Washington Monthly - September/October 2023 - 44

to reject accepting me,' " Dannenberg says. " It cuts that phenomenon
off at the pass. "
C
oncourse was founded in 2017 by Joe Morrison, a tech
entrepreneur who had previously consulted for university
marketing teams and built trading platforms
for banks. His ambition, according to the company's website,
was to " provide students around the world with universal
access to higher education. " In 2021, the company launched
its first reverse admission platform, Global Match, which
helped institutions enroll international students through
a similar process where colleges " apply " to students. Fortyseven
international students participated in the first Global
Match pilot. " They received 180 admission offers within the
first week, a tremendous start, " Morrison told me.
In fall 2021, Concourse joined with EAB, a company that
specializes in education research, marketing, and enrollment,
to launch Greenlight Match, which essentially applied
the Global Match model domestically in the U.S. " The goal
was to create more college access for first-generation, lowincome,
and other historically underserved U.S. students, "
Morrison said. The first step in that process was the launch
of a pilot program in the Chicago area in which 658 students
participated. Concourse coordinated with community-based
organizations to find students across nearly 50 high schools
who fit the underserved demographic they wanted to reach:
low-income families and first-generation college applicants
(about half the pool, according to a survey of the participants).
That test case generated nearly 2,000 admission offers
and more than $135 million in scholarship and financial
aid offers, Morrison said.
In the fall of 2022, Concourse became a subsidiary of
EAB and expanded to several other U.S. regions, including
Rochester, New York, where Olivia Galloway grew up. Now
in its second year, Greenlight Match has grown fourfold
to serve some 2,600 students and has secured more than
18,000 admission offers-or about seven per student-and
a total of $1.1 billion in scholarship offers, according to Morrison.
This fall, Concourse is planning a full national rollout
of Greenlight Match.
Delaney, the direct admission researcher, told me programs
like Greenlight Match are an improvement over traditional
admissions in two ways. First, by pushing information
to students instead of relying on students to search for
colleges, she said, it " reduces the need for social and cultural
capital to navigate the college search process and likely
makes the process more equitable for students of different
backgrounds within the Concourse system. "
Indeed, in researching this story, I found that students
like the fact that through the system, colleges search for
them instead of the other way around. One student told me
she likes it more than the Common Application, which enables
students to apply to multiple colleges at once. " In the
Common App you apply for the colleges you want, you look
for the college, " Lydia, an undocumented student and aspir44
September/October 2023
ing dental surgeon from Chicago who used Concourse to get
into Knox College, where she got a $59,000 annual scholarship
to cover the $63,000 annual tuition in 2022, told me.
" And in Concourse the college looks for you. "
The other advantage of direct and reverse admission,
Delaney says, is that the process offers a guarantee of acceptance,
which takes away uncertainty and allows students to
plan ahead. " Students no longer need to guess which institutions
will admit them, but instead already know where they
have been admitted, " Delaney told me. " There is also value
in the guarantee since it gives students 'a bird in the hand'
and a clearly defined pathway through which they can enter
a postsecondary institution. "
For all those advantages, direct admission can't replace
every aspect of the traditional college search process.
For one thing, Morrison noted, most direct admission programs
generate acceptance letters automatically, based on
minimum GPA thresholds. But the programs don't necessarily
give students personalized guidance on the colleges that
have proactively accepted them, including what major to
pursue or whether the campus culture is likely to be a good
fit. After the acceptance letters arrive, some students must
still submit a more traditional application in order to complete
the enrollment process and, often, to learn what kinds
of scholarships will be available to them.
Because of those limitations, Morrison believes that
the " student-first " reverse admission strategy pioneered by
his company has some advantages. Students fill out simple
profiles-the process usually takes about 30 minutes, he
said-with their grades, academic interests, financial details,
hobbies, and personal aspirations. This allows universities
to personalize offers to students, letting them know
which majors might best fit their interests and abilities,
which scholarships they are guaranteed to receive, and when
they can start school. After that, students complete a brief
form for each offer they would like to pursue, receive official
admission materials, and may then chat online with the
institution's representatives before making a final decision.
" As the 'demographic cliff' approaches and higher education
becomes increasingly competitive, it is widely agreed
that higher education institutions need to innovate and find
better ways to reach and attract students in order to build
their incoming classes, " Morrison told me. " Direct admission
is a step in the right direction, taking some of the guesswork
out of the process for students. Reverse admission takes this
concept much further, enabling universities to reach out to
students proactively and make personalized, informative,
compelling admission offers and provide a more studentcentric,
welcoming admission process. "
As direct admission has grown in popularity, other
players have jumped into the market. In 2019, the nonprofitrun
Common Application joined the bandwagon, allowing
colleges to offer " non-binding guaranteed admission " to
graduating students in their states who have filled out the
Common App and who meet a minimum GPA set by those
Washington Monthly - September/October 2023

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