The highest-achieving graduates at every high school in New York will automatically be accepted to the state’s public university systems under a plan unveiled by Gov. Hochul on Tuesday.
The policy, one of the governor’s State of the State priorities for higher education, was billed as a way to boost equity and enrollment, while promoting New York’s public universities and keeping talented youngsters in state.
“Access to higher education has the potential to transform the lives of young New Yorkers and change the trajectory of a student’s life,” Hochul said in a statement.
Over the next year, the State University of New York will develop a direct admissions program so that students in the top 10% of their classes can gain automatic entry to the system’s most selective campuses, such as Stony Brook and Binghamton University.
The City University of New York is expected to expand its existing direct admissions program.
“In the immediate aftermath of the Supreme Court decision on SFFA [Students for Fair Admissions], there were a lot of conversations with the governor’s team, with the legislature about how we in New York could ensure that we continue to make every academic opportunity available to all New York students,” SUNY Chancellor John King told the Daily News after Hochul’s speech.
“Direct admission is a great tool for making sure that very talented students know there’s a place for them at SUNY,” he said.
Multiple states — including Texas, California, Illinois and Idaho — already offer direct admission and have found that it boosts equity, according to the governor’s office.
For example, the top 9% of California high school graduates are offered a guaranteed space at a University of California campus if space is available, the public university system’s website says. The program increased under-represented student enrollment at the UC system’s selective campuses, according to a detailed written plan presented alongside Hochul’s speech.
New York ihas started experimenting with fixing the often stressful and obstacle-ridden college admissions process.
This school year, 65,000 local public school students received admissions letters to CUNY’s community colleges and additional information about the system’s four-year colleges. A spokesperson for CUNY called the proposal “a bold step toward educational equity that will ease the college transition for countless families.”
SUNY sent letters in June to 125,000 high school seniors outside NYC to their local community colleges for the fall. Locally, King announced this fall with Schools Chancellor David Banks that all high school seniors would receive “welcome” letters about SUNY programs.
“We are ready to implement the vision that the governor lays out in the book and have already begun conversations with our most selective campuses,” said King, “and will work with them and with school districts across the state to move implementation forward.”
