application fee, haven't even heard of the name of some school, but the admission notice floats into the mailbox one by one.

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal on September 3, in the face of a cliff-like decline in the source of 18-year-old students, hundreds of universities across the United States have joined"Direct Admission"（Direct Admissions）大军：No paperwork, no extracurricular activities, no requirementsstandardized examinationWith only a few indicators such as Senior high school transcripts, universities take the initiative to send admission notices to students.

It used to be a student begging a university to reward a position, but now it is a university begging a student to reward a student?

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You're accepted without applying?


According toCommon AppChief Executive OfficerJenny RicardRevealed:Since the 2023-24 academic year, the number of universities participating in direct admission on the platform has more than tripled and now accounts for about 1/5 of the total number of partner institutions.In the 2026-27 application season, 234 colleges and universities will join the direct recording army, covering 41 states. At present, more than a dozen states in the United States have launched state-level direct admission programs.

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cr. thecollegenavigators


Another platform.NicheThe data is even more exaggerated: more than 160 universities offer direct admission this application season, and students receive an average of 8 admission notices and an average of more than $17000 a year in scholarships. such as North Carolina.Wingate University, directly to the Senior high school graduates who did not apply for the "admission of $24000 scholarship" package package.

How simple is the process? Students only need to fill in a similar "social account profile" information on the platform-transcripts, family information, professional intentions-the rest to the algorithm to match. Next, the admission notice will automatically roll into your account, one by one, just like the push notification of the take-out order.

Of course, the university is not a sucker. There is an invisible clause in the admission notice: if the grade of senior three collapses, the university has the right to withdraw the offer.In other words, I'll coax you in first, but if you really lie flat, that's it.

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This "university chasing students" drama, in fact, has been playing for a full decade.

In 2015, Idaho took the lead in eating crabs, becoming the first state in the United States to launch a statewide direct admission program. In that year, the State Education Bureau sent 20171 admission letters to Senior high school graduates, which were "packaged and presented" by 8 public universities in the state ". Research shows that the program has increased the state's first-time enrollment by 4% to 8% and the state's enrollment by 8% to 15%.

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cr. Idaho Next Step

In 2016, Minnesota followed the pilot, and full-time enrollment at state universities subsequently rose 11.3 percent. In 2017, South Dakota launched"Active admission"Project. In 2019, the Illinois General Assembly appropriated funds to prepare the pilot.

Common App will start testing water in 2019 and officially launch in 2021: 3 traditional black universities will issue "pre-admission" to 3300 students ". In January 2022, the second round of the pilot was expanded to six schools, with 18000 students notified and more than 800 eventually submitting applications-with the highest response rates for African-American, Latino and first-generation college students. In November of the same year, the third round of pilot was expanded to 14 universities, and nearly 30000 admission notices were issued.

In 2023, Common App upgraded the pilot to a formal program, with 71 universities participating and 400000 students receiving admission notices. After that, they ran all the way: 116 (2024-25), 213 (2025-26) and 234 (2026-27).

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State-level projects are similarly blooming all over the place. Connecticut's Automated Admission Program (CAAP) has covered 9 universities and issued 173000 offers in one application season; Illinois's"One-click admission"The project connects eight public universities and eight community colleges; Texas, North Carolina, Hawaii, Tennessee, Oregon, Washington... a dozen states lined up to board the bus. Business platforms are not idle either: Niche,Greenlight MatchConcourse-one by one is like dating software, and it does the same thing: put student information on the shelves and let universities "buy" it ".

During the 2025-26 application season alone, platforms issued more than 800000 active admission notices to students. According to Inside Higher Ed statistics, more than 1.5 million direct recording notices have been issued.

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Did the university really panic?


There is no free lunch and no free admission notice. The reason why universities put down their bodies is that if they don't rob people, they will starve to death.

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The birth rate in the United States fell precipitously after the 2008 financial crisis, and these children are now old enough to go to college. In 2025, the United States will graduate a record 3.9 million Senior high school, and it will be all the way down from then on.

In addition, tuition fees have soared year after year, but academic qualifications are depreciating.

According to data from the American University Council, the average annual tuition and fees for students in four-year public universities in the 2025-26 academic year are about $12000, about 32000 in other states and about 45000 in private. With room and board, the total cost of a year at a private university easily topped $65000.

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In the 2026-27 academic year, 15 universities in the United States have entered the "100,000-dollar club" in annual expenses, with Harvey Mudd College topping the list with $104500.

At the same time, the Pew Center 2025 survey shows that 70% of Americans believe that higher education is "on the wrong path." EAB, an education consulting firm, conducted a more worrying survey this graduation season: 67% of Senior high school graduates did not intend to go to college at all.

Tuition fees have risen by 180, and the willingness to go to college has fallen by 8 percentage points. This account can be counted by people who are even worse in mathematics.

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Third knife, from the financial crisis. About 95 percent of U.S. universities are living on tuition, with declining enrollment and declining revenues that will result in layoffs, cuts in majors, and even closures.

Over the past decade or so, the list of U.S. colleges and universities has been getting longer and longer: more than 300 colleges and universities have been closed since 2008; 28 closed in the first nine months of 2024 (only 15 in 2023); At least 16 non-profit universities announced their closure in 2025. The Philadelphia Federal Reserve predicts that about 80 more universities will close between 2025 and 2029.

Even Syracuse University, a nationally renowned university with a $2.5 billion endowment, has not filled its staff this year, with a budget gap of 1.5 percent and a direct cut in the number of international students enrolled. Enrollment has been recruited like this, what else is decent? Let's live first.

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What does direct admission mean?


To be fair, direct admission is not without value.

