Impact of Coronavirus on Application Season 2020/2021

[always_slightly_confused]

Hi All!

 

I have been a lurker for quite some time, and have noticed that a significant number of people are senior graduate students or have some affiliation with the recruitment process of various graduate programs. I had a quick question about if anyone has heard anything about the upcoming application season (2020/2021). I definitely understand that the previous season just wrapped up, but with the recent developments of coronavirus/quarantine, does anyone know if applications/interviews/visits/etc will even be conducted this year (probably worst case scenario if they do not), or will it be all online (i know that some chemistry/bioengineering programs already do this)? Will it be impacted at all?

Just a little bit about me: I am planning on applying to Dev Bio and or molecular biology/cellular biology programs for this upcoming season, and am currently a research assistant at an R1 university in the northeast.

 

Thanks!

 

 

[dopamine_machine]

I'm wondering the same thing! Slightly worried that admissions will be impacted and cause me to waste money/time if admissions numbers are strongly cut.  I've been trying to search the internet/posts on here to see what others who are already in programs think, as well as for articles that explain how graduate admissions were cut during the 2001/2008 economic crises.  However, most of those articles/posts were either for graduate school admissions in general (not biology programs, but for the entire graduate school in general) or written by people in fields that may have less funding than biology fields.

What I will say is that MIT has admissions data dating back to their 2009 PhD Biology cycle (as well as for other graduate programs).  You can find it here.  From the data, it doesn't seem like admissions were impacted in their Biology program, or programs from most other MIT graduate schools.

Edited April 1, 2020 by dopamine_machine

[cropop]

I would guess there will be a significant impact at many schools for these reasons and more:

• Budgets are going to be reduced at schools for various reasons. This includes loss of revenue from the Spring semester and so on. Less revenue means departments have less money to pay for the first year of a PhD program, which is usually department funded. It might be too late for them to do anything about it for this Fall, but that might mean they compensate by taking less people next year. Many schools will compensate for unusually large cohorts one year (which place financial strain) by taking less the next year and this is sort of a similar concept.
• Some schools may defer admission (or let one defer admission) for people admitted this Fall until next year. This has the potential to reduce spots next year.
• It's entirely possible that there could be less grants available in the future, such as government grants (NIH/NSF, etc.). There are going to be huge consequences to the economy and who knows what is going to get cut out of the federal government budget to make up for stimulus packages and so on.

An interesting thing about the 2001/2008 crisis (maybe just 2008) is when the economy is doing poorly, undergraduate enrollment at universities tends to go up (because people need extra training or whatever and jobs are less lucrative). More undergraduates means more school funding and also the need for more TA to teach those undergraduates, which can mean more graduate positions. I expect that if jobs are hard to come by after this all plays out, we'll see more people go back to school or attempt to.

[dopamine_machine]

It's really too hard to tell at this point, as the American economy is really going to be at the hands of the virus, mostly in how long quarantine-like measures will stay in place.  I think it is largely going to be field-dependent as well.  I personally suspect that there's potential for increased science funding in the coming months as the US begins to draft preventative legislation to fight against future threats to public health.  Though, I think it may be safe to assume that universities will be well-insulated against economic conditions, as economic crises in the past have generally been strongly correlated with increased amounts of people applying to educational programs, despite increased costs of tuition/educational program.  Such a trend has been shown to ensure university persistence, keeping educational programs afloat (Stanford article).

I also wanted to link an article published a few weeks ago about potential COVID-19 linked changes to holistic graduate admissions:   https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/3/23/coronavirus-grad-school-admissions/

Edited April 5, 2020 by dopamine_machine

[smarty7]

I've heard professors and people on admissions committees say different things. When I attended the NIH Grad Fair online, the admissions committee invitees noted that application counts would probably be very low due to the idea that it would be harder to get in/more competitive, so they actually urged people to apply to even more schools. On the other hand, I've heard other research professors say that it'll probably be more competitive or more selective this year because labs are still trying to reopen safely and funding may be hard to guarantee right now. 

Due to this, I'll be applying to some programs but I definitely have a plan B and C in case things don't go well on the graduate admissions front. 

[DevoLevo]

On 4/1/2020 at 10:27 AM, always_slightly_confused said:

does anyone know if applications/interviews/visits/etc will even be conducted this year (probably worst case scenario if they do not), or will it be all online (i know that some chemistry/bioengineering programs already do this)? Will it be impacted at all?

Applications and interviews will definitely still be conducted at most if not all places - but at most if not all places I would speculate that interviews may be virtual.

My department is already talking a little bit about virtual interviews and the logistics of that.

Edited September 11, 2020 by DevoLevo