Conditional admission is the policy of admitting international students who are academically capable but don’t quite meet the necessary English language specifications, on the condition that they study English before and during their studies in order to meet the requirements. This is a move away from the traditional system of only admitting students who were sufficiently capable in English from the outset.

In most cases, students are given a full academic year to honour their language commitments, but some require as little as one semester to meet the necessary standard. Some universities such as Iowa State University have been offering conditional admission places for as long as three decades. Historically, the institutions that have offered conditional admission have done so because they have their own intensive English language programmes. More recent converts to conditional admission have been able to do so because of partnerships with independent providers such as ELS Educational Services Inc.

ELS Offer intensive twelve-week programmes at fifty-five sites nationwide where students learn grammar and vocabulary as well as practising reading, writing and speaking.  Jeffrey L. Nonemaker, director of international-student recruitment and admissions at the University of La Verne, California has found that going with a private provider allowed the institution to expand its conditional admissions programme more rapidly.

Although conditional admission works well for international students who haven’t the language capacity to slot straight into mainstream study, it can be quite expensive with tuition fees alone for a nine-month programme costing as much as $11,000. It is also fair to say that conditional admission is more suitable for undergraduate study than post-graduate as these programmes take on fewer students and can afford to be more selective.

However, with very high rates of students offered conditional admission accepting places it seems that English is becoming less of a barrier to those students wanting to study in the US.

Let us know what you think about conditional admission below.

The admissions process at Tufts usually asks students to submit two short essays from a choice of seven essay titles in support of their applications, however for the prospective class of 2014 they have invited applicants to submit a short video in place of one of the essays. The guidelines are that the video should say something about the applicant and be around one minute in length.

“[It] seemed like an interesting way to gather new perspectives on our deep and talented pool of applicants,” said Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Lee Coffin. “And it has been — applicants have used the video option in all sorts of creative ways and, like the unexpected following they have spawned in YouTube, the admissions officers are enjoying this new part of our supplemental application.”

Out of 15,000 applications so far, over 1,000 videos have been submitted as an optional part of the process.

You can view some of the most popular video applications on the Tufts Daily website.

A surprising hit on YouTube has been Amelia Downs’ “Math Dances” with over 50,000 views so far. You can view Amelia’s video below.

Math Dances: Tufts\’ Optional Essay: 6b

Amongst the highlights of the conference, hosted by Chapman University, were the awards dinner on the Queen Mary, the social event at Downtown Disney and the (fiercely competitive) annual dodgeball tournament!  Of course the conference was not all about socialising and there were a fantastic selection of workshops to choose from discussing important topics within international education, it was fantastic to hear the perspective of both the schools and the colleges on different issues. Another highlight was the high school and college fair on saturday, which i-studentadvisor were very proud to be the sponsor of.

This was the first OACAC conference i-studentadvisor attended and we were amazed by the care and organisation that went in to planning the conference. Special mention should go to David Allen, Doug Thompson and all the OACAC team for organising the conference and Chapman university staff and students for being fantastic hosts. We would also like to thank all the sponsors of the events, workshop presenters and all mentors and experienced ‘OACACers’ who made us feel so welcome.

We hope everyone who attended the conference enjoyed it as much as we did and we are already looking froward to next years conference being held at Northeastern University, Boston. Those who would like to attend next year should keep checking the OACAC website for updates and we would fully recommend anyone who works in the international college admissions field attend.

Were you at the conference? Please leave a comment aboout your favourite 2009 OACAC memories, or your thoughts on the conference as a whole.