For students, it does lower the threshold: free application fees, no paperwork, no recommendation letters, and it is especially friendly to first-generation college students, low-income families and minority students. According to Common App data, students who received direct recording notices were 32% more willing to apply than those who did not. The moment you get the offer, the feeling of "being needed" is a reassurance for many children.

Georgia high school student Eden Johnson said after receiving a direct recording notice from Ford Valley State University: "I thought it would be scary to go to college, but I just felt excited. It feels good to be needed."

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Eden Johnson (cr. Wall Street Journal)

For universities, direct admission is the "drainage artifact" at the top of the enrollment funnel, allowing an unknown school to instantly reach thousands of students who would not have looked at it at all. After joining direct admission last year, Jacksonville State University in Alabama received about 2000 direct admission applications and eventually enrolled 150-200 people-although the conversion rate was lower than that of traditional applications, the admissions officer said: this is a net profit, and these people would not have appeared in our eyes before.

But the downside is equally glarless.

First, "admission" does not mean "affordable". Beth Kramer, founder of the university consultancy In College Consulting, hit the nail on the head: "There's a huge gap between being admitted and being able to afford tuition. "Many schools do not mention money at all when offering offers. Only when the students are moved do they find that the tuition fee is 60,005 for one year, and the terms of the scholarship are all" subject to the final explanation of the school ".

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Alabama had to introduce hard rules for this:Universities participating in direct admission must clearly state the cost in the first admission notice. Michigan's admissions officer put it more directly: "Our best sales pitch is to put money on the table."

Listen, admissions already use the word "sales pitch.

The second is to record people only by GPA and other figures, which is equivalent to simplifying people into a report card. The resilience, creativity, and unique experiences that can only be demonstrated by paperwork and extracurricular activities are all zero in front of algorithms. Critics point out that direct recording turns "comprehensive evaluation" into "one-click screening", and students with poor grades but amazing potential do not even have the chance to be seen.

Three is the conversion rate of worry. The conversion rate of direct admission is generally lower than that of traditional channels. Students have not been "pursued" after getting the offer. They lack understanding of the school and go as soon as they say so. Jacksonville State University received 150-200 people from 2000 offer. Where is the admission? It is clearly a group of text messages asking for reading.

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Four is the "free lunch" trap. An offer that does not need to be applied for may make a child who could have rushed to a better school lie flat. Education consultants have repeatedly reminded that direct offer is only a "safety net", not a "finish line". It reduces anxiety, not ambition.

When the acceptance letter becomes a "promotional flyer"


This wave of operations spread to the Internet, and the mouths of American netizens were poisoned one by one.

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In the Wall Street Journal comment section, someone asked, "Is this money from the school, or is it to teach you how to borrow foreign debt?"

Someone shared a personal experience: "My granddaughter applied to 14 schools and was accepted to 14 (except Harvard). The University of Maine even sent an offer when she only asked for a piece of information."

There is a brother rose directly to the height of philosophy:"Supply and demand will ultimately filter out which universities are worth surviving. In the meantime, seeing faculty and management desperately trying to keep the money printing presses and admissions standards ridiculously low, I was uneasy about the American higher education industrial complex."

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Behind Duan Zi's return to Duan Zi is an increasingly common value question: when a university starts to call you, hand out leaflets and plug admission notices like a salesman, is it an "educational institution" or an "institution with difficulty in recruiting students"?

When the admission rate exceeds 70%, how much weight is left in the admission notice?

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Can foreign students take advantage of this wave?


Seeing this, many Chinese families studying abroad may have begun to rub their hands: is it our turn to pick up the leak when American universities rob students like this?

Unfortunately, the answer is probably: think too much.

First of all, the core target group of direct admission is "American Senior high school graduates", especially a generation of college students and low-and middle-income families.

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Direct Admission的学生类型（cr. Inside Higher Ed）

State-level programs in Idaho, Minnesota, Connecticut and other states are almost only open to Senior high school graduates in their states, and international students can't even touch the door. Although the direct recording program of Common App covers international students in theory, the premise is that your GPA has to be converted according to the US 4.0 system, and the platform gives priority to serving students in the United States. To put it bluntly, this is a "war to defend the source of local students", not an "international student release season".

Secondly, looking at the data, we can see that the wave of international applicants is on the decline: in the 2025-26 application season, the number of Common App international applicants dropped by about 10% year on year, while the total number of applicants increased slightly by 2%. The real gate-Harvard, MIT, Stanford-the admission rate remains unchanged, and the admission rate of international students is 30%-50% lower than the overall admission rate. Top30 elite schools have also collectively resumed SAT/ACT mandatory submission this year.

Famous universities have raised the threshold for international applicants while offering local students exemption. Two sets of logic, each in its own way.

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So, what can foreign students take advantage of? There are only two: one is that some schools that are short of money are willing to relax on scholarships and tuition fees in order to attract international students, and the bargaining chips have indeed increased;

Second, there is an extra layer of "reverse information" when choosing a school: those schools that are crazy about direct offer are often the schools with the most financial constraints. Some study abroad advisors have included "school financial health" in their school choice lists: is the endowment large enough? What is the percentage of tuition income? Has enrollment gone up or down over the past three years?

These numbers, more than rankings, can predict whether a school will survive to graduate.

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Written at the end

Back to this wave of "direct admission", for local students, this is indeed good news. The application threshold is lower, there are more choices and less psychological pressure. But for everyone, it also sounded a wake-up call: when a university starts chasing you, it's not its ranking that you need to be wary of, but its balance sheet.

As for international students, don't get carried away by the headline "You can record without applying.

But when universities lower the threshold because they are afraid of death, when the admission rate is no longer a proud capital but an embarrassing burden, when "being admitted" changes from an honor to a kind of harassment, how good can the education it can give?


From Testdaily

North American Study Abroad Examination Since Media

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