Students Are Using a ‘Backdoor’ to Attend Their Dream Schools

High-school grads move to college towns, enroll in online programs and build social life outside regular admissions route

By Roshan Fernandez of The WSJ. 

The links to related posts below are all about the extreme measures and costs that students and their families are willing to incur to get into the college of their choice. So it is interesting that now there might be a lower cost option.

Excerpts:

"Students who don’t get into major public flagships the traditional way are still participating in the social life of these campuses. The small-but-mighty group is moving to college towns, enrolling in online programs or nearby community colleges, living in private housing, joining Greek life, and attending game-day tailgates."

"The programs can be a savvy way for universities to protect their rankings and generate revenue, said Adam Nguyen, founder of admissions-consulting firm Ivy Link. These are often students who narrowly missed the admissions cutoff."

"Some schools dispute that characterization. The goal of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s dual-enrollment program with a nearby community college is to provide affordability for students and smooth an otherwise complex transfer process, administrators said."

"Justin Helman didn’t get his dream acceptance from the University of Florida. But that isn’t stopping him from pursuing the classic college experience there.

The recent high-school graduate from Park Ridge, N.J., is set to move into a private apartment right by campus. He is enrolling in a UF online program for the first few semesters and paying an extra fee package to access services like the campus gym and student-section football-game tickets. He plans to study at the library, join clubs and might rush a fraternity." 

Related posts:

For College Applicants, Pressure to Make Summers Count Has Gotten Even Worse: Teens scramble to specialize their summer pursuits early—to convey a ‘story’ to college admissions officers (2026) 

The Guru Who Says He Can Get Your 11-Year-Old Into Harvard (big lesson: Optimize childhood ): Jamie Beaton’s Crimson Education offers a pricey, yearslong boot camp preparing kids to apply to the Ivy League. Parents, and Wall Street, are on board (2024) 

"Independent education consultants" help high school students and their parents navigate the competitive college-admissions process (creative destruction and how the economy just keeps creating new types of occupations & professions) (2024) 

Students: Make a mistake on purpose, its good for you! (2007) 

This may sound surprising, but counselors advocate making a mistake on your college applications like an intentional typo. This makes you seem more "authentic." Too often all students look slick and identical. They got good grades, test scores, were on teams, did volunteer work, etc., all with the idea of getting into college. But is that who you really are if you do it just to impress the college? That is why counselors suggest making mistakes. Then your application makes you seem like a more real person, not too good to be true. Of course, colleges project an image, too with their pictures of the nicest parts of the campus and groups of smiling students in their catalogues to make you want to go their. Seems like everyone is trying to impress everyone else with an image.