Student Union
University Applications Spike Amid Pandemic
For many high school seniors across the United States, an email or envelope in the mailbox leads to screaming, cheering, crying or despair as they learn whether they have been accepted to the college or university of their choice.
“This year, I chose to apply to seven different universities: the University of Virginia, Howard University, James Madison University, Penn State University, University of Michigan, Pace University, and New York University,” said senior Bekah Lott, who will graduate from Rock Ridge High School in Virginia in May.
Lott has committed to New York University, her top choice, she said.
The Common Application, or Common App, a nonprofit that connects applicants with more than 900 colleges and universities through a standardized process, reported that applications were up 9% this season, compared with last year.
But applications from first-generation students were up 20%, according to the Common App, to larger and more selective colleges. This was also seen with students of color and low-income students. First generation students are those born in the U.S. to parents from another country, or the first in their families to go to college.
“This really is the opportunity for the more selective institutions to impact social mobility in the way that they have been striving to do,” Jenny Rickard, president and chief executive of the Common Application, told The Boston Globe on April 5. “This is the year.”
More students applied to one or several of the eight Ivy League schools. Harvard University, for example, has received a record-breaking 57,000 applications — or 42% more than last year — according to the student-run Harvard Crimson news site.
More than 1,600 schools waived the standardized test requirement this admission cycle, recognizing the difficulty of taking tests during the coronavirus pandemic. First-generation or minority students, who typically score lower than other SAT or ACT test takers, are facing fewer barriers as scores become optional, encouraging a surge in applications, according to The Boston Globe.
“For my applications, I actually chose not to submit my ACT scores. I really didn’t have a choice due to the pandemic because my ACT was cancelled twice,” Lott said.
The year before the pandemic, Common App reported that among first-generation students who applied to large, selective universities, 83% included their SAT or ACT scores. This year, only 36% of students applied with scores.
Nitasha Mothilal, parent of first-generation high school senior Esha Mothilal who attends Foxborough Regional Charter School in Massachusetts, explains how her daughter applied to two Ivy League Universities: Harvard and Brown. Mothilal said Esha submitted ACT and SAT test scores, even though they were optional. The application fee for each university was $80, she said.
“She did not get accepted into any of the Ivy’s,” Mothilal said. “She has still not decided which college she wants to go to. It is between Northeastern University, Brandeis College, and University of Vermont,” Mothilal said. The schools are in the New England area but Northeastern and Brandeis Universities are near Boston.
The increase in applications without standardized testing has made it harder for colleges to sift through the data to see who would be the best fit for their campus, according to Bloomberg News.
“Although I don’t know every aspect that goes into admitting a student, I believe that without test scores, students needed to make every other part of their application stronger. For me, I made sure that my personal essay, my extracurriculars were very strong before submitting my application to schools,” Lott said.
Lott’s extracurriculars consisted of volunteering in theater and choir and mentoring.
“My essay was about my hair, and the struggles I have had dealing with it growing up mixed with a white mother and a Black father,” Lott said. “I went to a predominately white private Christian school for the majority of my childhood and constantly had dress code violations and negative remarks said about my hair.”
The Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education projects that minority representation at U.S. colleges and universities will continue to increase until 2036, when college enrollment is expected to decline because of fewer births.
High school seniors are not the only ones awaiting their admission results. Undergraduate students who applied to the Ivy League for graduate school are also in the same situation.
Alex Woodward tweets about her acceptance into Harvard and Yale Universities as a first-generation undergraduate student.
“Today I was accepted into Yale divinity and I am just stoked. As a first gen college student I did not think I’d be getting any sort of graduate degree let alone from an Ivy. Feeling very grateful,” Woodward wrote in a tweet in March.
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US advisory council ends Nigeria visit, signs student exchange deal
Members of a U.S. presidential advisory council have approved a student exchange deal between an American college and a Nigerian university as part of the council's effort to strengthen collaboration on education, health, entrepreneurship and development between Africa and Africans living abroad.
The council also visited a health facility supported by the United States Agency for International Development in the capital.
Nigerian authorities and visitors chatted with members of the U.S President's Advisory Council on African Diaspora Engagement as they toured a healthcare facility in Karu, a suburb of Abuja, on the last day of the council's three-day visit to Abuja and Lagos.
The facility is one of many supported by the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, to improve the management of childhood illnesses, family planning, immunization and delivery.
The tour was part of the council's effort to promote African diaspora-led investments in technology entrepreneurship, education and healthcare delivery.
"They're doing a phenomenal job there, it really gave us a sense of what the healthcare system is in Nigeria," said Deniece Laurent-Mantey, executive director of the advisory council. "This is our first trip as a council to the continent and we chose Nigeria for a reason — the diaspora in Nigeria is very active, very influential, and they're really a source of strength when it comes to our U.S.-Africa policy. And so for us coming to Nigeria was very intentional."
The council was created by President Joe Biden in September to improve collaboration between Africa and its diaspora in terms of economic and social development.
Akila Udoji, manager of the Primary Healthcare Centre of Karu, said officials in Nigeria were pleased that the council members were able to visit.
