essay on covid 19 in english for students

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Covid 19 Essay in English

Essay on Covid -19: In a very short amount of time, coronavirus has spread globally. It has had an enormous impact on people's lives, economy, and societies all around the world, affecting every country. Governments have had to take severe measures to try and contain the pandemic. The virus has altered our way of life in many ways, including its effects on our health and our economy. Here are a few sample essays on ‘CoronaVirus’.

100 Words Essay on Covid 19

200 words essay on covid 19, 500 words essay on covid 19.

COVID-19 or Corona Virus is a novel coronavirus that was first identified in 2019. It is similar to other coronaviruses, such as SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, but it is more contagious and has caused more severe respiratory illness in people who have been infected. The novel coronavirus became a global pandemic in a very short period of time. It has affected lives, economies and societies across the world, leaving no country untouched. The virus has caused governments to take drastic measures to try and contain it. From health implications to economic and social ramifications, COVID-19 impacted every part of our lives. It has been more than 2 years since the pandemic hit and the world is still recovering from its effects.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the world has been impacted in a number of ways. For one, the global economy has taken a hit as businesses have been forced to close their doors. This has led to widespread job losses and an increase in poverty levels around the world. Additionally, countries have had to impose strict travel restrictions in an attempt to contain the virus, which has resulted in a decrease in tourism and international trade. Furthermore, the pandemic has put immense pressure on healthcare systems globally, as hospitals have been overwhelmed with patients suffering from the virus. Lastly, the outbreak has led to a general feeling of anxiety and uncertainty, as people are fearful of contracting the disease.

My Experience of COVID-19

I still remember how abruptly colleges and schools shut down in March 2020. I was a college student at that time and I was under the impression that everything would go back to normal in a few weeks. I could not have been more wrong. The situation only got worse every week and the government had to impose a lockdown. There were so many restrictions in place. For example, we had to wear face masks whenever we left the house, and we could only go out for essential errands. Restaurants and shops were only allowed to operate at take-out capacity, and many businesses were shut down.

In the current scenario, coronavirus is dominating all aspects of our lives. The coronavirus pandemic has wreaked havoc upon people’s lives, altering the way we live and work in a very short amount of time. It has revolutionised how we think about health care, education, and even social interaction. This virus has had long-term implications on our society, including its impact on mental health, economic stability, and global politics. But we as individuals can help to mitigate these effects by taking personal responsibility to protect themselves and those around them from infection.

Effects of CoronaVirus on Education

The outbreak of coronavirus has had a significant impact on education systems around the world. In China, where the virus originated, all schools and universities were closed for several weeks in an effort to contain the spread of the disease. Many other countries have followed suit, either closing schools altogether or suspending classes for a period of time.

This has resulted in a major disruption to the education of millions of students. Some have been able to continue their studies online, but many have not had access to the internet or have not been able to afford the costs associated with it. This has led to a widening of the digital divide between those who can afford to continue their education online and those who cannot.

The closure of schools has also had a negative impact on the mental health of many students. With no face-to-face contact with friends and teachers, some students have felt isolated and anxious. This has been compounded by the worry and uncertainty surrounding the virus itself.

The situation with coronavirus has improved and schools have been reopened but students are still catching up with the gap of 2 years that the pandemic created. In the meantime, governments and educational institutions are working together to find ways to support students and ensure that they are able to continue their education despite these difficult circumstances.

Effects of CoronaVirus on Economy

The outbreak of the coronavirus has had a significant impact on the global economy. The virus, which originated in China, has spread to over two hundred countries, resulting in widespread panic and a decrease in global trade. As a result of the outbreak, many businesses have been forced to close their doors, leading to a rise in unemployment. In addition, the stock market has taken a severe hit.

Effects of CoronaVirus on Health

The effects that coronavirus has on one's health are still being studied and researched as the virus continues to spread throughout the world. However, some of the potential effects on health that have been observed thus far include respiratory problems, fever, and coughing. In severe cases, pneumonia, kidney failure, and death can occur. It is important for people who think they may have been exposed to the virus to seek medical attention immediately so that they can be treated properly and avoid any serious complications. There is no specific cure or treatment for coronavirus at this time, but there are ways to help ease symptoms and prevent the virus from spreading.

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Writing about COVID-19 in a college admission essay

by: Venkates Swaminathan | Updated: September 14, 2020

Print article

Writing about COVID-19 in your college admission essay

For students applying to college using the CommonApp, there are several different places where students and counselors can address the pandemic’s impact. The different sections have differing goals. You must understand how to use each section for its appropriate use.

The CommonApp COVID-19 question

First, the CommonApp this year has an additional question specifically about COVID-19 :

Community disruptions such as COVID-19 and natural disasters can have deep and long-lasting impacts. If you need it, this space is yours to describe those impacts. Colleges care about the effects on your health and well-being, safety, family circumstances, future plans, and education, including access to reliable technology and quiet study spaces. Please use this space to describe how these events have impacted you.

This question seeks to understand the adversity that students may have had to face due to the pandemic, the move to online education, or the shelter-in-place rules. You don’t have to answer this question if the impact on you wasn’t particularly severe. Some examples of things students should discuss include:

The student or a family member had COVID-19 or suffered other illnesses due to confinement during the pandemic.
The candidate had to deal with personal or family issues, such as abusive living situations or other safety concerns
The student suffered from a lack of internet access and other online learning challenges.
Students who dealt with problems registering for or taking standardized tests and AP exams.

Jeff Schiffman of the Tulane University admissions office has a blog about this section. He recommends students ask themselves several questions as they go about answering this section:

Are my experiences different from others’?
Are there noticeable changes on my transcript?
Am I aware of my privilege?
Am I specific? Am I explaining rather than complaining?
Is this information being included elsewhere on my application?

If you do answer this section, be brief and to-the-point.

Counselor recommendations and school profiles

Second, counselors will, in their counselor forms and school profiles on the CommonApp, address how the school handled the pandemic and how it might have affected students, specifically as it relates to:

Grading scales and policies
Graduation requirements
Instructional methods
Schedules and course offerings
Testing requirements
Your academic calendar
Other extenuating circumstances

Students don’t have to mention these matters in their application unless something unusual happened.

Writing about COVID-19 in your main essay

Write about your experiences during the pandemic in your main college essay if your experience is personal, relevant, and the most important thing to discuss in your college admission essay. That you had to stay home and study online isn’t sufficient, as millions of other students faced the same situation. But sometimes, it can be appropriate and helpful to write about something related to the pandemic in your essay. For example:

One student developed a website for a local comic book store. The store might not have survived without the ability for people to order comic books online. The student had a long-standing relationship with the store, and it was an institution that created a community for students who otherwise felt left out.
One student started a YouTube channel to help other students with academic subjects he was very familiar with and began tutoring others.
Some students used their extra time that was the result of the stay-at-home orders to take online courses pursuing topics they are genuinely interested in or developing new interests, like a foreign language or music.

Experiences like this can be good topics for the CommonApp essay as long as they reflect something genuinely important about the student. For many students whose lives have been shaped by this pandemic, it can be a critical part of their college application.

Want more? Read 6 ways to improve a college essay , What the &%$! should I write about in my college essay , and Just how important is a college admissions essay? .

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Introduction

The global outbreak of COVID-19 has certainly taken an overwhelming toll on everyone. People have lost their jobs, their homes, and even their lives. There is no getting past the fact that the overall impact on the world has been negative, but it is important to realize that positive aspects of the pandemic have been overshadowed by the many negative ones. In an attempt to slow the spread of the disease, many governments made the decision to implement lockdowns, forcing billions to work and take classes from home, in many cases for the first times in their lives. Not only have these lockdowns altered the way that people work and go to school, but they have altered the mental health of everyone and the environmental health of the world around us.

Connection to STS Theory

The positive impacts of technology during the pandemic stems from the Modernization Theory, posing that there is a relationship between societal and technological advancements as societies shift to become updated as opposed to traditional. Technology has brought about lots of resistance to COVID that would not have been possible without the drastic advancements in science over the years. Thanks to these advancements, relationships can stay connected, students can continue to learn, jobs can stay open, and the environment can subtly improve. Our modernized world is well enough suited to take on the troubling times that COVID-19 has brought along.

Technology with School – Relates to College Students

Remote learning has allowed each of us to learn from the comfort of our homes. Working remotely has also allowed us to work from our living rooms. The perks of both are not having to wake up early to drive to work in the mornings, not having to sit at an office desk for eight hours a day, and not having to walk to class. Working remotely and remote learning has also been a time saver for many individuals.

According to Business Insider, there are a few tips that will help students be successful while being virtual. One tip is to clean your workspace. It is important to have a space, just like you would at a desk in a classroom, to ensure that you are paying attention to the professor. It is always important to engage with your professor. It is important to contact your professor outside of the class section to ensure that you are retaining the information. Another tip that the Business Insider recommends is to connect with your classmates. It is vital to build connections with your classmates that will help everyone have a comfortable environment to ask questions.

Personal Growth

In March 2020, the COVID-19 outbreak hit the United States. College students were forced to leave their beloved campuses and go home to finish their semesters online. For some, it meant their schoolwork load was lightened and they could sleep until noon. For others, it meant their plans of graduating and having a job for the summer were in jeopardy. Regardless of their situation, one thing was likely the same for all: lots of time alone. Students found things to do to pass the time. Some learned to cook, some started exercising at home, and others had more time to do what they already loved.

Ethan, a student at the University of South Carolina, used the time to start lifting weights in his home gym. In the United States, sales of home gym equipment doubled, reaching nearly $2.4 Billion in revenue. Store shelves were entirely sold out of exercise equipment. Many students like Ethan report that exercising was one of the biggest changes they made during COVID lockdown.

Other students, such as Cam, found an opportunity to get in a better place mentally. “I learned not to take things for granted. My relationship with my family has gotten better. I’m a much stronger person,” the Clemson student reported. Grayson, an athlete at Winthrop University, reported that it made him have a more positive outlook on being by himself. A student that elected to remain anonymous was just happy they could wake up later and not have to brush their teeth as much because of masks. Whether a dentist would approve of that habit or not, an improvement in mental health is a win in anyone’s book.

A select few students decided to challenge themselves in a world where all odds are stacked against them. Dean, a freshman at the University of South Carolina, decided to start his own bracelet and T-Shirt business in a time when small businesses all over the country were facing a grave threat of going out of business. All the while, he learned to play the guitar and uploaded his songs to SoundCloud, he reported.

Whether college students decided to get a six-pack or learned how to sew, almost everyone found something constructive and positive to do with their extra free time. The college students of COVID-19 learned what it meant to make the best of an unfortunate situation. Things may have looked bleak and frightening, but they learned how to manage those feelings and make something positive out of it.

Change in Workforce

Before the pandemic, many companies did not allow employees to work from home. Also, many companies would not even allow employees to take home items, such as laptops, as a safety precaution. According to Stanford Medicine, rapid innovation and implementation of technology has allowed for the employees to navigate the challenges. It states that it is clear that technology has transformed our typical daily workflow. Technology has also made it easier to connect with the patients during the pandemic.

The Pew Research Center states “about half of new teleworkers say they have more flexibility now and that majority who are working in person worry about virus exposure.” In December 2020, 71% of the workers that were surveyed were doing their job from home all or most of the time. Of those workers, more than half said if they were given the choice that they would want to keep working from home even after the pandemic. Among those who are currently working from home, most say that it has been easy to meet deadlines and complete projects on time without interruptions.

Environmental Improvements

Before the COVID-19 outbreak, a typical day consisted of billions of people across the globe commuting to work or school, whether that be through public buses or trains, driving themselves in cars, or some other means of transportation. As all these vehicles were used, immeasurable amounts of gases and chemicals were released into the atmosphere. As infection numbers and the death toll increased, most nations began enforcing lockdown protocols, and these mandates affected almost 3 billion people (Rume & Islam, 2020). Businesses and factories shut down or people began working from home, meaning they no longer needed to drive to work. In an attempt to stunt transmission, the majority of international travel was halted, limiting tourism, which also had a great impact. Since industrialization has advanced in major cities across the globe, the amount of Greenhouse Gases that have been emitted is alarming. Cars, buses, trains, industries, factories all release harmful chemicals due to the burning of fossil fuels or other energy sources. When these pollutants enter the atmosphere, they cause a variety of issues. It decreases overall air quality and visibility, and can be dangerous to those inhali ng the m.

According to research performed by Shakeel Ahmad Bhat and a group of other scientists from India, China, and the United Kingdom, Delhi, India is one of the most polluted cities in the world (Bhat et al, 2021). The city is highly industrialized and densely populated, contributing to the elevated levels of particulate matter in the air. Particulate matter is small pollutant liquid droplets and solid particles in the air (Environmental Protection Agency, 2020). When inhaled, they can burrow deep into the lungs and even the bloodstream and cause serious damage to a person, “particularly respiratory ailments” (Bhat et al, 2021). The two types of particulate matter are PM10 and PM2.5, and their numbers correspond to the size of the particles (their diameters in units of micrometers). The smaller the particle, the more harmful they are. By National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), the level of particulate matter in Delhi is well above the tolerable limits. In 2016 alone, the amount of deaths caused by the poor air quality in India “was approximately 4.2 million” (Bhat et al, 2021).

essay on covid 19 in english for students

Lockdowns positively affe cted more than just the air quality around the world; additionally, water quality and beaches were a major beneficiary. Tourism for centuries has led to a significant overuse of beach resources such as fishing and leisure activities, and these in turn led to pollution of the water. If people are using jet skis and boating in lakes or oceans, the fuel and exhaust often leak into the water which can cause significant harm to the wildlife that lives in it. Restricting beach access has allowed them to recover and regain their resources, and has also decreased the pollution levels in the water. The water flowing in the Venice canals are cleaner now than they have been before (Bhat et al, 2021). pH levels, electric conductivity, dissolved oxygen levels, biochemical oxygen demand, and chemical oxygen demand have all decreased as a result of the lockdowns (Rume & Islam, 2020). These decreases all contribute to the fact that overall water quality levels have increased.

Noise pollution is an often-overlooked type of pollution that affects the world, especially in highly urbanized regions. Noise pollution is elevated levels of sound which are typically caused by human activities including transportation, machines, factories, etc. When the noise levels are elevated for extended periods of time, it negatively affects all organisms in the area. It leads to hearing loss, lack of concentration, high stress levels, interrupted sleep, and many other issues in humans. As for the wildlife, their abilities to detect and avoid predators and prey are hindered by noise pollution. It affects the invertebrates responsible for the control of many environmental processes that maintain balance in the ecosystem (Rume & Islam, 2020). When lockdowns were implemented, traveling and transportation stopped, industries shut down, flights were canceled, and people stayed home. The environment was able to recover and the people and organisms within the ecosystem enjoy a higher quality of life as a result.

Reflection Questions

What kinds of positive experiences have you had during the pandemic?
As stated in the chapter, there are many students who spent their time working out or picked up new hobbies. What new things were you able to focus on during the lockdowns?

Bhat, Shakeel Ahmad et al. “Impact of COVID-Related Lockdowns on Environmental and Climate Change Scenarios.” Environmental research 195 (2021): 110839–110839. Web. https://www-sciencedirect-com.libproxy.clemson.edu/science/article/pii/S001393512100133X?via%3Dihub.

DiDonato, S., Forgo, E., & Manella, H. (2020, June 5). Here’s how technology is helping residents during the COVID-19 pandemic . Scope Blog. https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2020/06/04/how-technology-is-helping-residents-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/.

Environmental Protection Agency. (2020, October 1). Particulate Matter (PM) Basics. EPA. https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/particulate-matter-pm-basics.

Merkle, Steffen. “Positive Experiences During COVID-19.” Survey. 18 April 2021.

Parker, K., Horowitz, J. M., & Minkin, R. (2021, February 9). How Coronavirus Has Changed the Way Americans Work . Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project. https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/12/09/how-the-coronavirus-outbreak-has-and-hasnt-changed-the-way-americans-work/.

Rume, T., & Islam, S. M. D.-U. (2020, September 17). Environmental effects of COVID-19 pandemic and potential strategies of sustainability. Heliyon. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7498239/#bib42.

Shaban, Hamza. “The Pandemic’s Home-Workout Revolution May Be Here to Stay.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 8 Jan. 2021, www.washingtonpost.com/road-to-recovery/2021/01/07/home-fitness-boom/.

Thompson, K. L. (2021, February 2). I’m a college professor who’s teaching virtually during the pandemic. Here are 7 things my most successful students do on Zoom. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/tips-for-zoom-success-as-remote-student-professor-advice-2021-2.

To the extent possible under law, Yang Wu; Allie Messenger; Arnaut Aguilar; Ashley Bui; Ava Kramer; Ben Jablonski; Blake Busking; Blake Moore; Carrie Pohlman; Brenna Turpin; Brooke Baker; Caroline Edwards; Chris Leroux; Claudia Sisk; Clayton Trentham; Davey Crouch; Eli Packer; Elle Wagner; Eliza Nix; Ellie Vensel; Erin Kennedy; Emily Cleveland; Ethan May; Ethan Hirsch; Frances Laughlin; George Easter; Grace Arnold; Grace D'Egidio; Grace Towe; Hope Wilde; Jack Sanford; Jake Brazinski; Jason McNult; Jason Saadeh; John Fuller; John Griffen; Julia Wood; Kasey Kiser; Katie Herbolsheimer; Katrina Campos; Kerrigan Donnelly; Kierstyn Stevens; Laurence Innes; Luke Dotson; Macey Coulter; Marco Guareschi; Meg Botts; Michael Havasy; Mikel Zoeller; Mitchell Wallin; Patrick Reed; Reagan Beach; Ryan Cook; Ryan Kennedy; Spencer Dalley; Steffen Merkle; Tayler Smith; Thomas Williams; Tim Egan; Tres Key; Tyler Parker; Virginia Lundeen; Will Gosnell; William Carroll; and Zoe Sabbert have waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to COVID 19: A Student Perspective , except where otherwise noted.

