| | |  | BY MYAH WARD | With help from Renuka Rayasam DECISION DAY — Saturday is the last day for many high school seniors to decide where they’ll spend the next four years of their education — many without even stepping foot on a college campus. National headlines have highlighted acceptance rates going down, but that’s for the Ivy Leagues and top institutions in the U.S., said Angel Pérez, CEO of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. Because many of these schools made standardized tests optional, more students applied, thinking they may have a shot. Yet the majority of schools are actually still looking for students, Pérez said. Spring undergraduate enrollment is down 5.9 percent compared to this time last year, according to research by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center — a steeper decline in undergraduate enrollment than occurred in fall 2020. Traditional college students, ages 18 to 20, saw the largest decline: 7.2 percent for the current semester compared to last year. During summer 2020, pandemic-fueled uncertainty led some students to defer their freshman year. The concern was that these gap-year students would make it more difficult for this class to get accepted. That largely hasn’t been the case. Pérez’s group releases an annual list of universities and colleges still looking for applicants. This year’s list has over 300 institutions so far, and it’s expected to grow. The group released it early after calls from concerned high school counselors and students. This trend isn’t solely because of Covid. It’s the first edge of a demographic cliff coming in 2025 and 2026 when the country will have fewer high school students, Pérez said. The decline arrived early this year because high levels of unemployment and underemployment pulled a lot of families out of the college pipeline. “We’re worried about, what will that look like this September?” he said. “And will the students ever come back?” | 
Students exit the KSU Ice Arena after getting their Covid vaccine at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. | Getty | The numbers are even more alarming for community colleges, where enrollment nationwide has dropped 11.3 percent since this time last year, according to National Student Clearinghouse. It was down 9.5 percent last fall. The majority of community college students are older adults, and the responsibilities of work, child care and school were too much to handle. At large public universities like North Carolina State University, the acceptance rate has been relatively stable, said Jon Westover, director of undergraduate admissions at N.C. State. Roughly 100 students deferred last year, and the school expects a class size of 4,800 freshmen in September. It will accept 1,450 transfer students in the fall as well. Applications from international students, particularly from China and India, were down 20 percent this year, Westover said. Class differences among students were also exacerbated as some families had to make difficult choices about how, or whether, to pay for their child’s education. On top of everything else, Westover said universities can’t forget about the soon-to-be college sophomores who had their freshman year upended by the pandemic — a year that’s pivotal for retention. The lingering questions for this fall’s incoming first-year students are overwhelming. Will this year be more normal? Will they be required to get vaccinated before enrolling? How is their mental health? Did their remote high school environment leave them less prepared for college courses? Did they make the right choice without even a campus visit? Application readers had to go in with a different mindset — not comparing students to those they’d seen in years past. Students have been isolated at home. They missed out on standout opportunities and extracurriculars. Families lost jobs and loved ones. “This has been the most challenging year in my career,” Westover said. “I started in admissions in 1998, and it just felt like everything was different this year.” Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas for us at rrayasam@politico.com and mward@politico.com, or on Twitter at @renurayasam or @myahward.
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| | JOIN TUESDAY FOR A CONVERSATION ON SMALL BUSINESSES AFTER COVID-19: About one in six small businesses in the U.S. closed their doors since the pandemic began. The ones that remained open are getting by with fewer employees after laying off workers or a hiring freeze. What is ahead for small businesses in 2021 as they try to weather the ongoing economic uncertainty? And how does President Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package intend to support small-business owners? Join POLITICO for a virtual conversation with White House economic adviser Jared Bernstein and Joyce Beatty, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, on what small businesses need to survive and thrive beyond the Covid economic crisis. REGISTER HERE. | | | | |
| | — Biden considering mandatory Covid vaccines for all U.S. troops: Biden said he has not ruled out requiring all U.S. troops to get the coronavirus vaccine after the shots win final clearance from federal regulators, but cautioned that such a decision would be a “tough call.” — Manchin doesn’t support D.C. statehood: Sen. Joe Manchin said today that he did not support the D.C. statehood bill, a blow to advocates pushing to make it the 51st state after the legislation passed the House last week. Manchin was the first Democratic senator to come out against the bill. — Biden terminating border wall construction: The Department of Defense said today that Biden is canceling construction of the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. — Biden to restrict travel from India: Biden is preparing to restrict travel from India beginning next week, as the country grapples with a massive coronavirus outbreak, a White House official confirmed. The decision will not apply to U.S. citizens or humanitarian workers. It will officially take effect on May 4. — Bustos to retire: Rep. Cheri Bustos, House Democrats’ former campaign chief, announced today she would retire from Congress after this term, in one of the party’s first midterm surprises of the cycle. Bustos represents a district in northwestern Illinois that has shifted to the right since former President Barack Obama won it handily in 2012. Former President Donald Trump narrowly won her district twice. — Robocall accuses Texas candidate Wright of causing husband’s death: Texas Republican congressional candidate Susan Wright’s campaign reached out to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice today after discovering robocalls alleging that she had “murdered” her husband, the late GOP Rep. Ron Wright. Twenty-three candidates are running in a special election set for Saturday to succeed Wright, who passed away in February after being diagnosed with coronavirus.