"We're happy that they have seen what the money they have given to us to work with has been used to do, because they have been able to assist us in capacity-building, trainings, equipment supply and the makeover of the facility," Udoji said.
Earlier, the council signed a deal for a student exchange program between Spelman College in the southern U.S. city of Atlanta and Nigeria's University of Lagos.
Laurent-Mantey said education exchanges are one of the council's top priorities.
"In Lagos, we had the president of Spelman College — she's also a member of our council — she signed an agreement with the University of Lagos to further education exchange programs in STEM and creative industries between those two universities," Laurent-Mantey said. "And I think for us it's very important, because Spelman College is a historically Black university, and so here we are promoting the importance of collaboration between African Americans and Africans."
In March, the advisory council adopted its first set of recommendations for the U.S. president, including the student exchange initiative, advocating for more U.S. government support for Africa, climate-focused initiatives, and improving U.S. visa access for Africans.
The council met with Nigerian health and foreign affairs officials during the visit before leaving the country on Wednesday.
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5 killed, dozens injured in clashes over Bangladesh jobs quota system
At least 5 people were killed and dozens injured in two separate incidents in Bangladesh as violence continued Tuesday on university campuses in the nation's capital and elsewhere over a government jobs quota system, local media reports said quoting officials.
At least three of the dead were students and one was a pedestrian, the media reports said. Another man who died in Dhaka remained unidentified.
The deaths were reported Tuesday after overnight violence at a public university near Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka. The violence involved members of a pro-government student body and other students, when police fired tear gas and charged the protesters with batons during the clashes, which spread at Jahangir Nagar University in Savar, outside Dhaka, according to students and authorities.
Protesters have been demanding an end to a quota reserved for family members of veterans who fought in Bangladesh's war of independence in 1971, which allows them to take up 30% of governmental jobs.
They argue that quota appointments are discriminatory and should be merit-based. Some said the current system benefits groups supporting Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Some Cabinet ministers criticized the protesters, saying they played on students' emotions.
The Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily newspaper reported that one person died in Dhaka and three others, including a pedestrian, were killed after they suffered injuries during violence in Chattogram, a southeastern district, on Tuesday.
Prothom Alo and other media reports also said that a 22-year-old protester died in the northern district of Rangpur.
Details of the casualties could not be confirmed immediately.
While job opportunities have expanded in Bangladesh's private sector, many find government jobs stable and lucrative. Each year, some 3,000 such jobs open up to nearly 400,000 graduates.
Hasina said Tuesday that war veterans — commonly known as "freedom fighters" — should receive the highest respect for their sacrifice in 1971 regardless of their current political ideologies.
"Abandoning the dream of their own life, leaving behind their families, parents and everything, they joined the war with whatever they had," she said during an event at her office in Dhaka.
Protesters gathered in front of the university's official residence of the vice chancellor early Tuesday when violence broke out. Demonstrators accused the Bangladesh Chhatra League, a student wing of Hasina's ruling Awami League party, of attacking their "peaceful protests." According to local media reports, police and the ruling party-backed student wing attacked the protesters.
But Abdullahil Kafi, a senior police official, told the country's leading English-language newspaper Daily Star that they fired tear gas and "blank rounds" as protesters attacked the police. He said up to 15 police officers were injured.
More than 50 people were treated at Enam Medical College Hospital near Jahangir Nagar University as the violence continued for hours, said Ali Bin Solaiman, a medical officer of the hospital. He said at least 30 of them suffered pellet wounds.
On Monday, violence also spread at Dhaka University, the country's leading public university, as clashes gripped the campus in the capital. More than 100 students were injured in the clashes, police said.
On Tuesday, protesters blocked railways and some highways across the country, and in Dhaka, they halted traffic in many areas as they vowed to continue demonstrating until the demands were met.
Local media said police forces were spread across the capital to safeguard the peace.
Swapon, a protester and student at Dhaka University who gave only his first name, said they want the "rational reformation of the quota scheme." He said that after studying for six years, if he can't find a job, "it will cause me and my family to suffer."
Protesters say they are apolitical, but leaders of the ruling parties accused the opposition of using the demonstrations for political gains.
A ruling party-backed student activist, who refused to give his name, told The Associated Press that the protesters with the help of "goons" of the opposition's Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami party vandalized their rooms at the student dormitories near the Curzon Hall of Dhaka University.
The family-of-the-veterans quota system was halted following a court order after mass student protests in 2018. But last month, Bangladesh's High Court nulled the decision to reinstate the system once more, angering scores of students and triggering protests.
Last week, the Supreme Court suspended the High Court's order for four weeks and the chief justice asked protesting students to return to their classes, saying the court would issue a decision in four weeks.
However, the protests have continued daily, halting traffic in Dhaka.
The quota system also reserves government jobs for women, disabled people and ethnic minority groups, but students have protested against only the veterans system.
Hasina maintained power in an election in January that was again boycotted by the country's main opposition party and its allies due to Hasina's refusal to step down and hand over power to a caretaker government to oversee the election.
Her party favors keeping the quota for the families of the 1971 war heroes after her Awami League party, under the leadership of her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, led the independence war with the help of India. Rahman was assassinated along with most of his family members in a military coup in 1975.