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I Thought We’d Learned Nothing From the Pandemic. I Wasn’t Seeing the Full Picture

M y first home had a back door that opened to a concrete patio with a giant crack down the middle. When my sister and I played, I made sure to stay on the same side of the divide as her, just in case. The 1988 film The Land Before Time was one of the first movies I ever saw, and the image of the earth splintering into pieces planted its roots in my brain. I believed that, even in my own backyard, I could easily become the tiny Triceratops separated from her family, on the other side of the chasm, as everything crumbled into chaos.

Some 30 years later, I marvel at the eerie, unexpected ways that cartoonish nightmare came to life – not just for me and my family, but for all of us. The landscape was already covered in fissures well before COVID-19 made its way across the planet, but the pandemic applied pressure, and the cracks broke wide open, separating us from each other physically and ideologically. Under the weight of the crisis, we scattered and landed on such different patches of earth we could barely see each other’s faces, even when we squinted. We disagreed viciously with each other, about how to respond, but also about what was true.

Recently, someone asked me if we’ve learned anything from the pandemic, and my first thought was a flat no. Nothing. There was a time when I thought it would be the very thing to draw us together and catapult us – as a capital “S” Society – into a kinder future. It’s surreal to remember those early days when people rallied together, sewing masks for health care workers during critical shortages and gathering on balconies in cities from Dallas to New York City to clap and sing songs like “Yellow Submarine.” It felt like a giant lightning bolt shot across the sky, and for one breath, we all saw something that had been hidden in the dark – the inherent vulnerability in being human or maybe our inescapable connectedness .

More from TIME

Read More: The Family Time the Pandemic Stole

But it turns out, it was just a flash. The goodwill vanished as quickly as it appeared. A couple of years later, people feel lied to, abandoned, and all on their own. I’ve felt my own curiosity shrinking, my willingness to reach out waning , my ability to keep my hands open dwindling. I look out across the landscape and see selfishness and rage, burnt earth and so many dead bodies. Game over. We lost. And if we’ve already lost, why try?

Still, the question kept nagging me. I wondered, am I seeing the full picture? What happens when we focus not on the collective society but at one face, one story at a time? I’m not asking for a bow to minimize the suffering – a pretty flourish to put on top and make the whole thing “worth it.” Yuck. That’s not what we need. But I wondered about deep, quiet growth. The kind we feel in our bodies, relationships, homes, places of work, neighborhoods.

Like a walkie-talkie message sent to my allies on the ground, I posted a call on my Instagram. What do you see? What do you hear? What feels possible? Is there life out here? Sprouting up among the rubble? I heard human voices calling back – reports of life, personal and specific. I heard one story at a time – stories of grief and distrust, fury and disappointment. Also gratitude. Discovery. Determination.

Among the most prevalent were the stories of self-revelation. Almost as if machines were given the chance to live as humans, people described blossoming into fuller selves. They listened to their bodies’ cues, recognized their desires and comforts, tuned into their gut instincts, and honored the intuition they hadn’t realized belonged to them. Alex, a writer and fellow disabled parent, found the freedom to explore a fuller version of herself in the privacy the pandemic provided. “The way I dress, the way I love, and the way I carry myself have both shrunk and expanded,” she shared. “I don’t love myself very well with an audience.” Without the daily ritual of trying to pass as “normal” in public, Tamar, a queer mom in the Netherlands, realized she’s autistic. “I think the pandemic helped me to recognize the mask,” she wrote. “Not that unmasking is easy now. But at least I know it’s there.” In a time of widespread suffering that none of us could solve on our own, many tended to our internal wounds and misalignments, large and small, and found clarity.

Read More: A Tool for Staying Grounded in This Era of Constant Uncertainty

I wonder if this flourishing of self-awareness is at least partially responsible for the life alterations people pursued. The pandemic broke open our personal notions of work and pushed us to reevaluate things like time and money. Lucy, a disabled writer in the U.K., made the hard decision to leave her job as a journalist covering Westminster to write freelance about her beloved disability community. “This work feels important in a way nothing else has ever felt,” she wrote. “I don’t think I’d have realized this was what I should be doing without the pandemic.” And she wasn’t alone – many people changed jobs , moved, learned new skills and hobbies, became politically engaged.

Perhaps more than any other shifts, people described a significant reassessment of their relationships. They set boundaries, said no, had challenging conversations. They also reconnected, fell in love, and learned to trust. Jeanne, a quilter in Indiana, got to know relatives she wouldn’t have connected with if lockdowns hadn’t prompted weekly family Zooms. “We are all over the map as regards to our belief systems,” she emphasized, “but it is possible to love people you don’t see eye to eye with on every issue.” Anna, an anti-violence advocate in Maine, learned she could trust her new marriage: “Life was not a honeymoon. But we still chose to turn to each other with kindness and curiosity.” So many bonds forged and broken, strengthened and strained.

Instead of relying on default relationships or institutional structures, widespread recalibrations allowed for going off script and fortifying smaller communities. Mara from Idyllwild, Calif., described the tangible plan for care enacted in her town. “We started a mutual-aid group at the beginning of the pandemic,” she wrote, “and it grew so quickly before we knew it we were feeding 400 of the 4000 residents.” She didn’t pretend the conditions were ideal. In fact, she expressed immense frustration with our collective response to the pandemic. Even so, the local group rallied and continues to offer assistance to their community with help from donations and volunteers (many of whom were originally on the receiving end of support). “I’ve learned that people thrive when they feel their connection to others,” she wrote. Clare, a teacher from the U.K., voiced similar conviction as she described a giant scarf she’s woven out of ribbons, each representing a single person. The scarf is “a collection of stories, moments and wisdom we are sharing with each other,” she wrote. It now stretches well over 1,000 feet.

A few hours into reading the comments, I lay back on my bed, phone held against my chest. The room was quiet, but my internal world was lighting up with firefly flickers. What felt different? Surely part of it was receiving personal accounts of deep-rooted growth. And also, there was something to the mere act of asking and listening. Maybe it connected me to humans before battle cries. Maybe it was the chance to be in conversation with others who were also trying to understand – what is happening to us? Underneath it all, an undeniable thread remained; I saw people peering into the mess and narrating their findings onto the shared frequency. Every comment was like a flare into the sky. I’m here! And if the sky is full of flares, we aren’t alone.

I recognized my own pandemic discoveries – some minor, others massive. Like washing off thick eyeliner and mascara every night is more effort than it’s worth; I can transform the mundane into the magical with a bedsheet, a movie projector, and twinkle lights; my paralyzed body can mother an infant in ways I’d never seen modeled for me. I remembered disappointing, bewildering conversations within my own family of origin and our imperfect attempts to remain close while also seeing things so differently. I realized that every time I get the weekly invite to my virtual “Find the Mumsies” call, with a tiny group of moms living hundreds of miles apart, I’m being welcomed into a pocket of unexpected community. Even though we’ve never been in one room all together, I’ve felt an uncommon kind of solace in their now-familiar faces.

Hope is a slippery thing. I desperately want to hold onto it, but everywhere I look there are real, weighty reasons to despair. The pandemic marks a stretch on the timeline that tangles with a teetering democracy, a deteriorating planet , the loss of human rights that once felt unshakable . When the world is falling apart Land Before Time style, it can feel trite, sniffing out the beauty – useless, firing off flares to anyone looking for signs of life. But, while I’m under no delusions that if we just keep trudging forward we’ll find our own oasis of waterfalls and grassy meadows glistening in the sunshine beneath a heavenly chorus, I wonder if trivializing small acts of beauty, connection, and hope actually cuts us off from resources essential to our survival. The group of abandoned dinosaurs were keeping each other alive and making each other laugh well before they made it to their fantasy ending.

Read More: How Ice Cream Became My Own Personal Act of Resistance

After the monarch butterfly went on the endangered-species list, my friend and fellow writer Hannah Soyer sent me wildflower seeds to plant in my yard. A simple act of big hope – that I will actually plant them, that they will grow, that a monarch butterfly will receive nourishment from whatever blossoms are able to push their way through the dirt. There are so many ways that could fail. But maybe the outcome wasn’t exactly the point. Maybe hope is the dogged insistence – the stubborn defiance – to continue cultivating moments of beauty regardless. There is value in the planting apart from the harvest.

I can’t point out a single collective lesson from the pandemic. It’s hard to see any great “we.” Still, I see the faces in my moms’ group, making pancakes for their kids and popping on between strings of meetings while we try to figure out how to raise these small people in this chaotic world. I think of my friends on Instagram tending to the selves they discovered when no one was watching and the scarf of ribbons stretching the length of more than three football fields. I remember my family of three, holding hands on the way up the ramp to the library. These bits of growth and rings of support might not be loud or right on the surface, but that’s not the same thing as nothing. If we only cared about the bottom-line defeats or sweeping successes of the big picture, we’d never plant flowers at all.

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How to Write About the Impact of the Coronavirus in a College Essay

The global impact of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, means colleges and prospective students alike are in for an admissions cycle like no other. Both face unprecedented challenges and questions as they grapple with their respective futures amid the ongoing fallout of the pandemic.

Colleges must examine applicants without the aid of standardized test scores for many -- a factor that prompted many schools to go test-optional for now . Even grades, a significant component of a college application, may be hard to interpret with some high schools adopting pass-fail classes last spring due to the pandemic. Major college admissions factors are suddenly skewed.

"I can't help but think other (admissions) factors are going to matter more," says Ethan Sawyer, founder of the College Essay Guy, a website that offers free and paid essay-writing resources.

College essays and letters of recommendation , Sawyer says, are likely to carry more weight than ever in this admissions cycle. And many essays will likely focus on how the pandemic shaped students' lives throughout an often tumultuous 2020.

[ Read: How to Write a College Essay. ]

But before writing a college essay focused on the coronavirus, students should explore whether it's the best topic for them.

Writing About COVID-19 for a College Application

Much of daily life has been colored by the coronavirus. Virtual learning is the norm at many colleges and high schools, many extracurriculars have vanished and social lives have stalled for students complying with measures to stop the spread of COVID-19.

"For some young people, the pandemic took away what they envisioned as their senior year," says Robert Alexander, dean of admissions, financial aid and enrollment management at the University of Rochester in New York. "Maybe that's a spot on a varsity athletic team or the lead role in the fall play. And it's OK for them to mourn what should have been and what they feel like they lost, but more important is how are they making the most of the opportunities they do have?"

That question, Alexander says, is what colleges want answered if students choose to address COVID-19 in their college essay.

But the question of whether a student should write about the coronavirus is tricky. The answer depends largely on the student.

"In general, I don't think students should write about COVID-19 in their main personal statement for their application," Robin Miller, master college admissions counselor at IvyWise, a college counseling company, wrote in an email.

"Certainly, there may be exceptions to this based on a student's individual experience, but since the personal essay is the main place in the application where the student can really allow their voice to be heard and share insight into who they are as an individual, there are likely many other topics they can choose to write about that are more distinctive and unique than COVID-19," Miller says.

[ Read: What Colleges Look for: 6 Ways to Stand Out. ]

Opinions among admissions experts vary on whether to write about the likely popular topic of the pandemic.

"If your essay communicates something positive, unique, and compelling about you in an interesting and eloquent way, go for it," Carolyn Pippen, principal college admissions counselor at IvyWise, wrote in an email. She adds that students shouldn't be dissuaded from writing about a topic merely because it's common, noting that "topics are bound to repeat, no matter how hard we try to avoid it."

Above all, she urges honesty.

"If your experience within the context of the pandemic has been truly unique, then write about that experience, and the standing out will take care of itself," Pippen says. "If your experience has been generally the same as most other students in your context, then trying to find a unique angle can easily cross the line into exploiting a tragedy, or at least appearing as though you have."

But focusing entirely on the pandemic can limit a student to a single story and narrow who they are in an application, Sawyer says. "There are so many wonderful possibilities for what you can say about yourself outside of your experience within the pandemic."

He notes that passions, strengths, career interests and personal identity are among the multitude of essay topic options available to applicants and encourages them to probe their values to help determine the topic that matters most to them -- and write about it.

That doesn't mean the pandemic experience has to be ignored if applicants feel the need to write about it.

Writing About Coronavirus in Main and Supplemental Essays

Students can choose to write a full-length college essay on the coronavirus or summarize their experience in a shorter form.

To help students explain how the pandemic affected them, The Common App has added an optional section to address this topic. Applicants have 250 words to describe their pandemic experience and the personal and academic impact of COVID-19.

[ Read: The Common App: Everything You Need to Know. ]

"That's not a trick question, and there's no right or wrong answer," Alexander says. Colleges want to know, he adds, how students navigated the pandemic, how they prioritized their time, what responsibilities they took on and what they learned along the way.

If students can distill all of the above information into 250 words, there's likely no need to write about it in a full-length college essay, experts say. And applicants whose lives were not heavily altered by the pandemic may even choose to skip the optional COVID-19 question.

"This space is best used to discuss hardship and/or significant challenges that the student and/or the student's family experienced as a result of COVID-19 and how they have responded to those difficulties," Miller notes. Using the section to acknowledge a lack of impact, she adds, "could be perceived as trite and lacking insight, despite the good intentions of the applicant."

To guard against this lack of awareness, Sawyer encourages students to tap someone they trust to review their writing , whether it's the 250-word Common App response or the full-length essay.

Experts tend to agree that the short-form approach to this as an essay topic works better, but there are exceptions. And if a student does have a coronavirus story that he or she feels must be told, Alexander encourages the writer to be authentic in the essay.

"My advice for an essay about COVID-19 is the same as my advice about an essay for any topic -- and that is, don't write what you think we want to read or hear," Alexander says. "Write what really changed you and that story that now is yours and yours alone to tell."

Sawyer urges students to ask themselves, "What's the sentence that only I can write?" He also encourages students to remember that the pandemic is only a chapter of their lives and not the whole book.

Miller, who cautions against writing a full-length essay on the coronavirus, says that if students choose to do so they should have a conversation with their high school counselor about whether that's the right move. And if students choose to proceed with COVID-19 as a topic, she says they need to be clear, detailed and insightful about what they learned and how they adapted along the way.

"Approaching the essay in this manner will provide important balance while demonstrating personal growth and vulnerability," Miller says.

Pippen encourages students to remember that they are in an unprecedented time for college admissions.

"It is important to keep in mind with all of these (admission) factors that no colleges have ever had to consider them this way in the selection process, if at all," Pippen says. "They have had very little time to calibrate their evaluations of different application components within their offices, let alone across institutions. This means that colleges will all be handling the admissions process a little bit differently, and their approaches may even evolve over the course of the admissions cycle."

Searching for a college? Get our complete rankings of Best Colleges.

What Life Was Like for Students in the Pandemic Year

In this video, Navajo student Miles Johnson shares how he experienced the stress and anxiety of schools shutting down last year. Miles’ teacher shared his experience and those of her other students in a recent piece for Education Week. In these short essays below, teacher Claire Marie Grogan’s 11th grade students at Oceanside High School on Long Island, N.Y., describe their pandemic experiences. Their writings have been slightly edited for clarity. Read Grogan’s essay .

“Hours Staring at Tiny Boxes on the Screen”

By Kimberly Polacco, 16

I stare at my blank computer screen, trying to find the motivation to turn it on, but my finger flinches every time it hovers near the button. I instead open my curtains. It is raining outside, but it does not matter, I will not be going out there for the rest of the day. The sound of pounding raindrops contributes to my headache enough to make me turn on my computer in hopes that it will give me something to drown out the noise. But as soon as I open it up, I feel the weight of the world crash upon my shoulders.

Each 42-minute period drags on by. I spend hours upon hours staring at tiny boxes on a screen, one of which my exhausted face occupies, and attempt to retain concepts that have been presented to me through this device. By the time I have the freedom of pressing the “leave” button on my last Google Meet of the day, my eyes are heavy and my legs feel like mush from having not left my bed since I woke up.

Tomorrow arrives, except this time here I am inside of a school building, interacting with my first period teacher face to face. We talk about our favorite movies and TV shows to stream as other kids pile into the classroom. With each passing period I accumulate more and more of these tiny meaningless conversations everywhere I go with both teachers and students. They may not seem like much, but to me they are everything because I know that the next time I am expected to report to school, I will be trapped in the bubble of my room counting down the hours until I can sit down in my freshly sanitized wooden desk again.

“My Only Parent Essentially on Her Death Bed”

By Nick Ingargiola, 16

My mom had COVID-19 for ten weeks. She got sick during the first month school buildings were shut. The difficulty of navigating an online classroom was already overwhelming, and when mixed with my only parent essentially on her death bed, it made it unbearable. Focusing on schoolwork was impossible, and watching my mother struggle to lift up her arm broke my heart.

My mom has been through her fair share of diseases from pancreatic cancer to seizures and even as far as a stroke that paralyzed her entire left side. It is safe to say she has been through a lot. The craziest part is you would never know it. She is the strongest and most positive person I’ve ever met. COVID hit her hard. Although I have watched her go through life and death multiple times, I have never seen her so physically and mentally drained.

I initially was overjoyed to complete my school year in the comfort of my own home, but once my mom got sick, I couldn’t handle it. No one knows what it’s like to pretend like everything is OK until they are forced to. I would wake up at 8 after staying up until 5 in the morning pondering the possibility of losing my mother. She was all I had. I was forced to turn my camera on and float in the fake reality of being fine although I wasn’t. The teachers tried to keep the class engaged by obligating the students to participate. This was dreadful. I didn’t want to talk. I had to hide the distress in my voice. If only the teachers understood what I was going through. I was hesitant because I didn’t want everyone to know that the virus that was infecting and killing millions was knocking on my front door.

After my online classes, I was required to finish an immense amount of homework while simultaneously hiding my sadness so that my mom wouldn’t worry about me. She was already going through a lot. There was no reason to add me to her list of worries. I wasn’t even able to give her a hug. All I could do was watch.

“The Way of Staying Sane”

By Lynda Feustel, 16

Entering year two of the pandemic is strange. It barely seems a day since last March, but it also seems like a lifetime. As an only child and introvert, shutting down my world was initially simple and relatively easy. My friends and I had been super busy with the school play, and while I was sad about it being canceled, I was struggling a lot during that show and desperately needed some time off.

