This fall, tens of thousands of high-school seniors in Tennessee will receive letters stating that they’ve got a guaranteed seat at dozens of in-state colleges — no need to complete a traditional admission application. And many of those students will also receive personalized estimates of the state and institutional aid that they’re eligible for.
The new pilot program, called TN Direct Admissions, will make Tennessee the first state to link guaranteed admission offers with financial-aid commitments. “This effort is really about removing barriers and shifting the conversation to make it easier for young people, especially those who might not otherwise see college as an option, to take that next step,” said Steven Gentile, executive director at the Tennessee Higher Education Commission. “We believe that kind of approach is critical if you want to move the needle on college-going in Tennessee and beyond.”
The program marks a new phase in a series of coast-to-coast direct-admission experiments, in which colleges have been flipping the traditional enrollment script by offering spots to students who haven’t even applied. Since 2015, more than a dozen states — including Idaho, California, New York, and Texas — have created programs that promise eligible students a spot at participating institutions based on their academic qualifications. Some states rely on data-sharing agreements with high schools to identify eligible students; others use information students self-report on the Common Application, which institutions later verify.
Proponents of direct admission have touted the strategy as race-neutral means of boosting enrollment, especially among low-income, first-generation, and underrepresented minority students. The strategy is meant to simplify the act of applying to college, the complexity of which, research shows, can be overwhelming for students, if not a barrier to college in itself.
And the fear of rejection among teenagers from families unfamiliar with higher education is often especially keen, many college-access experts say; a direct-admission offer can provide an early dash of reassurance that “Yes, you are college-ready.”
But that’s not the same as “Yes, you can afford it.”
To understand why Tennessee’s innovation is important, let’s look at what we know so far about direct admission. Researchers who study the impact of the prevalent strategy have seen some promising results — and some key limitations. Idaho’s direct-admission program, the nation’s first, increased first-time undergraduate enrollment by 50 to 100 students on average at each participating campus, according to a 2022 study. Those increases were greatest at community colleges.
Still, Idaho’s program had little or no effect on the enrollment of low-income students who qualified for federal Pell Grants, the study found. Why? Direct-admission programs, the researchers observed, provide no other college-going supports: Guaranteed admission doesn’t mean students won’t encounter other enrollment barriers, such as a lack of financial resources. “It is possible that a direct-admission system on its own is enough to promote enrollment levels of students generally,” the authors wrote, “but not among low-income students.”
The same researchers partnered with the Common Application, along with six public and private colleges, to conduct a large-scale study assessing the effectiveness of direct-admission programs. Their 2023 paper on the findings said that though the strategy prompted more applications from low-income, first-generation, and underrepresented minority applicants at those colleges, it didn’t have any impacts on enrollment decisions. The conclusion: An admission guarantee can influence important college-going behaviors, but it alone can’t remove all obstacles, such as families’ financial constraints and concerns about paying for college.
That insight helped shape Tennessee’s pilot. One of the program’s creators is Taylor Odle, assistant professor of educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a co-author of the aforementioned studies.
“Getting into college is only one piece of the puzzle,” Odle said. “Students and families have to be able to afford it. We know there are many grants and scholarships available to students, but many students don’t know that, and they similarly have to navigate a mountain of red tape to find out what aid might even be available to them.”
Here’s how Tennessee’s new initiative will work. First, students must complete the Tennessee Promise application by November 1. That short form, Odle says, “contains every essential element” for a direct-admissions program, including contact information, high-school GPA, and ACT score. Since every junior is required to take the ACT, the state will already have a verified score for students. And about half of Tennessee’s high schools participate in an electronic transcript exchange with state colleges, which will allow for the verification of GPA data early on.
In November, approximately 41,000 seniors at more than 230 randomly selected high schools will receive a letter from Tennessee’s governor, Bill Lee, listing all the in-state institutions that have offered them admission.
A total of 53 public and private colleges are participating in the pilot. The program will guarantee admission to all 23 technical colleges and 13 community colleges without any grade-point-average or ACT requirements. Students will also see which of 17 four-year institutions have admitted them based on their grade-point average and standardized test scores. The thresholds for admission vary by campus, from a 2.25 to 3.0 GPA and a score of 16 to 20 (out of a possible 36) on the ACT.
About half the students who receive the letter will also see financial-aid estimates, including state aid as well as institutional scholarships they qualify for. Students can then scan a QR code to access a portal where they can select the college they would like to attend. The state’s higher-education commission will then submit the student’s information to each college as a completed application. The institution will follow up with a message confirming their admission and explaining next steps, such as submitting the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.
Sending financial-aid information to some but not all students will allow researchers to compare enrollment outcomes between the groups that received differing levels of information. Some students in the pilot will also receive additional support, including tech-based help navigating the remainder of the enrollment process and access to admissions officers who can answer any questions.
Tennessee plans to share the findings from its pilot in hopes that they will inform similar initiatives in other states. Odle, who will lead the quantitative evaluation of the program, said the experiment will allow stakeholders to see how the strategy impacts various subgroups of students.
Those findings, Odle said, will shape Tennessee’s decisions “about how to scale, how to augment, how to change this pilot, so we can identify the secret sauce, if you will, of what it really takes to move the needle on college-going.”
Bob Obrohta, executive director of the Tennessee College Access & Success Network, had just learned about the details of the pilot on Wednesday. He was optimistic that the program could ease some of the burden of completing numerous college applications, for families and college counselors alike. The direct-admission initiative, he wrote in an email to The Chronicle, could give counselors an opening to discuss students’ college choices, while giving families more time to make a decision.
Obrohta said he will be curious to see if the program eliminates the rush of late-summer applications, especially among students considering open-access institutions. Those 11th-hour applications often result in challenges — financial-aid issues, course-scheduling problems — that can derail a student’s plans. “Maybe the college transition will be more seamless and result in less summer melt,” he wrote.
And Obrohta said he would be eager to see if the program results in more students choosing a four-year institution — or a community college: “I’m hoping that by showing students that they are admitted earlier in the year and moving them past this bureaucratic hurdle, it will result in more students meeting enrollment deadlines, and securing a room so that they can live on campus.”
But Obrohta, who was a low-income and first-generation college student, said he will be most interested in the subset of high-school seniors who receive the financial-aid information. “If parents can take this information and realize something they thought was too expensive is suddenly affordable,” he wrote, “that will be a big success.”
