For many high school seniors, fall isn’t the typical corn mazes, haunted houses, and football games; it’s college application season. Flyers and emails from thousands of schools turn into applications and essays as the students wait, fingers crossed, for their acceptance letters. However, this year, the Universities of Wisconsin are cutting through the clutter, streamlining applications, and guaranteeing spots in their colleges to top students.
“Direct Admit Wisconsin is a program that notifies high school seniors that they are eligible for admission to certain Universities of Wisconsin without even applying. Notifications for admission for fall 2026 have already gone out, with more scheduled for delivery next month. All students have to do is fill out a Direct Admit form to get the process started,” Universities of Wisconsin Director of Media Relations Mark Pitsch said.
In terms of who they are admitting, the UW schools mainly look at the difficulty of a student’s courses and how well they did in those courses. Once they receive that information from the schools, they use a spreadsheet to find which UW schools a student will get into.
“They go by tiers, and one tier is whether or not you finished Algebra II, and then the other tier is GPA. Those are kind of the two indicators of who will be successful at a college,” school counselor Ann Ragus said.
On the student end, applying is extremely simple. Students don’t need to write an essay or fill out a detailed list of activities; instead, they just need to enter a little bit of family and school information, and then they receive a guaranteed acceptance into a school.
“It was pretty easy. I got an email that I was accepted into these schools for direct admission. I just went to the website and filled out an application, and then I got in a few days later,” senior Leah Lemberger said, who is planning on attending the natural resources department at Stevens Point.
The main reasoning behind the UW system implementing direct admission is to keep talented students in-state. Currently, they lose a lot of students to private, out-of-state, or tech schools, and they believe that removing the barrier of filling out an application will pull in a larger crowd and keep the UW system strong.
“The goal of Direct Admit Wisconsin is to make sure students and parents know that there is a place for them at the UWs. Already, we are seeing some anecdotal evidence that the
The program is helping more high school graduates attend college,” Pitsch said.
This evidence is already being noticed throughout Berlin and hundreds of other schools in the state. For thousands of students, the ease of knowing that they have already been accepted to an affordable and established school is enough for them to start taking the next steps to enrollment.
“Stevens Point said to Leah, ‘Congratulations, you are in the School of Natural Resources.’ Well, to have all that information in September was not common in the past. Now, that click of the button, and you’re ready to rock and roll in September,” school counselor Matt Willett said.