As March turned to April, virtual school began, and being alone really set in. I missed my friends and us being together. The isolation felt real with just my parents and me, even as we spent time together. My friends and I began meeting on Facetime every night to watch TV and just be together in some way. We laughed at insane jokes we made and had homework and therapy sessions over Facetime and grew closer through digital and literal walls.

The summer passed with in-person events together, and the virus faded into the background for a little while. We went to the track and the beach and hung out in people’s backyards.

Then school came for us in a more nasty way than usual. In hybrid school we were separated. People had jobs, sports, activities, and quarantines. Teachers piled on work, and the virus grew more present again. The group text put out hundreds of messages a day while the Facetimes came to a grinding halt, and meeting in person as a group became more of a rarity. Being together on video and in person was the way of staying sane.

In a way I am in a similar place to last year, working and looking for some change as we enter the second year of this mess.

“In History Class, Reports of Heightening Cases”

By Vivian Rose, 16

I remember the moment my freshman year English teacher told me about the young writers’ conference at Bread Loaf during my sophomore year. At first, I didn’t want to apply, the deadline had passed, but for some strange reason, the directors of the program extended it another week. It felt like it was meant to be. It was in Vermont in the last week of May when the flowers have awakened and the sun is warm.

I submitted my work, and two weeks later I got an email of my acceptance. I screamed at the top of my lungs in the empty house; everyone was out, so I was left alone to celebrate my small victory. It was rare for them to admit sophomores. Usually they accept submissions only from juniors and seniors.

That was the first week of February 2020. All of a sudden, there was some talk about this strange virus coming from China. We thought nothing of it. Every night, I would fall asleep smiling, knowing that I would be able to go to the exact conference that Robert Frost attended for 42 years.

Then, as if overnight, it seemed the virus had swung its hand and had gripped parts of the country. Every newscast was about the disease. Every day in history, we would look at the reports of heightening cases and joke around that this could never become a threat as big as Dr. Fauci was proposing. Then, March 13th came around--it was the last day before the world seemed to shut down. Just like that, Bread Loaf would vanish from my grasp.

“One Day Every Day Won’t Be As Terrible”

By Nick Wollweber, 17

COVID created personal problems for everyone, some more serious than others, but everyone had a struggle.

As the COVID lock-down took hold, the main thing weighing on my mind was my oldest brother, Joe, who passed away in January 2019 unexpectedly in his sleep. Losing my brother was a complete gut punch and reality check for me at 14 and 15 years old. 2019 was a year of struggle, darkness, sadness, frustration. I didn’t want to learn after my brother had passed, but I had to in order to move forward and find my new normal.

Routine and always having things to do and places to go is what let me cope in the year after Joe died. Then COVID came and gave me the option to let up and let down my guard. I struggled with not wanting to take care of personal hygiene. That was the beginning of an underlying mental problem where I wouldn’t do things that were necessary for everyday life.

My “coping routine” that got me through every day and week the year before was gone. COVID wasn’t beneficial to me, but it did bring out the true nature of my mental struggles and put a name to it. Since COVID, I have been diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety. I began taking antidepressants and going to therapy a lot more.

COVID made me realize that I’m not happy with who I am and that I needed to change. I’m still not happy with who I am. I struggle every day, but I am working towards a goal that one day every day won’t be as terrible.

Coverage of social and emotional learning is supported in part by a grant from the NoVo Foundation, at www.novofoundation.org . Education Week retains sole editorial control over the content of this coverage. A version of this article appeared in the March 31, 2021 edition of Education Week as What Life Was Like for Students in the Pandemic Year

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Covid-19’s Impact on Students’ Academic and Mental Well-Being

The pandemic has revealed—and exacerbated—inequities that hold many students back. Here’s how teachers can help.

The pandemic has shone a spotlight on inequality in America: School closures and social isolation have affected all students, but particularly those living in poverty. Adding to the damage to their learning, a mental health crisis is emerging as many students have lost access to services that were offered by schools.

No matter what form school takes when the new year begins—whether students and teachers are back in the school building together or still at home—teachers will face a pressing issue: How can they help students recover and stay on track throughout the year even as their lives are likely to continue to be disrupted by the pandemic?

New research provides insights about the scope of the problem—as well as potential solutions.

The Achievement Gap Is Likely to Widen

A new study suggests that the coronavirus will undo months of academic gains, leaving many students behind. The study authors project that students will start the new school year with an average of 66 percent of the learning gains in reading and 44 percent of the learning gains in math, relative to the gains for a typical school year. But the situation is worse on the reading front, as the researchers also predict that the top third of students will make gains, possibly because they’re likely to continue reading with their families while schools are closed, thus widening the achievement gap.

To make matters worse, “few school systems provide plans to support students who need accommodations or other special populations,” the researchers point out in the study, potentially impacting students with special needs and English language learners.

Of course, the idea that over the summer students forget some of what they learned in school isn’t new. But there’s a big difference between summer learning loss and pandemic-related learning loss: During the summer, formal schooling stops, and learning loss happens at roughly the same rate for all students, the researchers point out. But instruction has been uneven during the pandemic, as some students have been able to participate fully in online learning while others have faced obstacles—such as lack of internet access—that have hindered their progress.

In the study, researchers analyzed a national sample of 5 million students in grades 3–8 who took the MAP Growth test, a tool schools use to assess students’ reading and math growth throughout the school year. The researchers compared typical growth in a standard-length school year to projections based on students being out of school from mid-March on. To make those projections, they looked at research on the summer slide, weather- and disaster-related closures (such as New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina), and absenteeism.

The researchers predict that, on average, students will experience substantial drops in reading and math, losing roughly three months’ worth of gains in reading and five months’ worth of gains in math. For Megan Kuhfeld, the lead author of the study, the biggest takeaway isn’t that learning loss will happen—that’s a given by this point—but that students will come back to school having declined at vastly different rates.

“We might be facing unprecedented levels of variability come fall,” Kuhfeld told me. “Especially in school districts that serve families with lots of different needs and resources. Instead of having students reading at a grade level above or below in their classroom, teachers might have kids who slipped back a lot versus kids who have moved forward.”

Disproportionate Impact on Students Living in Poverty and Students of Color

Horace Mann once referred to schools as the “great equalizers,” yet the pandemic threatens to expose the underlying inequities of remote learning. According to a 2015 Pew Research Center analysis , 17 percent of teenagers have difficulty completing homework assignments because they do not have reliable access to a computer or internet connection. For Black students, the number spikes to 25 percent.

“There are many reasons to believe the Covid-19 impacts might be larger for children in poverty and children of color,” Kuhfeld wrote in the study. Their families suffer higher rates of infection, and the economic burden disproportionately falls on Black and Hispanic parents, who are less likely to be able to work from home during the pandemic.

Although children are less likely to become infected with Covid-19, the adult mortality rates, coupled with the devastating economic consequences of the pandemic, will likely have an indelible impact on their well-being.

Impacts on Students’ Mental Health

That impact on well-being may be magnified by another effect of school closures: Schools are “the de facto mental health system for many children and adolescents,” providing mental health services to 57 percent of adolescents who need care, according to the authors of a recent study published in JAMA Pediatrics . School closures may be especially disruptive for children from lower-income families, who are disproportionately likely to receive mental health services exclusively from schools.

“The Covid-19 pandemic may worsen existing mental health problems and lead to more cases among children and adolescents because of the unique combination of the public health crisis, social isolation, and economic recession,” write the authors of that study.

A major concern the researchers point to: Since most mental health disorders begin in childhood, it is essential that any mental health issues be identified early and treated. Left untreated, they can lead to serious health and emotional problems. In the short term, video conferencing may be an effective way to deliver mental health services to children.

Mental health and academic achievement are linked, research shows. Chronic stress changes the chemical and physical structure of the brain, impairing cognitive skills like attention, concentration, memory, and creativity. “You see deficits in your ability to regulate emotions in adaptive ways as a result of stress,” said Cara Wellman, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at Indiana University in a 2014 interview . In her research, Wellman discovered that chronic stress causes the connections between brain cells to shrink in mice, leading to cognitive deficiencies in the prefrontal cortex.

While trauma-informed practices were widely used before the pandemic, they’re likely to be even more integral as students experience economic hardships and grieve the loss of family and friends. Teachers can look to schools like Fall-Hamilton Elementary in Nashville, Tennessee, as a model for trauma-informed practices .

3 Ways Teachers Can Prepare

When schools reopen, many students may be behind, compared to a typical school year, so teachers will need to be very methodical about checking in on their students—not just academically but also emotionally. Some may feel prepared to tackle the new school year head-on, but others will still be recovering from the pandemic and may still be reeling from trauma, grief, and anxiety.

Here are a few strategies teachers can prioritize when the new school year begins:

Focus on relationships first. Fear and anxiety about the pandemic—coupled with uncertainty about the future—can be disruptive to a student’s ability to come to school ready to learn. Teachers can act as a powerful buffer against the adverse effects of trauma by helping to establish a safe and supportive environment for learning. From morning meetings to regular check-ins with students, strategies that center around relationship-building will be needed in the fall.
Strengthen diagnostic testing. Educators should prepare for a greater range of variability in student learning than they would expect in a typical school year. Low-stakes assessments such as exit tickets and quizzes can help teachers gauge how much extra support students will need, how much time should be spent reviewing last year’s material, and what new topics can be covered.
Differentiate instruction—particularly for vulnerable students. For the vast majority of schools, the abrupt transition to online learning left little time to plan a strategy that could adequately meet every student’s needs—in a recent survey by the Education Trust, only 24 percent of parents said that their child’s school was providing materials and other resources to support students with disabilities, and a quarter of non-English-speaking students were unable to obtain materials in their own language. Teachers can work to ensure that the students on the margins get the support they need by taking stock of students’ knowledge and skills, and differentiating instruction by giving them choices, connecting the curriculum to their interests, and providing them multiple opportunities to demonstrate their learning.

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12 Ideas for Writing Through the Pandemic With The New York Times

A dozen writing projects — including journals, poems, comics and more — for students to try at home.

By Natalie Proulx

The coronavirus has transformed life as we know it. Schools are closed, we’re confined to our homes and the future feels very uncertain. Why write at a time like this?

For one, we are living through history. Future historians may look back on the journals, essays and art that ordinary people are creating now to tell the story of life during the coronavirus.

But writing can also be deeply therapeutic. It can be a way to express our fears, hopes and joys. It can help us make sense of the world and our place in it.

Plus, even though school buildings are shuttered, that doesn’t mean learning has stopped. Writing can help us reflect on what’s happening in our lives and form new ideas.

We want to help inspire your writing about the coronavirus while you learn from home. Below, we offer 12 projects for students, all based on pieces from The New York Times, including personal narrative essays, editorials, comic strips and podcasts. Each project features a Times text and prompts to inspire your writing, as well as related resources from The Learning Network to help you develop your craft. Some also offer opportunities to get your work published in The Times, on The Learning Network or elsewhere.

We know this list isn’t nearly complete. If you have ideas for other pandemic-related writing projects, please suggest them in the comments.

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Read these 12 moving essays about life during coronavirus

Artists, novelists, critics, and essayists are writing the first draft of history.

by Alissa Wilkinson

The world is grappling with an invisible, deadly enemy, trying to understand how to live with the threat posed by a virus . For some writers, the only way forward is to put pen to paper, trying to conceptualize and document what it feels like to continue living as countries are under lockdown and regular life seems to have ground to a halt.

So as the coronavirus pandemic has stretched around the world, it’s sparked a crop of diary entries and essays that describe how life has changed. Novelists, critics, artists, and journalists have put words to the feelings many are experiencing. The result is a first draft of how we’ll someday remember this time, filled with uncertainty and pain and fear as well as small moments of hope and humanity.

The Vox guide to navigating the coronavirus crisis

At the New York Review of Books, Ali Bhutto writes that in Karachi, Pakistan, the government-imposed curfew due to the virus is “eerily reminiscent of past military clampdowns”:

Beneath the quiet calm lies a sense that society has been unhinged and that the usual rules no longer apply. Small groups of pedestrians look on from the shadows, like an audience watching a spectacle slowly unfolding. People pause on street corners and in the shade of trees, under the watchful gaze of the paramilitary forces and the police.

His essay concludes with the sobering note that “in the minds of many, Covid-19 is just another life-threatening hazard in a city that stumbles from one crisis to another.”

Writing from Chattanooga, novelist Jamie Quatro documents the mixed ways her neighbors have been responding to the threat, and the frustration of conflicting direction, or no direction at all, from local, state, and federal leaders:

Whiplash, trying to keep up with who’s ordering what. We’re already experiencing enough chaos without this back-and-forth. Why didn’t the federal government issue a nationwide shelter-in-place at the get-go, the way other countries did? What happens when one state’s shelter-in-place ends, while others continue? Do states still under quarantine close their borders? We are still one nation, not fifty individual countries. Right?

A syllabus for the end of the world

Award-winning photojournalist Alessio Mamo, quarantined with his partner Marta in Sicily after she tested positive for the virus, accompanies his photographs in the Guardian of their confinement with a reflection on being confined :

The doctors asked me to take a second test, but again I tested negative. Perhaps I’m immune? The days dragged on in my apartment, in black and white, like my photos. Sometimes we tried to smile, imagining that I was asymptomatic, because I was the virus. Our smiles seemed to bring good news. My mother left hospital, but I won’t be able to see her for weeks. Marta started breathing well again, and so did I. I would have liked to photograph my country in the midst of this emergency, the battles that the doctors wage on the frontline, the hospitals pushed to their limits, Italy on its knees fighting an invisible enemy. That enemy, a day in March, knocked on my door instead.

In the New York Times Magazine, deputy editor Jessica Lustig writes with devastating clarity about her family’s life in Brooklyn while her husband battled the virus, weeks before most people began taking the threat seriously:

At the door of the clinic, we stand looking out at two older women chatting outside the doorway, oblivious. Do I wave them away? Call out that they should get far away, go home, wash their hands, stay inside? Instead we just stand there, awkwardly, until they move on. Only then do we step outside to begin the long three-block walk home. I point out the early magnolia, the forsythia. T says he is cold. The untrimmed hairs on his neck, under his beard, are white. The few people walking past us on the sidewalk don’t know that we are visitors from the future. A vision, a premonition, a walking visitation. This will be them: Either T, in the mask, or — if they’re lucky — me, tending to him.

Essayist Leslie Jamison writes in the New York Review of Books about being shut away alone in her New York City apartment with her 2-year-old daughter since she became sick:

The virus. Its sinewy, intimate name. What does it feel like in my body today? Shivering under blankets. A hot itch behind the eyes. Three sweatshirts in the middle of the day. My daughter trying to pull another blanket over my body with her tiny arms. An ache in the muscles that somehow makes it hard to lie still. This loss of taste has become a kind of sensory quarantine. It’s as if the quarantine keeps inching closer and closer to my insides. First I lost the touch of other bodies; then I lost the air; now I’ve lost the taste of bananas. Nothing about any of these losses is particularly unique. I’ve made a schedule so I won’t go insane with the toddler. Five days ago, I wrote Walk/Adventure! on it, next to a cut-out illustration of a tiger—as if we’d see tigers on our walks. It was good to keep possibility alive.

At Literary Hub, novelist Heidi Pitlor writes about the elastic nature of time during her family’s quarantine in Massachusetts:

During a shutdown, the things that mark our days—commuting to work, sending our kids to school, having a drink with friends—vanish and time takes on a flat, seamless quality. Without some self-imposed structure, it’s easy to feel a little untethered. A friend recently posted on Facebook: “For those who have lost track, today is Blursday the fortyteenth of Maprilay.” ... Giving shape to time is especially important now, when the future is so shapeless. We do not know whether the virus will continue to rage for weeks or months or, lord help us, on and off for years. We do not know when we will feel safe again. And so many of us, minus those who are gifted at compartmentalization or denial, remain largely captive to fear. We may stay this way if we do not create at least the illusion of movement in our lives, our long days spent with ourselves or partners or families.

What day is it today?

Novelist Lauren Groff writes at the New York Review of Books about trying to escape the prison of her fears while sequestered at home in Gainesville, Florida:

Some people have imaginations sparked only by what they can see; I blame this blinkered empiricism for the parks overwhelmed with people, the bars, until a few nights ago, thickly thronged. My imagination is the opposite. I fear everything invisible to me. From the enclosure of my house, I am afraid of the suffering that isn’t present before me, the people running out of money and food or drowning in the fluid in their lungs, the deaths of health-care workers now growing ill while performing their duties. I fear the federal government, which the right wing has so—intentionally—weakened that not only is it insufficient to help its people, it is actively standing in help’s way. I fear we won’t sufficiently punish the right. I fear leaving the house and spreading the disease. I fear what this time of fear is doing to my children, their imaginations, and their souls.

At ArtForum , Berlin-based critic and writer Kristian Vistrup Madsen reflects on martinis, melancholia, and Finnish artist Jaakko Pallasvuo’s 2018 graphic novel Retreat , in which three young people exile themselves in the woods:

In melancholia, the shape of what is ending, and its temporality, is sprawling and incomprehensible. The ambivalence makes it hard to bear. The world of Retreat is rendered in lush pink and purple watercolors, which dissolve into wild and messy abstractions. In apocalypse, the divisions established in genesis bleed back out. My own Corona-retreat is similarly soft, color-field like, each day a blurred succession of quarantinis, YouTube–yoga, and televized press conferences. As restrictions mount, so does abstraction. For now, I’m still rooting for love to save the world.

At the Paris Review , Matt Levin writes about reading Virginia Woolf’s novel The Waves during quarantine:

A retreat, a quarantine, a sickness—they simultaneously distort and clarify, curtail and expand. It is an ideal state in which to read literature with a reputation for difficulty and inaccessibility, those hermetic books shorn of the handholds of conventional plot or characterization or description. A novel like Virginia Woolf’s The Waves is perfect for the state of interiority induced by quarantine—a story of three men and three women, meeting after the death of a mutual friend, told entirely in the overlapping internal monologues of the six, interspersed only with sections of pure, achingly beautiful descriptions of the natural world, a day’s procession and recession of light and waves. The novel is, in my mind’s eye, a perfectly spherical object. It is translucent and shimmering and infinitely fragile, prone to shatter at the slightest disturbance. It is not a book that can be read in snatches on the subway—it demands total absorption. Though it revels in a stark emotional nakedness, the book remains aloof, remote in its own deep self-absorption.

