BOCA RATON, Florida – What does a college application like a pandemic look like?
High school juniors and seniors are facing challenges they never expected due to COVID-19.
SPECIAL COVERAGE: Return to Coronavirus
Growing older people have a multitude of things for this year: Will they run for a school or university whose check is optional? Will they still have to approve their SAT or ACT if they haven’t already?
To say his senior year wasn’t what Ariel Hus expected is an understatement.
“It’s horrible. I had to paint 10 times harder to learn,” Hus said.
He graduated from the Donna Klein Jewish Academy in Boca Raton and said virtual learning simply isn’t for him.
Hus begins his undergraduate courses in pre-med at the University of Miami in the fall. The effect of Covid-19 in his senior year will continue in his first semester at the university.
“Basically, I felt that since I wasn’t able to completely finish certain classes like chemistry that maybe I should retake it the next semester and double up on my sciences, so that’s what I did,” Hus said.
Fortunately, Hus worked with university counselor Dr. Bonnie Rabin. She owns College Career Consulting and said there were some adjustments this year when she ran for college.
She advises students to know which schools are optional for the test, which means they may not want SAT or ACT grades to apply.
“For a large part, some of the admissions have disappeared, and it’s a wonderful year if you’re a student who doesn’t get good results or hasn’t,” Rabin said.
He said some academics who rely heavily on extracurricular activities, such as sports or music, want other tactics to show their continued connection to their interests.
“Students have to rebrand, replace, think of new ways that they can demonstrate they are connected to their interests, and that’s challenging but not impossible,” Rabin said.
The pandemic has also replaced the way future academics can do colleges.
“They have replaced visits and overnight stays for developing seniors with Zoom sessions with existing students, and I encourage others to enjoy them,” Rabin said.
While Rabin knows that not everyone can have a personal school counselor, he said students deserve to contact his senior school counselor, consult loose online systems, and locate personal counselors who do volunteer work.
Ariel’s mother Shiri Hus advises parents to worry and offer support.
“Surely parents want to contribute this extra now, even more than ever, because it’s an emotional challenge or for all of us, yet they end up having to do homework and get into college,” Shiri Hus said.