This semester, students at Provo and Timpview high schools may apply to all 16 Utah public colleges in one place for free using the Admit Utah pilot program.

Thanks to a data-sharing agreement between USHE and the Provo City School District, students who opt in to the Admit Utah program indicate which state colleges they want to apply to, and USHE sends their GPA and other information provided by the district to those respective institutions.

“It’s essentially a one-stop shop for college admissions,” said Kris Coles, the senior assistant commissioner of access and college in high school for USHE. “It’s clicking buttons instead of filling out numerous fields of info.”

While some schools require additional follow-up from the student, the information provided by the district is enough to admit students to most schools, according to Coles.

“Outside of the University of Utah, those other institutions are saying, ‘Yeah, great, we’ll admit that student right now. We’re still going to need a high school transcript or ACT scores from them, but we’ll admit them based on this information,'” he said. 

Coles said the number of students going to college within three years of high school graduation has dropped in the last six years, and that the new program is one way the state is trying to reduce obstacles for kids applying to college.

Provo City School District was chosen for the pilot program because of its willingness to participate. Coles said Provo Superintendent Wendy Dau has worked with USHE on the data-sharing agreement and saw the vision for the program.

“There’s a lot of concern in public education about federal requirements for sharing student data, FERPA regulations, but we have had a lot of great conversation with our internal privacy officers and legal team who have developed a framework that is within allowable federal regulation to share student data between our systems,” he said. “So (Dau) has just been very bullish on college access with her students.”

Coles said he had conversations with Timpview students earlier this week who were trying the new program and that they were “floored” to realize how easy it was to apply to college.

The plan is to launch the platform statewide next year and continue fine-tuning and enhancing it.

“I don’t think we’ll truly be satisfied until the admissions process is just this very easy, simple, streamlined approach to transitioning from high school to college,” Coles said.

Provo City School District and USHE will hold a kickoff assembly for the partnership at 8 a.m. Monday at Provo High School.