Vox is starting a book club. Come read with us!

In an essay for the Financial Times, novelist Arundhati Roy writes with anger about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s anemic response to the threat, but also offers a glimmer of hope for the future:

Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.

From Boston, Nora Caplan-Bricker writes in The Point about the strange contraction of space under quarantine, in which a friend in Beirut is as close as the one around the corner in the same city:

It’s a nice illusion—nice to feel like we’re in it together, even if my real world has shrunk to one person, my husband, who sits with his laptop in the other room. It’s nice in the same way as reading those essays that reframe social distancing as solidarity. “We must begin to see the negative space as clearly as the positive, to know what we don’t do is also brilliant and full of love,” the poet Anne Boyer wrote on March 10th, the day that Massachusetts declared a state of emergency. If you squint, you could almost make sense of this quarantine as an effort to flatten, along with the curve, the distinctions we make between our bonds with others. Right now, I care for my neighbor in the same way I demonstrate love for my mother: in all instances, I stay away. And in moments this month, I have loved strangers with an intensity that is new to me. On March 14th, the Saturday night after the end of life as we knew it, I went out with my dog and found the street silent: no lines for restaurants, no children on bicycles, no couples strolling with little cups of ice cream. It had taken the combined will of thousands of people to deliver such a sudden and complete emptiness. I felt so grateful, and so bereft.

And on his own website, musician and artist David Byrne writes about rediscovering the value of working for collective good , saying that “what is happening now is an opportunity to learn how to change our behavior”:

In emergencies, citizens can suddenly cooperate and collaborate. Change can happen. We’re going to need to work together as the effects of climate change ramp up. In order for capitalism to survive in any form, we will have to be a little more socialist. Here is an opportunity for us to see things differently — to see that we really are all connected — and adjust our behavior accordingly. Are we willing to do this? Is this moment an opportunity to see how truly interdependent we all are? To live in a world that is different and better than the one we live in now? We might be too far down the road to test every asymptomatic person, but a change in our mindsets, in how we view our neighbors, could lay the groundwork for the collective action we’ll need to deal with other global crises. The time to see how connected we all are is now.

The portrait these writers paint of a world under quarantine is multifaceted. Our worlds have contracted to the confines of our homes, and yet in some ways we’re more connected than ever to one another. We feel fear and boredom, anger and gratitude, frustration and strange peace. Uncertainty drives us to find metaphors and images that will let us wrap our minds around what is happening.

Yet there’s no single “what” that is happening. Everyone is contending with the pandemic and its effects from different places and in different ways. Reading others’ experiences — even the most frightening ones — can help alleviate the loneliness and dread, a little, and remind us that what we’re going through is both unique and shared by all.

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Elsevier - PMC COVID-19 Collection

The impact of COVID-19 on student experiences and expectations: Evidence from a survey ☆

Esteban m. aucejo.

a Department of Economics, Arizona State University, CEP & NBER, United States of America

Jacob French

b Department of Economics, Arizona State University, United States of America

Maria Paola Ugalde Araya

Basit zafar.

c Department of Economics, University of Michigan, & NBER, United States of America

In order to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on higher education, we surveyed approximately 1500 students at one of the largest public institutions in the United States using an instrument designed to recover the causal impact of the pandemic on students' current and expected outcomes. Results show large negative effects across many dimensions. Due to COVID-19: 13% of students have delayed graduation, 40% have lost a job, internship, or job offer, and 29% expect to earn less at age 35. Moreover, these effects have been highly heterogeneous. One quarter of students increased their study time by more than 4 hours per week due to COVID-19, while another quarter decreased their study time by more than 5 hours per week. This heterogeneity often followed existing socioeconomic divides. Lower-income students are 55% more likely than their higher-income peers to have delayed graduation due to COVID-19. Finally, we show that the economic and health related shocks induced by COVID-19 vary systematically by socioeconomic factors and constitute key mediators in explaining the large (and heterogeneous) effects of the pandemic.

• Due to COVID: 13% of students delayed graduation, 40% lost a job, internship, or offer, and 29% expect to earn less at 35.
• The effects of the pandemic have been highly heterogeneous.
• Lower-income students are 55% more likely than their higher-income peers to have delayed graduation due to COVID-19.
• COVID-19's economic and health shocks vary by socioeconomic status and act as key mediators explaining pandemic's effects.

1. Introduction

The disruptive effects of the COVID-19 outbreak have impacted almost all sectors of our society. Higher education is no exception. Anecdotal evidence paints a bleak picture for both students and universities. According to the American Council on Education, enrollment is likely to drop by 15% in the fall of 2020, while at the same time many institutions may have to confront demands for large tuition cuts if classes remain virtual. 1 In a similar vein, students face an increasingly uncertain environment, where financial and health shocks (for example, lack of resources to complete their studies or fear of becoming seriously sick), along with the transition to online learning may have affected their academic performance, educational plans, current labor market participation, and expectations about future employment.

This paper attempts to shed light on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on college students. First, we describe and quantify the causal effects of the COVID-19 outbreak on a wide set of students' outcomes/expectations. In particular, we analyze enrollment and graduation decisions, academic performance, major choice, study and social habits, remote learning experiences, current labor market participation, and expectations about future employment. Second, we study how these effects differ along existing socioeconomic divides and whether the pandemic has exacerbated existing inequalities. Finally, we present suggestive evidence on the mechanisms behind the heterogeneous COVID-19 effects by quantifying the relationship between individual-level (financial and health) shocks and students' academic decisions and labor market expectations.

For this purpose, we surveyed about 1500 undergraduate students at Arizona State University (ASU), one of the largest public universities in the United States, in late April 2020. The survey was explicitly designed to not only collect student outcomes and expectations after the onset of the pandemic, but also to recover counterfactual outcomes in the absence of the outbreak. Specifically, the survey asked students about their current experiences/expectations and what those experiences/expectations would have been had it not been for the pandemic. Because we collect information conditional on both states of the world (with the COVID-19 pandemic, and without) from each student , we can directly analyze how each student believes COVID-19 has impacted their current and future outcomes. 2 For example, by asking students about their current GPA in a post-COVID-19 world and their expected GPA in the absence of COVID-19, we can back out the subjective treatment effect of COVID-19 on academic performance. The credibility of our approach depends on: (1) students having well-formed beliefs about outcomes in the counterfactual scenario. This is a plausible assumption in our context since the counterfactual state is a realistic and relevant one - it was the status quo less than two months before the survey, and (2) there being no systematic bias in the reporting of the data - an assumption that is implicitly made when using any survey data. 3

Our findings on academic outcomes indicate that COVID-19 has led to a large number of students delaying graduation (13%), withdrawing from classes (11%), and intending to change majors (12%). Moreover, approximately 50% of our sample separately reported a decrease in study hours and in their academic performance. Predicting the longer-term impact of the pandemic on student achievement is more difficult, but students reported that they expect to take a break from college in the fall 2020 semester at more than twice the rate in previous years. Historically, 28% of students who fail to re-enroll do not return to ASU or another university after 5 years (authors' calculations from ASU first-time freshmen transcript data for the 2012–2014 spring semesters), suggesting that the pandemic may have a lasting impact on the educational achievement of current students. We also find that students report a decreased preference for online instruction as a result of their recent experiences.

As expected, the COVID-19 outbreak also had large negative effects on students' current labor market participation and expectations about post-college labor outcomes. Working students suffered a 31% decrease in their wages and a 37% drop in weekly hours worked, on average. Moreover, around 40% of students lost a job, internship, or a job offer, and 61% reported to have a family member that experienced a reduction in income. The pandemic also had a substantial impact on students' expectations about their labor market prospects post-college. For example, their perceived probability of finding a job before graduation decreased by almost 20%, and their expected earnings when 35 years old (around 15 years from the outbreak) declined by approximately 2.5%. This last finding suggests that students expect the pandemic to have a long-lasting impact on their labor market prospects, which is qualitatively consistent with the literature on graduating during a recession. For instance, Oreopoulos et al. (2012) and Schwandt and von Wachter (2019) find significant reductions in earnings 5 and 10 years after graduation, respectively, and Kahn (2010) finds an even longer-lasting effect on wages. On the other hand, although we are measuring the probability of finding a job before graduating, not unemployment directly, our estimated quantitative effect on students' expectations of finding a job seems to be larger relative to the literature ( Kahn, 2010 ; Altonji et al., 2016 ; and Rothstein, 2020 ).

The data also show that while all subgroups of the population have experienced negative effects due to the outbreak, the size of the effects are heterogeneous. For example, compared to their more affluent peers, lower-income students are 55% more likely to delay graduation due to COVID-19 and are 41% more likely to report that COVID-19 impacted their major choice. Further, COVID-19 nearly doubled the gap between higher- and lower-income students' expected GPA. 4 There also is substantial variation in the pandemic's effect on preference for online learning, with Honors students and males revising their preferences down more than 2.5 times as much as their peers. However, despite appearing to be more disrupted by the switch to online learning, the impact of COVID-19 on Honors students' academic outcomes is consistently smaller than the impact on non-Honors students.

Finally, we evaluate the extent to which mitigating factors associated with more direct economic and health shocks from the pandemic (for example, a family member losing income due to COVID-19, or the expected probability of hospitalization if contracting COVID-19) can explain the heterogeneity in pandemic effects. We find that both types of shock (economic and health) are systematically correlated with students' COVID-19 experiences. For example, the expected probability of delaying graduation due to COVID-19 increases by approximately 25% if either a student's subjective probability of being late on a debt payment in the following 90 days (a measure of financial fragility) or subjective probability of requiring hospitalization conditional on contracting COVID-19 increases by one standard deviation. As expected, the magnitude of health and economic shocks are not homogeneous across the student population. The average of the principal component for the economic and health shocks is about 0.3–0.4 standard deviations higher for students from lower-income families. Importantly, we find that the disparate economic and health impacts of COVID-19 can explain 40% of the delayed graduation gap (as well as a substantial part of the gap for other outcomes) between lower- and higher-income students. This analysis should be viewed as descriptive in nature and not necessarily causal, since omitted factors that are correlated both with the shocks and the outcomes may be driving these relationships.

To our knowledge, this is the first paper to shed light on the effects of COVID-19 on college students' experiences. The treatment effects that we find are large in economic terms. Whether students are overreacting in their response to the COVID-19 shock is not clear. We do find that previous cumulative GPA is a strong predictor of expected semester GPA without COVID-19, suggesting that students' reported expectations are meaningful. However, we know that individuals generally tend to overweight recent experiences ( Malmendier and Nagel, 2016 ; Kuchler and Zafar, 2019 ). Whether students' subjective treatment effects are “correct” in some ex-post sense is beside the point. As long as students are reporting their subjective beliefs without any systematic bias, it is the perceived treatment effects, not actual ones, – regardless of whether they are correct or not – which are fundamental to understanding choices. For example, if students (rightly or wrongly) perceive a negative treatment effect of COVID-19 on the returns to a college degree, this belief will have an impact on their future human capital decisions (such as continuing with their education, choice of major, etc.).

Our results underscore the fact that the COVID-19 shock is likely to exacerbate socioeconomic disparities in higher education. This is consistent with findings regarding the impacts of COVID-19 on K-12 students. Kuhfeld et al. (2020) project that school closures are likely to lead to significant learning losses in math and reading. However, they estimate heterogeneous effects, and conclude that high-performing students are likely to make gains. Likewise, Chetty et al. (2020) find that, post-COVID, student progress on an online math program decreased significantly more in poorer ZIP codes. Our analysis reveals that the heterogeneous economic and health burden imposed by COVID-19 can partially explain these varying impacts. This suggests that by addressing the economic and health impacts imposed by COVID-19, policy makers may be able to prevent COVID-19 from widening existing gaps in higher education.

2.1. Survey

Our data come from an original survey of undergraduate students at Arizona State University (ASU), one of the largest public universities in the United States. Like other higher educational institutions in the US, the Spring 2020 semester started in person. However, in early March during spring break, the school announced that instruction would be transitioned online and that students were advised not to return to campus.

The study was advertised on the My ASU website, accessible only through the student's ASU ID and password. Undergraduate students were invited to participate in an online survey about their experiences and expectations in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, for which they would be paid $10. The study was posted during the second to last week of instruction for the spring semester (April 23rd). Our sample size was constrained by the research funds to 1500 students, and the survey was closed once the desired sample size was reached, which happened within 3 days of posting the survey.

The survey was programmed in Qualtrics. It collected data on students' demographics and family background, their current experiences (both for academic outcomes and non-academic outcomes), and their future expectations. Importantly for the purposes of this study, the survey collected data on what these outcomes/expectations would have been in the counterfactual state, without COVID-19. The survey instrument (with only the relevant sections) can be found here .

2.2. Sample

A total of 1564 respondents completed the survey. 5 90 respondents were ineligible for the study (such as students enrolled in graduate degree programs or diploma programs) and were dropped from the sample. Finally, responses in the 1st and 99th percentile of survey duration were further excluded, leading to a final sample size of 1446. The survey took 38 min to complete, on average (median completion time was 26 min).

The first five columns of Table 1 show how our sample compares with the broader ASU undergraduate population and the average undergraduate student at other large flagship universities (specifically, the largest public universities in each state). Relative to the ASU undergraduate population, our sample has a significantly higher proportion of first-generation students (that is, students with no parent with a college degree), and a smaller proportion of international students. The demographic composition of our sample compares reasonably well with that of students in flagship universities. Our sample is also positively selected in terms of SAT/ACT scores relative to these two populations. The sample may also differ from the student body at other large public schools in that 30% report living on campus, which is not always the norm at other large institutions and may play an important role in how disruptive the pandemic has been. 6

Summary statistics.

	Survey	ASU	P-value	Flagship	P-value	Survey	P-value	Top-10	P-value
	All	ASU	(1)–(2)	Univ.	(1)-(4)	Honors	(6)-(2)	Univ.	(6)-(8)

	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)	(7)	(8)	(9)
Female	0.50	0.48	0.04	0.50	0.77	0.51	0.31	0.50	0.90
Black	0.04	0.04	0.15	0.07	0.00	0.02	0.00	0.07	0.00
White	0.61	0.49	0.00	0.61	0.82	0.60	0.00	0.39	0.00
Hispanic	0.20	0.24	0.00	0.12	0.00	0.12	0.00	0.12	0.76
Int. students	0.02	0.09	0.00	0.06	0.00	0.01	0.00	0.12	0.00
First generation ,	0.38	0.28	0.00	–	–	0.20	0.00	–	–
Family income ,	97	111	0.00	–	–	117	0.07	–	–
Freshman	0.24	0.27	0.01	–	–	0.29	0.44	–	–
Sophomore	0.25	0.24	0.19	–	–	0.32	0.00	–	–
Junior	0.28	0.22	0.00	–	–	0.24	0.41	–	–
Senior	0.23	0.28	0.00	–	–	0.16	0.00	–	–
SAT verbal 25th %tile	600	532	0.00	557	0.00	680	0.00	716	0.00
SAT verbal 75th %tile	720	644	0.00	655	0.00	750	0.00	782	0.00
SAT math 25th %tile	600	542	0.00	563	0.00	690	0.00	731	0.00
SAT math 75th %tile	740	661	0.00	675	0.00	780	0.00	798	0.00
ACT 25th %tile	25	22	0.00	24	0.00	29	0.00	32	0.00
ACT 75th %tile	32	28	0.00	29	0.00	34	0.00	35	0.00

	1446	60,108		1,339,304		322		81,118

Notes: Data in columns (2), (3) and (8) is from IPEDS 2018. The flagship universities are the 4-year public universities with the highest number of undergraduate students in each state. Means for these columns are weighted by total number of undergraduates in each institution. ACT and SAT data are weighted averages of 2018–2015 years from IPEDS. P -value columns show the p -value of a difference in means test between the two columns indicated by the numbers in the heading.

The better performance on admission tests could be explained by the high proportion of Honors students in our sample (22% compared to 18% in the ASU population). The last four columns of Table 1 show how Honors students compare with ASU students and the average college student at a top-10 university. We see that they perform better than the average ASU student (which is expected) and just slightly worse than the average college student at a top-10 university. The share of white Honors students in our sample (60%) is higher than the proportion in the ASU population and much higher than the proportion of white students in the top-10 universities.

Overall, we believe our sample of ASU students is a reasonable representation of students at other large public schools, while the Honors students may provide insight into the experiences of students at more elite Institutions. Though, it is important to acknowledge that elite institutions may have additional resources to address a global pandemic.

3. Analytic framework

We next outline a simple analytic framework that guides the empirical analysis. Let O i ( COVID  – 19) be the potential outcome of individual i associated with COVID-19 treatment. We are interested in the causal impact of COVID-19 on student outcomes:

where the first term on the right-hand side is student i 's outcome in the state of the world with COVID-19, and the second term being student i 's outcome in the state of the world without COVID-19. Recovering the treatment effect at the individual level entails comparison of the individual's outcomes in two alternate states of the world. With standard data on realizations, a given individual is observed in only one state of the world (in our case, COVID –  19 = 1). The alternate outcomes are counterfactual and unobserved. A large econometric and statistics literature studies how to identify these counterfactual outcomes and moments of the counterfactual outcomes (such as average treatment effects) from realized choice data (e.g., Heckman and Vytlacil, 2005 ; Angrist and Pischke, 2009 ; Imbens and Rubin, 2015 ). Instead, the approach we use in this paper is to directly ask individuals for their expected outcomes in both states of the world. From the collected data, we can then directly calculate the individual-level subjective treatment effect. As an example, consider beliefs about end-of-semester GPA. The survey asked students “ What semester-level GPA do you expect to get at the end of this semester ?” This is the first-term on the right-hand side of Eq. (1) . The counterfactual is elicited as follows “ Were it not for the COVID-19 pandemic , what semester-level GPA would you have expected to get at the end of the semester ?”. The difference in the responses to these two questions gives us the subjective expected treatment effect of COVID-19 on the student's GPA. For certain binary outcomes in the survey, we directly ask students for the Δ i . For example, regarding graduation plans, we simply ask a student if the Δ i is positive, negative, or zero: “ How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected your graduation plan ? [ graduate later ; graduation plan unaffected ; graduate earlier ].”

