The Core Knowledge Blog

Mercy College in New York is creating an “Immediate Decision Week,” an instant, on-the-spot evaluation that allows students to learn whether they have been admitted 24 hours after showing their high school transcripts, the New York Sun reports. The paper says admissions officers will also be canvassing local beaches and malls in “roving vans” in the New Yorks five boroughs and Westchester in search of instant applicants.

The beach?? “Dude, you are, like, so totally accepted!”

The Sun’s ed reporter Elizabeth Green says appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, it’s not an act of desperation (Mercy’s enrollment numbers are up strongly) but attempt to improve customer service — and to make sure that everyone who is qualified for the college knows that it is available.

“For the sophisticated middle class, the dignified and genteel ways of higher education do not constitute a barrier,” notes Barmak Nassirian, American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. “Now imagine the unsophisticated, low-income student who doesn’t have a cooperative adult in their life, for whom the very knowledge that you have to get admitted to go to college is news. What’s wrong with their running into a desk at a mall, where somebody grabs their best instincts and makes them act on it? That’s a fabulously good thing.”