| | WAIT FOR IT — Matt Wuerker dresses up like Alexander Hamilton to take us through the week that marked Biden’s 100th day in office in his Weekend Wrap.
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| | | EU TAKES SECOND BITE AT APPLE — Less than a year after her court defeat over a €13 billion case against Apple, the EU’s top antitrust enforcer Margrethe Vestager is once again taking aim at the iPhone maker, writes Vincent Manancourt. This time, Vestager is targeting one of CEO Tim Cook’s crown jewels: Apple’s App Store. In charges announced today, the Danish politician accused the iPhone maker of abusing a dominant position to distort competition in the music streaming market, handing an early win to the chief complainant in the case, Sweden-based Spotify. The case marks a return to center stage for Vestager, who has suffered a string of defeats in EU courts on some of her flagship cases against Big Tech, including Apple. But it’s also set to revive a tense dynamic between the European enforcer and Cook, which exploded into public acrimony in 2016 when she announced her decision against Apple in the tax case.
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| FEELING 100 — Starting on the day Biden took office, photographer Stephen Voss walked the halls and streets of D.C. to capture life in Washington at the start of a new presidential era.
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| | ALONE TOGETHER — If you are on Twitter, you probably know Jonny Sun’s presence: missives about his innermost thoughts that somehow capture the mood of the internet. The same is true of his latest book, Goodbye, Again. He says he wrote most of the book in 2018, but it often reads like a prophetic guide to our post-pandemic world. He writes about fearing parties, how we change and trying to keep houseplants alive. There are essays about egg recipes, funeral playlists and a 15-minute countdown to the end of the world. The themes in the book about trying to find connection while being ultimately lonely run throughout his work, including a PhD in online communities from MIT, a writer for the show “BoJack Horseman” and a TED Talk . Nightly’s Renuka Rayasam tried to peer into Sun’s brain today. This conversation has been edited. Do you think social media and just the general process of moving our lives online has actually made us more lonely? I’ve actually found an inverse relationship between technology and loneliness. I’ve always thought communication is communication no matter what the medium is. I’ve been technology agnostic. A lot of my anxiety and depression, my social anxiety specifically, tends to isolate me. But I found that through writing and through sharing both online and also in my work, I’ve been able to connect with people and communicate more clearly and more honestly and definitely more intentionally. Readers will reach out and say, “I have felt this way my whole life but I never figured how to articulate it.” That sort of energy applies to communicating online. You’ve got more than half a million Twitter followers (!!). Tell me how I can get good at social media. Are you just a natural or is there a skill to this? I don’t feel like a natural. I am constantly trying to figure everything out. The answer has kind of shifted throughout time. There are different eras of Twitter. The people who I care about following the most — it’s always been this feeling of genuineness and openness. It is really hard to be like, “oh I’m gonna bare my heart online and share all this stuff publicly,” but the things that really connect with people are the things that are a little less filtered and branded. The more open and vulnerable and really honest and kind of sad about things that I’ve shared, the more people connect to that. It’s the unspoken thing that everyone’s feeling that no one’s talking about. Okay now it’s lightning round time. Let’s see how many of these questions you can answer in three minutes.
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