The approach we use in this paper follows a small and growing literature that uses subjective expectations to understand decision-making under uncertainty. Specifically, Arcidiacono et al. (2020) and Wiswall and Zafar (2020) ask college students about their beliefs for several outcomes associated with counterfactual choices of college majors, and estimate the ex-ante treatment effects of college majors on career and family outcomes. Shapiro and Giustinelli (2019) use a similar approach to estimate the subjective ex-ante treatment effects of health on labor supply. There is one minor distinction from these papers: while these papers elicit ex-ante treatment effects, in our case, we look at outcomes that have been observed (for example, withdrawing from a course during the semester) as well as those that will be observed in the future (such as age 35 earnings). Thus, some of our subjective treatment effects are ex-post in nature while others are ex-ante.

The soundness of our approach depends on a key assumption that students have well-formed expectations for outcomes in both the realized state and the counterfactual state. Since the outcomes we ask about are absolutely relevant and germane to students, they should have well-formed expectations for the realized state. In addition, given that the counterfactual state is the one that had been the status quo in prior semesters (and so students have had prior experiences in that state of the world), their ability to have expectations for outcomes in the counterfactual state should not be a controversial assumption. 7 As evidence that students' expectations exhibit meaningful variation, Appendix Fig. A1 shows that previous cumulative GPA is a strong predictor of expected semester GPA with COVID-19.

4. Empirical analysis

4.1. treatment effects.

We start with the analysis of the aggregate-level treatment effects, which are presented in Table 2 . The outcomes are organized in two groups, academic and labor market (see Appendix Table A1 for a complete list of outcomes). The first two columns of the table show the average beliefs for those outcomes where the survey elicited beliefs in both states of the world. The average treatment effects shown in column (3) are of particular interest. Since we can compute the individual-level treatment effects, columns (4)–(7) of the table show the cross-sectional heterogeneity in the treatment effects.

Subjective treatment effects.

	With	Without		Prop.	Prop.	25th	75th
	COVID-19	COVID-19		>0	=0	%tile	%tile
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)	(7)

Likelihood of taking online classes	0.46	0.50	−0.04	0.31	0.22	−0.20	0.08
	(0.30)	(0.33)	(0.26)
Semester GPA	3.48	3.65	−0.17	0.07	0.41	−0.30	0.00
	(0.37)	(0.50)	(0.33)
Weekly study hours	15.12	16.03	−0.91	0.33	0.20	−5.00	4.00
	(10.21)	(11.55)	(8.15)
Delayed graduation (0/1)			0.13			0.00	0.00
			(0.34)
Withdraw from a class (0/1)			0.11			0.00	0.00
			(0.31)
Change major (0/1)			0.12			0.00	0.00
			(0.33)


Lost in-college job (0/1)			0.29			0.00	1.00
			(0.45)
In-college weekly hours worked	12.97	24.38	−11.64	0.40	0.21	−22.00	0.00
	(13.71)	(15.30)	(16.09)
In-college weekly earnings ,	147.73	237.02	−21.27	0.09	0.52	−1.00	0.00
	(366.62)	(342.91)	(170.05)
Fam. lost job or reduce income (0/1)			0.61			0.00	1.00
			(0.49)
Lost job offer or internship (0/1)			0.13			0.00	0.00
			(0.34)
Probability of finding a Job	55.97	69.36	−13.39	0.13	0.24	−20.00	0.00
	(25.07)	(28.04)	(20.27)
Reservation waged	48.53	50.53	−1.91	0.09	0.63	−0.08	0.00
	(21.95)	(21.93)	(28.02)
Expected earnings at 35 years old	88.18	91.49	−2.34	0.06	0.65	−0.07	0.00
	(33.92)	(33.90)	(28.64)

Notes: Δ : change. Prop. Δ >0: proportion of students for whom the individual level Δ is positive. Prop. Δ =0: proportion of students for whom the individual level Δ is zero. 25th and 75th percentiles of the cross-sectional distribution of Δ . Standard deviation in parentheses. ( ∗  :  p <0.1, ∗∗  :  p <0.05, ∗∗∗  :  p <0.01).

We see that the average treatment effects are statistically and economically significant for all outcomes. The average impacts on academic outcomes, shown in Panel A, are mostly negative. For example, the average subjective treatment effect of COVID-19 on semester-level GPA is a decline of 0.17 points. More than 50% of the students in our sample expect a decrease in their GPA due to the treatment (versus only 7% expecting an increase). Additionally, 13% of the participants delayed their graduation, 11% withdrew from a class during the spring semester, and 12% stated that their major choice was impacted by COVID-19. 8

While almost no students report planning to drop out due to COVID-19, on average they expect to take a break from ASU in the fall 2020 semester at nearly twice the historical rate. Admittedly, the decision to take a break during a pandemic may be different than in more normal times. However, a substantial increase in the share of students failing to continue their studies is concerning, as historically 28% of students who fail to re-enroll for a fall semester do not return to ASU or another university within 5 years.

Regarding the impact of the pandemic on major choice, students who report that COVID-19 impacted their major choice were more likely to be in lower-paying majors before the pandemic; mean pre-COVID major-specific annual earnings were $43,053 ($46,943) for students whose major choice was (not) impacted by COVID-19. 9 Impacted students were also 9.3 percentage points less likely to be in a science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) major before COVID-19. 10 We are only able to observe pre- and post-COVID major choices for the subset of students who had switched their major by the date of the survey. 11 Within this selected subsample of switchers, students chose to move into higher paying majors, with an average change in first-year earnings of $3,340. These patterns are generally consistent with the finding that students tend to gravitate towards higher-paying majors when exposed to adverse economic conditions when in college ( Blom et al., 2019 ).

An interesting and perhaps unanticipated result reported in Table 2 is that, on average, students are 4 percentage points less likely to opt for online instruction if given the choice between online and in-person instruction due to their experience with online instruction during the pandemic. 12 13 However, there is a substantial amount of variation in terms of the direction of the effect: 31% (47%) of the participants are now more (less) likely to enroll in online classes. We explore this heterogeneity in more detail in the next section, but it seems that prior experience with online classes somewhat ameliorates the negative experience; the average treatment effect for students with prior experience in online classes is a 2.4 percentage points decrease in their likelihood of enrolling in online classes, versus a 9.5 percentage points decline for their counterparts (difference statistically significant at the 0.1% level).

This large variation in the treatment effects of COVID-19 is apparent in several of the other outcomes, such as study hours, where the average treatment effect of COVID-19 on weekly study hours is −0.9 (that is, students spend 0.9 less hours studying per week due to COVID-19). The interquartile range of the across-subject treatment effect demonstrates substantial variation, with the pandemic decreasing study time by 5 hours at the 25th percentile and increasing study time by 4 hours at the 75th.

Overall, these results suggest that COVID-19 represents a substantial disruption to students' academic experiences, and is likely to have lasting impacts through changes in major/career and delayed graduation timelines. Students' negative experiences with online teaching, perhaps due to the abruptness of the transition, also has implications for the willingness of students to take online classes in the future.

Turning to Panel B in Table 2 , we see that students' current and expected labor market outcomes were substantially disrupted by COVID-19. As for the extensive margin of current employment, on average, 29% of the students lost the jobs they were working at prior to the pandemic (67% of the students were working prior to the pandemic), 13% of students had their internships or job offers rescinded, and 61% of the students reported that a close family member had lost their job or experienced an income reduction. The last statistic is in line with findings from other surveys of widespread economic disruption across the US. 14 Respondents experienced an average decrease of 11.5 hours of work per week and a 21% decrease in weekly earnings, although there was no change in weekly earnings for 52% of the sample, which again reflects substantial variation in the effects of COVID-19 across students.

In terms of labor market expectations, on average, students foresee a 13 percentage points decrease in the probability of finding a job by graduation, a reduction of 2% in their reservation wages, and a 2.3% decrease in their expected earnings at age 35.

The significant changes in reservation wages and expected earnings at age 35 demonstrate that students expect the treatment effects of COVID-19 to be long-lasting. Qualitatively, this is broadly consistent with the literature on graduating during recession. Oreopoulos et al. (2012) finds that graduating during a recession in which the unemployment rate increases 5% implies an initial loss in earnings of 9%, that decreases to 4.5% within 5 years and disappears after 10 years for a sample of male college graduates in Canada. Similarly, Schwandt and von Wachter (2019) find a 2.6% reduction in earnings 10 years after graduation for a 3-percentage point increase in unemployment at graduation, and Kahn (2010) finds an even longer-lasting effect on wages.

A large literature has investigated the impact of graduating during recessions on unemployment rates. Kahn (2010) finds that during the 1980's recession, the probability of being employed right after graduation for white males was largely unaffected by economic conditions. Altonji et al. (2016) only find what they term modest impacts. On the other hand, Rothstein (2020) finds that, for 22 to 23-year-olds graduating from college during the Great Recession, the probability of being employed decreases by 0.7 percentage point for every 1 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate. Using the estimates in Rothstein (2020) and the approximate 10 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate during April 2020, a back-of-the-envelope calculation indicates a 7 percentage point reduction in the probability of being employed for the graduating cohort in our sample. We find that students who are graduating in spring or summer 2020 expect a 35 percentage point decline in the likelihood of finding a job before graduation. While it is difficult to precisely map pre-graduation job finding rates to unemployment over the subsequent year, a 7 percentage point increase in unemployment appears low compared to the impact on students' expectations. It could be the case that the literature estimates are not appropriate for a situation as unexpected and different as a global pandemic, where the economic recession goes hand in hand with health concerns. Having said that, it could also be that students are overreacting to the COVID-19 shock. Data that tracks students' expectations and outcomes over time may be able to shed light on this.

4.2. Heterogeneous effects

We next explore demographic heterogeneity in the treatment effects of COVID-19. Fig. 1 plots the average treatment effects across several relevant demographic divisions including gender, race, parental education, and parental income. Honors college status and cohort are also included as interesting dimensions of heterogeneity in the COVID-19 context. The figure shows the impacts for six of the more economically meaningful outcomes from Table 2 (additional outcomes can be found in Appendix Fig. A2 ).

Treatment effects by demographic group.

(a) Delay Graduation due to COVID (0/1)

(b) Semester GPA ( Δ 0–4)

(d) Likelihood take online classes ( Δ 0–1)

(e) Probability job before graduate ( Δ 0–1)

(f) Expected earnings at age 35 (Pct. Δ )

Notes: bars denote 90% confidence interval.

At least four patterns of note emerge from Fig. 1 . First, compared to their classmates, students from disadvantaged backgrounds (lower-income students defined as those with below-median parental income, racial minorities, and first-generation students) experienced larger negative impacts for the academic outcomes, as shown in the first three panels of the figure. 15 The trends are most striking for lower-income students, who are 55% more likely to delay graduation due to COVID-19 than their more affluent classmates (0.16 increase in the proportion of those expecting to delay graduation versus 0.10), expect 30% larger negative effects on their semester GPA due to COVID-19, and are 41% more likely to report that COVID-19 impacted their major choice (these differences are statistically significant at the 5% level). For some academic outcomes, COVID-19 had similarly disproportionate effects on nonwhite and first-generation students, with nonwhite students being 70% more likely to report changing their major preference compared to their white peers and first-generation students being 50% more likely to delay their graduation than students with college-educated parents. Thus, while on average COVID-19 negatively impacted several measures of academic achievement for all subgroups, the effects are significantly more pronounced for socioeconomic groups which were predisposed towards worse academic outcomes pre-COVID. 16 The pandemic's widening of existing achievement gaps can be seen directly in students' expected Semester GPA. Without COVID-19, lower-income students expected a 0.052 lower semester GPA than their higher-income peers. With COVID-19, this gap nearly doubles to 0.098. 17

Second, Panel (d) of Fig. 1 shows that the switch to online learning was substantially harder for some demographic groups; for example, men are 7 percentage points less likely to opt for an online version of a course as a result of COVID-19, while women do not have a statistically significant change in their online preferences. We also see that Honors students revise their preferences by more than 2.5 times the amount of non-Honors students. As we show later (in Table 4 ), these gaps persist after controlling for household income, major, and cohort, suggesting that the switch to online learning mid-semester may have been substantially more disruptive for males and Honors students. While the effect of COVID-19 on preferences for online learning looks similar for males and Honors students, our survey evidence indicates that different mechanisms underpin these shifts. Based on qualitative evidence, it appears that Honors students had a negative reaction to the transition to online learning because they felt less challenged, while males were more likely to struggle with the learning methods available through the online platform. 18 One speculative explanation for the gender difference is that consumption value of college amenities is higher for men (however, Jacob et al. (2018) , find little gender difference in willingness to pay for the amenities they consider).

Composition of COVID effects.

	Delay grad due to COVID (0/100)					COVID impact major choice (0/100)					Prob take online classes ( pp)					Prob job before grad ( pp)
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)	(7)	(8)	(9)	(10)	(11)	(12)	(13)	(14)	(15)	(16)	(17)	(18)	(19)	(20)

Women	1.80	0.82	0.20	−0.12	−0.09	3.01	0.08	−0.53	−0.71	−0.69	5.61	3.45	3.65	3.73	3.70	−1.23	−0.64	−0.50	−0.31	−0.36
	(1.66)	(2.04)	(2.16)	(2.07)	(2.12)	(1.65)	(2.03)	(2.08)	(2.03)	(2.05)	(1.46)	(1.61)	(1.66)	(1.65)	(1.67)	(0.98)	(1.13)	(1.13)	(1.15)	(1.13)
Lower-income	4.34	3.26	3.84	2.68	3.15	3.08	1.16	1.74	0.73	1.33	1.96	1.47	1.40	1.76	1.41	−0.40	0.13	−0.52	0.38	−0.16
	(1.77)	(1.94)	(1.78)	(1.85)	(1.75)	(1.61)	(1.67)	(1.63)	(1.69)	(1.71)	(1.15)	(1.24)	(1.17)	(1.25)	(1.20)	(1.02)	(1.05)	(0.99)	(1.01)	(0.96)
Honors	− 9.00	− 7.41	− 7.75	− 6.59	− 6.93	− 6.36	− 4.55	− 4.52	− 3.88	− 4.09	− 4.52	−2.64	−2.62	−2.87	−2.75	0.53	− 2.18	− 2.11	− 2.49	− 2.56
	(1.76)	(1.93)	(2.00)	(1.96)	(1.98)	(1.72)	(1.78)	(1.72)	(1.73)	(1.75)	(1.44)	(1.73)	(1.75)	(1.78)	(1.79)	(1.09)	(1.02)	(1.04)	(1.06)	(1.06)


Student Lost Job (0/1)		3.59		4.07			−1.03		−0.58			− 2.78		− 2.64			0.86		0.72
		(2.66)		(2.66)			(2.27)		(2.31)			(1.57)		(1.57)			(1.60)		(1.61)
Family Lost Income (0/1)		2.31		1.77			1.53		1.01			−1.45		−1.30			− 4.35		− 4.14
		(2.27)		(2.25)			(1.66)		(1.59)			(1.47)		(1.42)			(1.38)		(1.37)
Student Change in Earnings ($)		0.00		0.00			0.00		0.00			− 0.01		− 0.01			0.00		0.00
		(0.01)		(0.01)			(0.01)		(0.01)			(0.00)		(0.00)			(0.00)		(0.00)
Prob. miss Debt (0–1)		17.12		13.74			15.89		12.76			−2.83		−2.37			−4.83		−3.71
		(4.36)		(4.40)			(3.93)		(4.02)			(2.79)		(2.67)			(3.07)		(3.00)
Principal Component					2.85					1.41					−0.26					− 1.49
					(0.82)					(0.83)					(0.60)					(0.48)


Subjective health (1–5, 5 high)			− 2.68	− 2.33				−2.20	−1.89				2.91	2.71				1.51	1.34
			(1.26)	(1.30)				(1.40)	(1.33)				(0.96)	(0.96)				(0.87)	(0.83)
Prob. hosp. if catch COVID (0–1)			12.89	11.56				10.98	9.74				0.11	0.10				− 3.99	− 3.45
			(4.42)	(4.24)				(4.00)	(4.00)				(2.98)	(3.03)				(1.99)	(1.98)
Prob. catch COVID (0–1)			8.24	6.43				9.52	7.65				2.73	3.29				−2.41	−1.55
			(4.02)	(3.95)				(3.78)	(3.76)				(2.88)	(2.86)				(2.36)	(2.35)
Principal component					4.32					3.90					− 1.37					− 1.66
					(0.89)					(0.91)					(0.69)					(0.51)




Economic proxies		0.000		0.002			0.002		0.031			0.116		0.166			0.001		0.003
Health Proxies			0.000	0.000				0.000	0.000				0.001	0.002				0.006	0.022




Major FE	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Cohort FE	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y



Mean	12.93	12.93	12.93	12.93	12.93	12.24	12.24	12.24	12.24	12.24	−4.18	−4.18	−4.18	−4.18	−4.18	−13.39	−13.39	−13.39	−13.39	−13.39
R	0.020	0.163	0.164	0.178	0.172	0.012	0.194	0.198	0.206	0.199	0.021	0.153	0.157	0.160	0.152	0.001	0.237	0.230	0.243	0.237
N	1446	1446	1446	1446	1446	1446	1446	1446	1446	1446	1446	1446	1446	1446	1446	1380	1380	1380	1380	1380

Notes: Standard errors in parentheses bootstrapped with 1000 replications. Each column reports results from a separate OLS regression of the dependent variable onto the covariates (row variables). Dependent variables measured in percentage points. ( ∗  :  p <0.1, ∗∗  :  p <0.05, ∗∗∗  :  p <0.01).

