After our nation’s highest court recently struck down Roe v. Wade, many in the world of elite college admissions expressed that the gut-wrenching decision for many would have a significant impact on college choices among rising high school seniors. These folks surmised that students would not wish to study in states that outlawed abortion. And, don’t get us wrong, there are indeed rising high school seniors across America who will eliminate colleges off their lists because of abortion bans. But these students, we at Ivy Coach believe, will be few and far between. Why, you ask? Because there are only so many highly selective universities in America. To eliminate certain elite universities off of a list because of abortion bans would be too limiting for students seeking to get into the best school possible. Students aren’t going to apply to Washington University in St. Louis because of a Missouri abortion ban? Nonsense. Watch as Wash U’s applications continue to rise in the years to come.

As Ivy Coach’s own Jayson Weingarten, a former University of Pennsylvania admissions officer tells it in a piece out today entitled “Abortion bans force US students to rethink college plans” in The New York Post by Reuters, “Several students raised similar concerns about attending college in North Carolina after the state in 2016 passed a law restricting which bathrooms transgender people could use, said counselor Jayson Weingarten of New York-based Ivy Coach. But he said many still chose to attend Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Admissions statistics from UNC show the number of applicants increased by 14% between 2016 and 2017 despite individual students’ unease. Abortion is ‘a topic of concern for most of the students but not something that’s going to dissuade them from going to one of the most highly selective schools in the country,’ Weingarten said.” Well said, Jayson! And the data indeed backed up his thesis.

This, of course, all leads us to an Ivy Coach crystal ball forecast. As loyal readers of our college admissions blog know so very well, we’ve got a crystal ball at our college counseling firm — and it’s extremely accurate. Heck, it’s even been cited on the pages of America’s oldest college newspaper, The Dartmouth. We hereby forecast that abortion bans in various states, as deeply regrettable as they may be to us and to so many Americans across this land in setting back women’s rights by half a century, will not lead to a drop in applications to elite universities located within states enacting abortion bans. You heard it here first.