The third trend worth highlighting from Fig. 1 is that Honors students were better able to mitigate the negative effect of COVID-19 on their academic outcomes (panels a, b, and c), despite appearing to be more disrupted by the move to online learning (panel d). Honors students report being less than half as likely as non-Honors students to delay graduation and change their major due to COVID-19. Extrapolating from these patterns provides suggestive evidence that academic impacts for students attending elite schools– the group more comparable to these Honors students– are likely to have been small relative to the impacts for the average student at large public schools.

Finally, the last two panels of Fig. 1 present the COVID effect on two labor market expectations and show much less meaningful heterogeneity across demographic groups compared to the academic outcomes in previous panels. This suggests that, while students believe COVID-19 will impact both their academic outcomes and future labor market outcomes, they do not believe there is a strong connection between these domains. Supporting this observation, the individual-specific treatment effect on semester GPA is only weakly correlated with the individual-specific treatment effects on finding a job before graduation (corr = 0.0497, p  = 0.065) and expected earnings at 35 (corr = 0.0467, p  = 0.077).

The one notable exception to the lack of heterogeneity in panels (e) and (f) of Fig. 1 are seniors, who on average revised their subjective probability of finding a job before graduation three times as much as other cohorts. Appendix Fig. A3 further breaks down the estimated COVID-19 effects by expected year of graduation. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the 2020 cohort expects much larger effects on immediate job market outcomes such as reservation wages and probability of finding a job before graduation. While average expected changes to job market outcomes are noisier for academically younger students, perhaps reflecting additional uncertainty about the longer-term impacts of COVID-19, they appear to anticipate meaningful changes to their future labor market prospects. Conversely, younger students also expected larger disruptions to academic outcomes such as semester GPA and study time.

5. Understanding the heterogeneous effects

This section presents mediation analysis on the drivers of the underlying heterogeneity in the treatment effects. The COVID-19 pandemic serves as both an economic and a health shock. However, these shocks may have been quite heterogeneous across the various groups, and that could partly explain the heterogeneous treatment effects we documented in the previous section.

5.1. Economic and health mediating factors

We proxy for the financial and health shocks due to COVID-19 by relying on a small but relevant set of covariates which capture more fundamental or first-order disruptions from the pandemic. Financial shocks are characterized based on whether a student lost a job due to COVID-19, whether a student's family members lost income due to COVID-19, the change in a student's monthly earnings due to COVID-19, and the likelihood a student will fail to fully meet debt payments in the next 90 days. To measure health shocks, we consider a student's belief about the likelihood that they will be hospitalized if they contract COVID-19, a student's belief about the likelihood that they will have contracted COVID-19 by summer, and a student's subjective health assessment. Finally, in order to summarize the combined effect of each set of proxies, we construct principal component scores as one-dimensional measures of the financial and health shock to students. 19

Table 3 reports summary statistics of the different economic and health proxies by demographic group. Given the results in Fig. 1 , the remainder of the analysis will focus on three socioeconomic divisions: parental income, gender, and Honors college status. Our data indicate that lower-income students faced larger health and economic shocks as compared to their more affluent peers. In particular, they are almost 10 percentage points more likely to expect to default on their debt payments compared to their higher-income counterparts. Additionally, lower-income students are 16 percentage points more likely to have had a close family member experience an income reduction due to COVID-19. Regarding the health proxies, lower-income students rate their health as worse than higher-income students and perceive a higher probability of being hospitalized if they catch the virus. Finally, the differences in economic and health shocks between lower and higher-income students, as summarized by the principle components of the selected proxy variables, are statistically significant.

Summary statistics for economic and health proxies.

	All	Lower	Higher	P-value	Honors	Not	P-value	Female	Male	P-value
	All	Income	Income	(2)–(3)	Honors	Honors	(5)–(6)	Female	Male	(8)–(9)
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)	(7)	(8)	(9)	(10)

Likelihood default in next 90 days (0–1)	0.16	0.21	0.12	0.00	0.08	0.18	0.00	0.19	0.13	0.00
	(0.26)	(0.29)	(0.23)		(0.19)	(0.28)		(0.29)	(0.24)
Student lost job (0/1)	0.29	0.30	0.28	0.53	0.22	0.31	0.00	0.32	0.26	0.01
	(0.45)	(0.46)	(0.45)		(0.41)	(0.46)		(0.47)	(0.44)
Family lost job or earnings (0/1)	0.61	0.70	0.54	0.00	0.54	0.64	0.00	0.67	0.56	0.00
	(0.49)	(0.46)	(0.50)		(0.50)	(0.48)		(0.47)	(0.50)
Student change in earnings	−89.30	−95.40	−84.16	0.36	−49.42	−100.72	0.00	−107.27	−71.02	0.00
	(230.50)	(230.21)	(230.77)		(181.77)	(241.52)		(237.35)	(221.99)

	0.00	0.19	−0.16	0.00	−0.37	0.10	0.00	0.17	−0.18	0.00
	(1.28)	(1.27)	(1.26)		(1.07)	(1.31)		(1.30)	(1.23)


Subjective health	3.98	3.88	4.05	0.00	4.06	3.95	0.04	3.90	4.06	0.00
	(0.82)	(0.84)	(0.80)		(0.81)	(0.82)		(0.83)	(0.80)
Likelihood hospitalized if catch COVID (0–1)	0.33	0.38	0.30	0.00	0.29	0.35	0.00	0.37	0.29	0.00
	(0.28)	(0.29)	(0.27)		(0.26)	(0.29)		(0.29)	(0.27)
Likelihood catch COVID-19 by summer (0–1)	0.30	0.30	0.30	0.75	0.29	0.31	0.17	0.32	0.29	0.01
	(0.24)	(0.24)	(0.23)		(0.23)	(0.24)		(0.24)	(0.23)

	0.00	0.18	−0.15	0.00	−0.20	0.06	0.00	0.18	−0.19	0.00
	(1.15)	(1.19)	(1.09)		(1.10)	(1.16)		(1.18)	(1.09)

Notes: P-value columns report the p-value of a difference in means test between the two columns indicated by the numbers in the heading.

Columns (5)–(7) of Table 3 show that both economic and health shocks are larger for non-Honors students. In fact, the average differences in the principal component scores for both the economic and health factors is larger for these two groups than for the income groups. Likewise, the last three columns of the table show that women experienced larger COVID-19 shocks due to economic and health factors. These differences are partly driven by the fact that, in our sample, females are more likely to report that they belong to a lower-income household than males (50% vs. 42%).

In short, Table 3 makes clear that the impacts of COVID-19 on the economic well-being and health of students have been quite heterogeneous, with lower-income and lower-ability students being more adversely affected.

5.2. The role of economic and health shocks on explaining the COVID-19 effects

To investigate the role of economic and health shocks in explaining the heterogeneous treatment effects (in Section 4.2 ), we estimate the following specification:

where Δ i is the COVID-19 treatment effect for outcome O on student i . Demog i is a vector including indicators for gender, lower-income, Honors status, and dummies for cohort year and major. FinShock i and HealthShock i are vectors containing the shock proxies or their principal component. Finally, ε i denotes an idiosyncratic shock.

The parameters of interest are α 2 and α 3 . A causal interpretation of these parameters requires FinShock i and HealthShock i to be independent of ε i . This seems unlikely in our context as unobservables correlated with FinShock i and HealthShock i may also modulate COVID-19's impact on academic outcomes. Therefore, we prefer to interpret α 2 and α 3 as simple correlations. Nevertheless, we believe this descriptive evidence can be informative from a policy perspective.

Table 4 shows estimates of Eq. (2) for four different outcomes ( Appendix Table A2 shows the estimates for additional outcomes). For each outcome, five specifications are reported ranging from controlling for only demographic variables in the first specification to controlling for both economic and health factors in the fourth specification. Finally, the last column includes only the principal component of each shock to provide insight about overall effects, given that certain shock proxies show high levels of correlation (see Appendix Table A4 for the correlations within each set of proxies).

Several important messages emerge from Table 4 . First, both shocks are (economically and statistically) significant correlates of the COVID-19 effects on students' outcomes. In particular, F-tests show that the financial and health shock proxies are jointly significant across almost all specifications. 20 This is also reflected in the statistical significance of the principal components. Moreover, the fact that the effect of key proxy variables remains robust when we simultaneously control for both shocks demonstrates the robustness of our results. For example, we find that a 50 percentage point increase in the probability of being late on debt payments is associated with an increase in the probability of delaying graduation and switching majors due to COVID-19 of 6.9 and 6.4 percentage points respectively. These effects are large given that they represent more than half of the overall COVID-19 treatment effect for these variables. Similarly, we find that an analogous increase in the probability of hospitalization if contracting COVID-19 is associated with a 6 and 5 percentage points increase in the probability of delaying graduation and switching majors due to COVID-19.

Second, in terms of labor market expectations, we find that the change in the expected probability of finding a job before graduation strongly depends on having a family member that lost income (which is also correlated with the student himself losing a job). In particular, the size of this effect represents 32% of the overall COVID-19 treatment effect. Therefore, this finding suggests that students' labor market expectations are driven in large part by personal/family experiences.

Third, although the proxies play an important role in explaining the pandemic's impact on students, there is still a substantial amount of variation in COVID-19 treatment effects left unexplained. Across the four outcomes in Table 4 , the full set of proxies explain less than a quarter of the variation in outcomes across individuals. Appendix Fig. A4 visualizes this variation by plotting the distribution of several continuous outcomes with and without controls. While the interquartile range noticeably shrinks after conditioning on the proxy variables, these plots highlight the large amount of variation in treatment effects remaining after conditioning on the proxies.

Finally, our results show that the financial and health shocks play an important role in explaining the heterogeneous effects of the COVID-19 outbreak. In particular, columns (4) and (9) demonstrate that economic and health factors together can explain approximately 40% and 70% of the income gap in COVID-19's effect on delayed graduation and changing major respectively. The gap between Honors and non-Honors students is likewise reduced by 27% and 39% for the same outcomes. Taken together, these results imply that differences in the magnitude of COVID-19's economic and health impact can explain a significant proportion of the demographic gaps in COVID-19's effect on the decision to delay graduation, the decision to change major, and preferences for online learning. These results are important and suggest that focusing on the needs of students who experienced larger financial or health shocks from COVID-19 may be an effective way to minimize the disparate disruptive effects and prevent COVID-19 from exacerbating existing achievement gaps in higher education.

6. Conclusions

This paper provides the first systematic analysis of the effects of COVID-19 on higher education. To study these effects, we surveyed 1500 students at Arizona State University, and present quantitative evidence showing the negative effects of the pandemic on students' outcomes and expectations. For example, we find that 13% of students have delayed graduation due to COVID-19. Expanding upon these results, we show that the effects of the pandemic are highly heterogeneous, with lower-income students 55% more likely to delay graduation compared to their higher-income counterparts. We further show that the negative economic and health impacts of COVID-19 have been significantly more pronounced for less advantaged groups, and that these differences can partially explain the underlying heterogeneity that we document. Our results suggest that by focusing on addressing the economic and health burden imposed by COVID-19, as measured by a relatively narrow set of mitigating factors, policy makers may be able to prevent COVID-19 from widening existing achievement gaps in higher education.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no relevant or material financial interests that relate to the research described in this paper. There are no declarations of interest.

☆ Noah Deitrick and Adam Streff provided excellent research assistance. All errors that remain are ours.

1 See, the New York Times article “ After Coronavirus , Colleges Worry : Will Students Come Back ?” (April 15, 2020) for a discussion surrounding students' demands for tuition cuts.

2 In some cases, instead of asking students for the outcomes in both states of the world, we directly ask for the difference. For example, the survey asked how the pandemic had affected the student's graduation date.

3 This approach has been used successfully in several other settings, such as to construct career and family returns to college majors ( Arcidiacono et al., 2020 ; Wiswall and Zafar, 2020 ), and the causal impact of health on retirement ( Shapiro and Giustinelli, 2019 ).

4 The income gap in GPA increased from 0.052 to 0.098 on a 4 point scale. It is significant at the 1% level in both scenarios.

5 The 64 people taking the survey at the moment the target sample size (1500) was reached were allowed to finish.

6 59% of Honors students in our sample report living on campus.

7 This is different from asking students in normal times about their expected outcomes in a state with online teaching and no campus activities (COVID-19) since most students would not have had any experience with this counterfactual prior to March this year.

8 Altonji et al. (2016) finds a small but positive effect on the probability of attending graduate school when graduating into a recession. This is suggestive evidence that students try to avoid entering the labor market when economic conditions are adverse. Our results on delayed graduation are consistent with students avoiding entering the labor market at inopportune times.

9 For this calculation, we take earnings data from the US Department of Education College Scorecard dataset. Major-specific earnings are calculated using median first-year earnings for ASU graduates in 2015 and 2016 by two-digit CIP code. Observable earnings averaged within major category.

10 STEM major designation made using two-digit CIP code and The STEM Designated Degree Program from the US Department of Homeland Security.

11 This includes 77 respondents, or 43% of those who say COVID-19 impacted their major choice.

12 The relevant survey question read: “ Suppose you are given the choice to take a course online/remote or in-person . [ Had you NOT had experience with online/remote classes this semester ], what is the percent chance that you would opt for the online/remote option ?”

13 This result is in line with a survey about eLearning experiences across different universities in Washington and New York that concludes that 75% of the students are unhappy with the quality of their classes after moving to online learning due to COVID-19.

14 According to the US Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey Week 3, 48% of the surveyed households have experienced a loss in employment income since March 13 2020.

15 The cutoff for median parental income in our sample is $80,000.

16 Based on analysis of ASU administrative data including transcripts, we find that, relative to their counterparts, first-generation, lower-income, and non-white students drop out at higher rates, take longer to graduate, have lower GPAs at graduation, and are more likely to switch majors when in college (see Appendix Table A3 ).

17 The difference is significant at 1% in both cases.

18 Honors students were as likely as non-Honors students to say that classes got easier after they went online but, conditional on saying classes got easier, were 47% more likely to say “homework/test questions got easier.” Conversely, males were marginally more likely to say classes got harder after they went online (10% more likely, p  = 0.055) and, conditional on this, were 14% more likely to say that “online material is not clear”.

19 Eigenvalues indicate the presence of only one principal component for each of the shocks.

20 The only exception is the financial shock when explaining changes in the probability of taking classes online.

Expected and previous academic performance.

Notes: Figure plots mean expected GPA with COVID-19 against students' cumulative GPA up to the spring 2020 semester. The 45 degree line is also plotted for reference.

More treatment effects by demographic group.

(a) Withdrew from Class due to COVID (0/1); (b) Social Events per Week ( Δ 0–14); (c) Move in With Family due to COVID (0/1); (d) Weekly Study Hours ( Δ 0–40); (e) Reservation Wage (Pct. Δ )

Notes: Bars denote 90% confidence interval.

Cohort trends.

Notes: Figure plots average COVID-19 effects for a series of outcomes. The x-axis variable in each panel is expected academic year of graduation (after COVID), with summer graduation dates included in the previous academic year. Bars denote 90% confidence interval.

Distribution of individual effects.

Notes: Data winsorized below 5% and above 95%. Controls include cohort fixed effects, major fixed effects, and the economic/health proxies in Table 3 . Conditional distribution adjusted to preserve unconditional mean. Within each plot: middle line represents median, edges of box represent interquatile range (IQR), edge of whisker represents the adjacent values or the 25th(75th) percentile plus(minus) 1.5 times the IQR. Outlier observations past adjacent values plotted as individual points.

	With	Without		Prop.	Prop.	25th	75th
	COVID-19	COVID-19		>0	=0	%tile	%tile
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)	(7)

Likelihood of taking online classes	0.46 (0.33)	0.50 (0.30)	−0.04 (0.26)	0.31	0.22	−0.20	0.08
Semester GPA	3.48 (0.50)	3.65 (0.37)	−0.17 (0.33)	0.07	0.41	−0.30	0.00
Weekly study hours	15.12 (11.55)	16.03 (10.21)	−0.91 (8.15)	0.33	0.20	−5.00	4.00
Delayed graduation (0/1)			0.13 (0.34)			0.00	0.00
Withdraw from a class (0/1)			0.11 (0.31)			0.00	0.00
Change major (0/1)			0.12 (0.33)			0.00	0.00
Time in classes			−0.10 (0.87)	0.33	0.24	−1.00	1.00
Time studying by myself			0.28 (0.83)	0.52	0.23	0.00	1.00
Time studying with peers			−0.75 (0.51)	0.04	0.18	−1.00	−1.00


Lost in-college job (0/1)			0.29 (0.45)			0.00	1.00
In-college weekly hours worked	12.97 (15.30)	24.38 (13.71)	−11.64 (16.09)	0.40	0.21	−22.00	0.00
In-college weekly earnings ,	147.73 (342.91)	237.02 (366.62)	−21.27 (170.05)	0.09	0.52	−1.00	0.00
Fam. lost job or reduce income (0/1)			0.61 (0.49)			0.00	1.00
Lost job offer or internship (0/1)			0.13 (0.34)			0.00	0.00
Probability of finding a Job	55.97 (28.04)	69.36 (25.07)	−13.39 (20.27)	0.13	0.24	−20.00	0.00
Reservation waged	48.53 (21.93)	50.53 (21.95)	−1.91 (28.02)	0.09	0.63	−0.08	0.00
Expected earnings at 35 years old	88.18 (33.90)	91.49 (33.92)	−2.34 (28.64)	0.06	0.65	−0.07	0.00
Time working for pay			−0.46 (0.66)	0.09	0.35	−1.00	0.00
Making a lot of money			0.26 (0.61)	0.35	0.56	0.00	1.00
Being a leader in your line of work			0.16 (0.55)	0.24	0.68	0.00	0.00
Enjoying your line of work			0.20 (0.63)	0.32	0.56	0.00	1.00
Family-life Balance			0.34 (0.63)	0.42	0.49	0.00	1.00
Job security			0.55 (0.67)	0.66	0.24	0.00	1.00
Have opt. to be helpful to others			0.38 (0.63)	0.46	0.45	0.00	1.00
Have opt. to work with people			0.08 (0.68)	0.28	0.53	0.00	1.00


Number of weekly social events	0.26 (1.28)	4.44 (3.82)	−4.17 (3.66)	0.01	0.08	−5.00	−2.00
Time on social media			0.62 (0.61)	0.69	0.24	0.00	1.00
Time news and online browsing			0.71 (0.53)	0.75	0.21	1.00	1.00
Time online entertainment			0.74 (0.54)	0.78	0.17	1.00	1.00
Time in sports and exercise			−0.46 (0.75)	0.15	0.23	−1.00	0.00
Time commuting			−0.89 (0.36)	0.02	0.07	−1.00	−1.00
Time sleeping			0.17 (0.83)	0.44	0.28	−1.00	1.00

Composition of COVID effects: more outcomes.

	Expect earn at age 35 ( pp)					Res wage ( pp)					Sem GPA ( 0–4)					Withdrew class b/c COVID (0/100)
	(1)	(2)	(3)	(4)	(5)	(6)	(7)	(8)	(9)	(10)	(11)	(12)	(13)	(14)	(15)	(16)	(17)	(18)	(19)	(20)

Women	0.60	−0.08	−0.04	0.07	0.17	1.90	2.18	2.18	2.22	2.33	0.04	0.03	0.03	0.03	0.03	−0.02	−0.00	−0.01	−0.01	−0.01
	(1.35)	(1.48)	(1.62)	(1.58)	(1.66)	(1.47)	(2.47)	(2.59)	(2.61)	(2.60)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)
Lower-Income	0.56	1.27	1.18	1.30	1.46	−0.13	−0.02	−0.24	−0.11	−0.03	− 0.04	−0.03	− 0.05	−0.03	− 0.04	0.03	0.02	0.03	0.02	0.02
	(1.62)	(1.62)	(2.11)	(1.65)	(2.11)	(1.35)	(1.58)	(1.62)	(1.77)	(1.55)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)
Honors	4.92	5.53	5.60	5.47	5.22	−1.17	−0.95	−0.90	−0.93	−1.13	0.04	0.04	0.04	0.03	0.04	− 0.06	− 0.06	− 0.07	− 0.06	− 0.06
	(3.04)	(3.37)	(3.24)	(3.29)	(3.15)	(1.66)	(1.84)	(1.76)	(1.84)	(1.81)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)	(0.02)


Student lost job (0/1)		−2.38		−2.39			1.13		1.08			−0.02		−0.02			−0.01		−0.00
		(1.86)		(1.86)			(2.10)		(2.11)			(0.03)		(0.03)			(0.02)		(0.02)
Family lost income (0/1)		− 2.67		−2.31			−1.03		−0.73			− 0.06		− 0.05			0.02		0.01
		(1.43)		(1.48)			(1.91)		(1.93)			(0.02)		(0.02)			(0.02)		(0.02)
Student change in earnings ($)		−0.00		−0.00			0.00		0.00			− 0.00		−0.00			−0.00		−0.00
		(0.00)		(0.00)			(0.00)		(0.00)			(0.00)		(0.00)			(0.00)		(0.00)
Prob. miss debt (0–1)		2.21		3.35			−1.16		−0.29			− 0.13		− 0.11			∗∗0.10		∗0.08
		(5.47)		(6.26)			(3.07)		(2.98)			(0.04)		(0.04)			(0.04)		(0.05)
Principal component					−0.69					−0.28					− 0.02					0.02
					(0.49)					(0.57)					(0.01)					(0.01)


Subjective health (1–5, 5 high)			2.30	2.31				1.24	1.25				0.04	0.04				− 0.02	− 0.02
			(1.26)	(1.29)				(0.68)	(0.71)				(0.01)	(0.01)				(0.01)	(0.01)
Prob. hosp. if catch COVID (0–1)			2.27	2.00				1.93	2.09				−0.02	−0.01				0.04	0.03
			(3.63)	(3.85)				(4.23)	(4.17)				(0.04)	(0.04)				(0.04)	(0.05)
Prob. catch COVID (0–1)			−4.49	−4.77				−5.64	−5.53				−0.05	−0.03				0.06	0.05
			(2.84)	(3.51)				(3.55)	(3.79)				(0.04)	(0.04)				(0.04)	(0.04)
Principal component					−1.13					−0.72					− 0.03					0.02
					(0.86)					(0.71)					(0.01)					(0.01)




Economic proxies		0.267		0.304			0.702		0.767			0.000		0.000			0.045		0.101
Health proxies			0.244	0.290				0.104	0.172				0.000	0.003				0.010	0.039




Major FE	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y
Cohort FE	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y	Y



Mean	−2.34	−2.34	−2.34	−2.34	−2.34	−1.91	−1.91	−1.91	−1.91	−1.91	−0.17	−0.17	−0.17	−0.17	−0.17	0.11	0.11	0.11	0.11	0.11
R	0.005	0.046	0.048	0.051	0.045	0.001	0.087	0.089	0.090	0.087	0.012	0.169	0.164	0.177	0.164	0.010	0.142	0.141	0.148	0.146
N	1435	1435	1435	1435	1435	1430	1430	1430	1430	1430	1446	1446	1446	1446	1446	1446	1446	1446	1446	1446

Notes: Standard errors in parentheses bootstrapped with 1000 replications. Each column reports results from a separate OLS regression of the dependent variable onto the covariates (row variables). Dependent variables measured in percentage points (except GPA). ( ∗  :  p <0.1, ∗∗  :  p <0.05, ∗∗∗  :  p <0.01).

Existing achievement gaps.

	Years to graduate	Cum GPA at grad	Graduate	Dropout	Ever switch major
Women	3.37	3.39	0.62	0.22	0.54
Men	3.54	3.25	0.54	0.28	0.51
	−0.16	0.15	0.08	−0.06	0.02

First generation	3.49	3.26	0.49	0.33	0.52
Not first generation	3.40	3.36	0.55	0.23	0.49
	0.10	−0.10	−0.06	0.10	0.03

Low income	3.54	3.28	0.50	0.32	0.52
High income	3.30	3.37	0.57	0.20	0.48
	0.24	−0.09	−0.07	0.12	0.04

Nonwhite	3.51	3.25	0.55	0.29	0.54
White	3.40	3.38	0.61	0.21	0.52
	0.11	−0.13	−0.06	0.08	0.02

Honors	3.34	3.67	0.83	0.09	0.43
Non-honors	3.47	3.25	0.55	0.27	0.54
	−0.14	0.42	0.29	−0.18	−0.11

Notes: Sample includes all first time freshman at ASU's main campus who started within the last 10 years. N  = 58,426. ( ∗  :  p <0.1, ∗∗  :  p <0.05, ∗∗∗  :  p <0.01).

Correlation of shock proxies.


	Student lost	Family lost	Student	Likelihood
	Job	Income	Change in earnings	Default in next 90 days

Student lost job (0/1)	1.000
Family lost income (0/1)	0.174	1.000
Student change in earnings ($)	−0.572	−0.153	1.000
Likelihood default in next 90 days (0–1)	0.225	0.176	−0.203	1.000


	Subjective	Likelihood	Likelihood
	Health	Hospitalized if catch COVID	Catch COVID by summer

Subjective health (1–5, 5 High)	1.000
Likelihood hospitalized if catch COVID (0–1)	−0.293	1.000
Likelihood catch COVID by summer (0–1)	−0.053	0.093	1.000

Notes: Table reports correlation matrix for indicated variables.

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8 Lessons We Can Learn From the COVID-19 Pandemic

BY KATHY KATELLA May 14, 2021

Rear view of a family standing on a hill in autumn day, symbolizing hope for the end of the COVID-19 pandemic

Note: Information in this article was accurate at the time of original publication. Because information about COVID-19 changes rapidly, we encourage you to visit the websites of the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), World Health Organization (WHO), and your state and local government for the latest information.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed life as we know it—and it may have changed us individually as well, from our morning routines to our life goals and priorities. Many say the world has changed forever. But this coming year, if the vaccines drive down infections and variants are kept at bay, life could return to some form of normal. At that point, what will we glean from the past year? Are there silver linings or lessons learned?

“Humanity's memory is short, and what is not ever-present fades quickly,” says Manisha Juthani, MD , a Yale Medicine infectious diseases specialist. The bubonic plague, for example, ravaged Europe in the Middle Ages—resurfacing again and again—but once it was under control, people started to forget about it, she says. “So, I would say one major lesson from a public health or infectious disease perspective is that it’s important to remember and recognize our history. This is a period we must remember.”

We asked our Yale Medicine experts to weigh in on what they think are lessons worth remembering, including those that might help us survive a future virus or nurture a resilience that could help with life in general.

Lesson 1: Masks are useful tools

What happened: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) relaxed its masking guidance for those who have been fully vaccinated. But when the pandemic began, it necessitated a global effort to ensure that everyone practiced behaviors to keep themselves healthy and safe—and keep others healthy as well. This included the widespread wearing of masks indoors and outside.

What we’ve learned: Not everyone practiced preventive measures such as mask wearing, maintaining a 6-foot distance, and washing hands frequently. But, Dr. Juthani says, “I do think many people have learned a whole lot about respiratory pathogens and viruses, and how they spread from one person to another, and that sort of old-school common sense—you know, if you don’t feel well—whether it’s COVID-19 or not—you don’t go to the party. You stay home.”

Masks are a case in point. They are a key COVID-19 prevention strategy because they provide a barrier that can keep respiratory droplets from spreading. Mask-wearing became more common across East Asia after the 2003 SARS outbreak in that part of the world. “There are many East Asian cultures where the practice is still that if you have a cold or a runny nose, you put on a mask,” Dr. Juthani says.

She hopes attitudes in the U.S. will shift in that direction after COVID-19. “I have heard from a number of people who are amazed that we've had no flu this year—and they know masks are one of the reasons,” she says. “They’ve told me, ‘When the winter comes around, if I'm going out to the grocery store, I may just put on a mask.’”

Lesson 2: Telehealth might become the new normal

What happened: Doctors and patients who have used telehealth (technology that allows them to conduct medical care remotely), found it can work well for certain appointments, ranging from cardiology check-ups to therapy for a mental health condition. Many patients who needed a medical test have also discovered it may be possible to substitute a home version.

What we’ve learned: While there are still problems for which you need to see a doctor in person, the pandemic introduced a new urgency to what had been a gradual switchover to platforms like Zoom for remote patient visits.

More doctors also encouraged patients to track their blood pressure at home , and to use at-home equipment for such purposes as diagnosing sleep apnea and even testing for colon cancer . Doctors also can fine-tune cochlear implants remotely .

“It happened very quickly,” says Sharon Stoll, DO, a neurologist. One group that has benefitted is patients who live far away, sometimes in other parts of the country—or even the world, she says. “I always like to see my patients at least twice a year. Now, we can see each other in person once a year, and if issues come up, we can schedule a telehealth visit in-between,” Dr. Stoll says. “This way I may hear about an issue before it becomes a problem, because my patients have easier access to me, and I have easier access to them.”

Meanwhile, insurers are becoming more likely to cover telehealth, Dr. Stoll adds. “That is a silver lining that will hopefully continue.”

Lesson 3: Vaccines are powerful tools

What happened: Given the recent positive results from vaccine trials, once again vaccines are proving to be powerful for preventing disease.

What we’ve learned: Vaccines really are worth getting, says Dr. Stoll, who had COVID-19 and experienced lingering symptoms, including chronic headaches . “I have lots of conversations—and sometimes arguments—with people about vaccines,” she says. Some don’t like the idea of side effects. “I had vaccine side effects and I’ve had COVID-19 side effects, and I say nothing compares to the actual illness. Unfortunately, I speak from experience.”

Dr. Juthani hopes the COVID-19 vaccine spotlight will motivate people to keep up with all of their vaccines, including childhood and adult vaccines for such diseases as measles , chicken pox, shingles , and other viruses. She says people have told her they got the flu vaccine this year after skipping it in previous years. (The CDC has reported distributing an exceptionally high number of doses this past season.)

But, she cautions that a vaccine is not a magic bullet—and points out that scientists can’t always produce one that works. “As advanced as science is, there have been multiple failed efforts to develop a vaccine against the HIV virus,” she says. “This time, we were lucky that we were able build on the strengths that we've learned from many other vaccine development strategies to develop multiple vaccines for COVID-19 .”

Lesson 4: Everyone is not treated equally, especially in a pandemic

What happened: COVID-19 magnified disparities that have long been an issue for a variety of people.

What we’ve learned: Racial and ethnic minority groups especially have had disproportionately higher rates of hospitalization for COVID-19 than non-Hispanic white people in every age group, and many other groups faced higher levels of risk or stress. These groups ranged from working mothers who also have primary responsibility for children, to people who have essential jobs, to those who live in rural areas where there is less access to health care.

“One thing that has been recognized is that when people were told to work from home, you needed to have a job that you could do in your house on a computer,” says Dr. Juthani. “Many people who were well off were able do that, but they still needed to have food, which requires grocery store workers and truck drivers. Nursing home residents still needed certified nursing assistants coming to work every day to care for them and to bathe them.”

As far as racial inequities, Dr. Juthani cites President Biden’s appointment of Yale Medicine’s Marcella Nunez-Smith, MD, MHS , as inaugural chair of a federal COVID-19 Health Equity Task Force. “Hopefully the new focus is a first step,” Dr. Juthani says.

Lesson 5: We need to take mental health seriously

What happened: There was a rise in reported mental health problems that have been described as “a second pandemic,” highlighting mental health as an issue that needs to be addressed.

What we’ve learned: Arman Fesharaki-Zadeh, MD, PhD , a behavioral neurologist and neuropsychiatrist, believes the number of mental health disorders that were on the rise before the pandemic is surging as people grapple with such matters as juggling work and childcare, job loss, isolation, and losing a loved one to COVID-19.

The CDC reports that the percentage of adults who reported symptoms of anxiety of depression in the past 7 days increased from 36.4 to 41.5 % from August 2020 to February 2021. Other reports show that having COVID-19 may contribute, too, with its lingering or long COVID symptoms, which can include “foggy mind,” anxiety , depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder .

“We’re seeing these problems in our clinical setting very, very often,” Dr. Fesharaki-Zadeh says. “By virtue of necessity, we can no longer ignore this. We're seeing these folks, and we have to take them seriously.”

Lesson 6: We have the capacity for resilience

What happened: While everyone’s situation is different (and some people have experienced tremendous difficulties), many have seen that it’s possible to be resilient in a crisis.

What we’ve learned: People have practiced self-care in a multitude of ways during the pandemic as they were forced to adjust to new work schedules, change their gym routines, and cut back on socializing. Many started seeking out new strategies to counter the stress.

“I absolutely believe in the concept of resilience, because we have this effective reservoir inherent in all of us—be it the product of evolution, or our ancestors going through catastrophes, including wars, famines, and plagues,” Dr. Fesharaki-Zadeh says. “I think inherently, we have the means to deal with crisis. The fact that you and I are speaking right now is the result of our ancestors surviving hardship. I think resilience is part of our psyche. It's part of our DNA, essentially.”

Dr. Fesharaki-Zadeh believes that even small changes are highly effective tools for creating resilience. The changes he suggests may sound like the same old advice: exercise more, eat healthy food, cut back on alcohol, start a meditation practice, keep up with friends and family. “But this is evidence-based advice—there has been research behind every one of these measures,” he says.

But we have to also be practical, he notes. “If you feel overwhelmed by doing too many things, you can set a modest goal with one new habit—it could be getting organized around your sleep. Once you’ve succeeded, move on to another one. Then you’re building momentum.”

Lesson 7: Community is essential—and technology is too

What happened: People who were part of a community during the pandemic realized the importance of human connection, and those who didn’t have that kind of support realized they need it.

What we’ve learned: Many of us have become aware of how much we need other people—many have managed to maintain their social connections, even if they had to use technology to keep in touch, Dr. Juthani says. “There's no doubt that it's not enough, but even that type of community has helped people.”

Even people who aren’t necessarily friends or family are important. Dr. Juthani recalled how she encouraged her mail carrier to sign up for the vaccine, soon learning that the woman’s mother and husband hadn’t gotten it either. “They are all vaccinated now,” Dr. Juthani says. “So, even by word of mouth, community is a way to make things happen.”

It’s important to note that some people are naturally introverted and may have enjoyed having more solitude when they were forced to stay at home—and they should feel comfortable with that, Dr. Fesharaki-Zadeh says. “I think one has to keep temperamental tendencies like this in mind.”

But loneliness has been found to suppress the immune system and be a precursor to some diseases, he adds. “Even for introverted folks, the smallest circle is preferable to no circle at all,” he says.

Lesson 8: Sometimes you need a dose of humility

What happened: Scientists and nonscientists alike learned that a virus can be more powerful than they are. This was evident in the way knowledge about the virus changed over time in the past year as scientific investigation of it evolved.

What we’ve learned: “As infectious disease doctors, we were resident experts at the beginning of the pandemic because we understand pathogens in general, and based on what we’ve seen in the past, we might say there are certain things that are likely to be true,” Dr. Juthani says. “But we’ve seen that we have to take these pathogens seriously. We know that COVID-19 is not the flu. All these strokes and clots, and the loss of smell and taste that have gone on for months are things that we could have never known or predicted. So, you have to have respect for the unknown and respect science, but also try to give scientists the benefit of the doubt,” she says.

“We have been doing the best we can with the knowledge we have, in the time that we have it,” Dr. Juthani says. “I think most of us have had to have the humility to sometimes say, ‘I don't know. We're learning as we go.’"

Information provided in Yale Medicine articles is for general informational purposes only. No content in the articles should ever be used as a substitute for medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician. Always seek the individual advice of your health care provider with any questions you have regarding a medical condition.

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Report Writing On Covid 19 For Students

Report Writing on COVID-19 for Students

A report, as you know, is a detailed account of a particular event or something that happened. Writing a report on a pandemic such as COVID-19, which shook the whole world, requires a lot of research. You should have a thorough knowledge of the details that have to be included in the report before you start writing one. Check out the following sections to learn what they are and also go through the sample reports to see how to structure your report.

What to include in a report on covid-19, sample report on covid-19 around the world, sample report on covid-19 in india for students, frequently asked questions on report writing on covid-19.

Before you start writing your report, make sure you understand what the term ‘COVID-19’ refers to and gather all the significant information about it. Since COVID-19 is a pandemic, you have to try and understand the causes, symptoms, difficulties caused by the virus, aftereffects, precautions, aftercure and so on. Once you do this, also explore information about the number of cases reported, number of deaths caused, number of people cured, advancements in the field of medicine, etc. Having a thorough knowledge of these factors can give you a clear idea of what to write and how to structure your report.

While plague, cholera and flu were pandemics of the past, the current COVID-19 pandemic has put the whole world in a fix. With the first case of COVID-19 reported in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China in December of 2019, life on Earth had changed forever. Since then, everybody was locked inside, asked to cover their noses and mouths, wash their hands, keep themselves clean, use sanitisers every time they step out and step back into their houses, eat protein-rich and hygienic food, inhale steam, drink hot water and so on. For many, everything changed with the outbreak of the pandemic. A huge number of people lost their loved ones, some their jobs and some were even disturbed mentally rather than just physically. Life simply switched to a new normal.

The commonly found symptoms were fatigue, severe headaches, common cold, breathing difficulties, reduced oxygen levels, loss of appetite, taste and smell and so on. The government and the medical community continuously asked people to be on their guard, stay indoors and report to the nearest hospitals in case they identify any of the above stated symptoms in themselves or in the people around them.

As of December 2021, around 1 million new cases and around 7500 deaths were reported and the daily moving average of cases rose to 390 in the first week of December. However, with the development of vaccinations by scientists and doctors, the number of cases as well as the number of deaths have been reduced. Still, people have been asked to take precautions even though vaccinations have been administered to most people around the world.

The spread of COVID-19 in India began with the first case being reported in Kerala on January 30, 2020. In a year’s time, more than twenty-eight million people were tested positive for COVID. Around five million people – the highest recorded number of diagnosed cases – were from Maharashtra; the next in line was Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu with more than two million cases each, followed by Andhra Pradesh with over one million cases.

Owing to the widespread increase in the number of deaths, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a nationwide lockdown until further notice. All schools, colleges and offices were closed. Schools, colleges, community halls and convention centers were turned into isolation wards as hospitals were overflowing with patients. Healthcare professionals, along with many volunteers, worked day and night to treat patients and reduce the number of deaths.

After almost a year, vaccinations such as Covishield and Covaxin were launched in India. These vaccines were first administered to people above the age of sixty, followed by people from the age of forty to sixty, above eighteen and then younger kids. Vaccinations were given in two doses with an interval of one and a half to two months in between. With the government making vaccinations mandatory for travel and other purposes, almost all people had taken the vaccinations. A third dose of the vaccine (booster dose) also has been launched. The government has taken efforts to set up multiple vaccination booths in government schools and hospitals. With continuous efforts from the government, medical and police officials, and cooperation from the citizens, India has successfully seen a decrease in the number of cases and deaths, and an increase in the number of recoveries.

What is a report?

A report is an official document presented in writing or print about a particular event or happening.

What are the details to be included in a report on COVID-19?

The details to be included in a report on COVID-19 are as follows.

Difficulties caused by the virus
Aftereffects
Precautions
Number of cases reported
Number of deaths caused
Number of people cured
Advancements in the field of medicine

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Health and wellbeing during COVID-19

People with symptoms of a respiratory infection including COVID-19

Guidance for people with symptoms of a respiratory infection including COVID-19, or a positive test result for COVID-19.

Applies to England

As we learn to live safely with COVID-19, there are actions we can all take to help reduce the risk of catching COVID-19 and passing it on to others. These actions will also help to reduce the spread of other respiratory infections. COVID-19 and other respiratory infections such as flu can spread easily and cause serious illness in some people.

Vaccinations are very effective at preventing serious illness from COVID-19, however even if you are vaccinated there is a chance you might catch COVID-19 or another respiratory infection and pass it on to other people.

Who this guidance is for

Most people can no longer access free testing for COVID-19. This guidance is in 2 parts:

Actions you can take to protect other people if you are unwell with symptoms of a respiratory infection, including COVID-19, and you have not taken a test for COVID-19.

Advice for people who have taken a COVID-19 test and have received a positive test result.

There is separate guidance for people who have been informed by the NHS that they are at highest risk of becoming seriously unwell and who might be eligible for new COVID-19 treatments.

There is also additional guidance for those working in health and social care settings.

People at higher risk of becoming seriously unwell from a respiratory infection, including COVID-19

People who are at higher risk from COVID-19 and other respiratory infections include:

older people
those who are pregnant
those who are unvaccinated
people of any age whose immune system means they are at higher risk of serious illness
people of any age with certain long-term conditions

The risk of becoming seriously unwell from COVID-19 and other respiratory infections is very low for most children and young people.

Some children aged under 2 years, especially those with a heart condition or born prematurely, as well as very young infants, are at increased risk of hospitalisation from respiratory syncytial virus ( RSV ) .

You will not always know whether someone you come into contact with outside your home is at higher risk of becoming seriously unwell. They could be strangers (for example, people you sit next to on public transport) or people you may have regular contact with (for example, friends and work colleagues). This means it is important to follow the advice in this guidance to reduce the spread of infection and help to keep others safe.

Symptoms of respiratory infections, including COVID-19

Respiratory infections can spread easily between people. It is important to be aware of symptoms so you can take action to reduce the risk of spreading your infection to other people.

The symptoms of COVID-19 and other respiratory infections are very similar. It is not possible to tell if you have COVID-19, flu or another respiratory infection based on symptoms alone. Most people with COVID-19 and other respiratory infections will have a relatively mild illness, especially if they have been vaccinated.

If you have symptoms of a respiratory infection, such as COVID-19, and you have a high temperature or you do not feel well enough to go to work or carry out normal activities, you are advised to try to stay at home and avoid contact with other people.

Symptoms of COVID-19, flu and common respiratory infections include:

continuous cough
high temperature, fever or chills
loss of, or change in, your normal sense of taste or smell
shortness of breath
unexplained tiredness, lack of energy
muscle aches or pains that are not due to exercise
not wanting to eat or not feeling hungry
headache that is unusual or longer lasting than usual
sore throat, stuffy or runny nose
diarrhoea, feeling sick or being sick

If you are feeling unwell with these symptoms you should get plenty of rest and drink water to keep hydrated. You can use medications such as paracetamol to help with your symptoms. Antibiotics are not recommended for viral respiratory infections because they will not relieve your symptoms or speed up your recovery.

In some cases, you might continue to have a cough or feel tired after your other symptoms have improved, but this does not mean that you are still infectious.

You can find information about these symptoms on NHS.UK .

If you are concerned about your symptoms, or they are worsening, seek medical advice by contacting NHS 111. In an emergency dial 999.

What to do if you have symptoms of a respiratory infection, including COVID-19, and have not taken a COVID-19 test

Try to stay at home and avoid contact with other people.

If you have symptoms of a respiratory infection, such as COVID-19, and you have a high temperature or do not feel well enough to go to work or carry out normal activities, try to stay at home and avoid contact with other people, until you no longer have a high temperature (if you had one) or until you no longer feel unwell.

It is particularly important to avoid close contact with anyone who you know is at higher risk of becoming seriously unwell if they are infected with COVID-19 and other respiratory infections, especially those whose immune system means that they are at higher risk of serious illness, despite vaccination .

Try to work from home if you can. If you are unable to work from home, talk to your employer about options available to you.

If you have been asked to attend a medical or dental appointment in person, contact your healthcare provider and let them know about your symptoms.

You may wish to ask friends, family or neighbours to get food and other essentials for you.

If you leave your home

If you leave your home while you have symptoms of a respiratory infection, and you have a high temperature or feel unwell, avoid close contact with anyone who you know is at higher risk of becoming seriously unwell, especially those whose immune system means that they are at higher risk of serious illness, despite vaccination .

The following actions will reduce the chance of passing on your infection to others:

wearing a well-fitting face covering made with multiple layers or a surgical face mask
avoiding crowded places such as public transport, large social gatherings, or anywhere that is enclosed or poorly ventilated
taking any exercise outdoors in places where you will not have close contact with other people
covering your mouth and nose when you cough or sneeze; wash your hands frequently with soap and water for 20 seconds or use hand sanitiser after coughing, sneezing and blowing your nose and before you eat or handle food; avoid touching your face

Reduce the spread of infection in your household

While you are unwell there is a high risk of passing your infection to others in your household. These are simple things you can do to help prevent the spread :

try to keep your distance from people you live with
in shared areas wear a well-fitting face covering made with multiple layers or a surgical face mask, especially if you live with people whose immune system means that they are at higher risk of serious illness, despite vaccination
ventilate rooms you have been in by opening windows and leaving them open for at least 10 minutes after you have left the room
wash your hands regularly and cover your mouth and nose when coughing or sneezing
regularly clean frequently touched surfaces, such as door handles and remote controls, and shared areas such as kitchens and bathrooms
advise anyone that does need to come into your home that you have symptoms, so they can take precautions to protect themselves such as wearing a well-fitting face covering or a surgical face mask, keeping their distance if they can, and washing their hands regularly

GermDefence is a website that can help you identify simple ways to protect yourself and others in your household from COVID-19 and other viruses. People who use GermDefence are less likely to catch flu and other infections and are less likely to spread them at home.

There is further guidance on protecting yourself and others in living safely with respiratory infections, including COVID-19.

Children and young people (aged 18 years and under) who have symptoms of a respiratory infection, including COVID-19

Respiratory infections are common in children and young people, particularly during the winter months. Symptoms can be caused by several respiratory infections including the common cold, COVID-19 and RSV .

For most children and young people, these illnesses will not be serious, and they will soon recover following rest and plenty of fluids.

Very few children and young people with respiratory infections become seriously unwell. This is also true for children and young people with long-term conditions. Some children under 2, especially those born prematurely or with a heart condition, can be more seriously unwell from RSV .

Attending education is hugely important for children and young people’s health and their future.

When children and young people with symptoms should stay at home and when they can return to education

Children and young people with mild symptoms such as a runny nose, sore throat, or slight cough, who are otherwise well, can continue to attend their education setting.

Children and young people who are unwell and have a high temperature should stay at home and avoid contact with other people, where they can. They can go back to school, college or childcare, and resume normal activities when they no longer have a high temperature and they are well enough to attend.

All children and young people with respiratory symptoms should be encouraged to cover their mouth and nose with a disposable tissue when coughing and/or sneezing and to wash their hands after using or disposing of tissues.

It can be difficult to know when to seek help if your child is unwell. If you are worried about your child, especially if they are aged under 2 years old, then you should seek medical help.

What to do if you have a positive COVID-19 test result

If you have a positive COVID-19 test result, it is very likely that you have COVID-19 even if you do not have any symptoms. You can pass on the infection to others, even if you have no symptoms.

Most people with COVID-19 will no longer be infectious to others after 5 days. If you have a positive COVID-19 test result, try to stay at home and avoid contact with other people for 5 days after the day you took your test. There is different advice for children and young people aged 18 and under .

During this period there are actions you can take to reduce the risk of passing COVID-19 on to others.

If you have been asked to attend a medical or dental appointment in person, contact your healthcare provider and let them know about your positive test result.

At the end of this period, if you have a high temperature or feel unwell, try to follow this advice until you feel well enough to resume normal activities and you no longer have a high temperature if you had one.

Although most people will no longer be infectious to others after 5 days, some people may be infectious to other people for up to 10 days from the start of their infection. You should avoid meeting people at higher risk of becoming seriously unwell from COVID-19, especially those whose immune system means that they are at higher risk of serious illness from COVID-19, despite vaccination , for 10 days after the day you took your test.

If you leave your home during the 5 days after your positive test result the following steps will reduce the chance of passing on COVID-19 to others:

wear a well-fitting face covering made with multiple layers or a surgical face mask
avoid crowded places such as public transport, large social gatherings, or anywhere that is enclosed or poorly ventilated
take any exercise outdoors in places where you will not have close contact with other people
cover your mouth and nose when you cough or sneeze; wash your hands frequently with soap and water for 20 seconds or use hand sanitiser after coughing, sneezing and blowing your nose and before you eat or handle food; avoid touching your face

While you are infectious there is a high risk of passing your infection to others in your household. These are simple things you can do to help prevent the spread :

advise anyone that does need to come into your home that you have a positive test result, so they can take precautions to protect themselves such as wearing a well-fitting face covering or a surgical face mask, keeping their distance if they can, and washing their hands regularly

What to do if you are a close contact of someone who has had a positive test result for COVID-19

People who live in the same household as someone with COVID-19 are at the highest risk of becoming infected because they are most likely to have prolonged close contact. People who stayed overnight in the household of someone with COVID-19 while they were infectious are also at high risk.

If you are a household or overnight contact of someone who has had a positive COVID -19 test result it can take up to 10 days for your infection to develop. It is possible to pass on COVID-19 to others, even if you have no symptoms.

You can reduce the risk to other people by taking the following steps:

avoid contact with anyone you know who is at higher risk of becoming severely unwell if they are infected with COVID-19, especially those whose immune system means they are at higher risk of serious illness from COVID-19, despite vaccination
limit close contact with other people outside your household, especially in crowded, enclosed or poorly ventilated spaces
wear a well-fitting face covering made with multiple layers or a surgical face mask if you do need to have close contact with other people, or you are in a crowded place
wash your hands frequently with soap and water or use hand sanitiser

If you develop symptoms of a respiratory infection try to stay at home and avoid contact with other people and follow the guidance for people with symptoms.

If you are a contact of someone with COVID-19 but do not live with them or did not stay in their household overnight, you are at lower risk of becoming infected. There is guidance on protecting yourself and others in living safely with respiratory infections, including COVID-19 .

Children and young people aged 18 years and under who have a positive test result

It is not recommended that children and young people are tested for COVID-19 unless directed to by a health professional.

If a child or young person has a positive COVID-19 test result they should try to stay at home and avoid contact with other people for 3 days after the day they took the test, if they can. After 3 days, if they feel well and do not have a high temperature, the risk of passing the infection on to others is much lower. This is because children and young people tend to be infectious to other people for less time than adults.

Children and young people who usually go to school, college or childcare and who live with someone who has a positive COVID-19 test result should continue to attend as normal.

How to reduce the spread of infection with the people you live with if you have COVID-19

COVID-19: reduce the spread of infection with the people you live with (infographic) English

PDF , 158 KB , 1 page

This file may not be suitable for users of assistive technology.

Infographic text alternative

If you have COVID-19, there is a high risk that others in your household will catch it from you. There are several things you can do to reduce the spread of infection in your household.

Limit close contact with others. Spend as little time as possible in communal areas.

Regularly clean frequently touched surfaces and shared rooms like kitchens and bathrooms.

Wash your hands regularly using soap and water, particularly after coughing and sneezing.

Get help where possible from those you live with. Ask for help with cleaning and being brought food safely to avoid unnecessary contact.

Use a face covering if you need to spend time in shared spaces.

Keep rooms well ventilated.

Catch coughs and sneezes in disposable tissues and put them straight in the bin.

People with symptoms of a respiratory infection including COVID-19 (easy read)

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What to do if you test positive for COVID-19 (easy read)

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People with symptoms of a respiratory infection including COVID-19 (Somali) ( PDF , 104 KB , 13 pages )

People with symptoms of a respiratory infection including COVID-19 (Tamil) ( PDF , 236 KB , 18 pages )

People with symptoms of a respiratory infection including COVID-19 (Ukrainian) ( PDF , 152 KB , 13 pages )

People with symptoms of a respiratory infection including COVID-19 (Urdu) ( PDF , 153 KB , 12 pages )

Reduce the spread of infection with the people you live with (infographic)

COVID-19: reduce the spread of infection with the people you live with (infographic) Arabic ( PDF , 438 KB , 1 page )

COVID-19: reduce the spread of infection with the people you live with (infographic) Bengali ( PDF , 429 KB , 1 page )

COVID-19: reduce the spread of infection with the people you live with (infographic) Chinese simplified ( PDF , 421 KB , 1 page )

COVID-19: reduce the spread of infection with the people you live with (infographic) Chinese traditional ( PDF , 426 KB , 1 page )

COVID-19: reduce the spread of infection with the people you live with (infographic) Farsi ( PDF , 458 KB , 1 page )

COVID-19: reduce the spread of infection with the people you live with (infographic) French ( PDF , 392 KB , 1 page )

COVID-19: reduce the spread of infection with the people you live with (infographic) Gujarati ( PDF , 417 KB , 1 page )

COVID-19: reduce the spread of infection with the people you live with (infographic) Hindi ( PDF , 427 KB , 1 page )

COVID-19: reduce the spread of infection with the people you live with (infographic) Russian ( PDF , 352 KB , 1 page )

COVID-19: reduce the spread of infection with the people you live with (infographic) Pashto ( PDF , 458 KB , 1 page )

COVID-19: reduce the spread of infection with the people you live with (infographic) Polish ( PDF , 392 KB , 1 page )

COVID-19: reduce the spread of infection with the people you live with (infographic) Portuguese ( PDF , 390 KB , 1 page )

COVID-19: reduce the spread of infection with the people you live with (infographic) Punjabi Gurmukhi ( PDF , 415 KB , 1 page )

COVID-19: reduce the spread of infection with the people you live with (infographic) Punjabi Shahmuki ( PDF , 442 KB , 1 page )

COVID-19: reduce the spread of infection with the people you live with (infographic) Slovak ( PDF , 391 KB , 1 page )

COVID-19: reduce the spread of infection with the people you live with (infographic) Tamil ( PDF , 430 KB , 1 page )

COVID-19: reduce the spread of infection with the people you live with (infographic) Ukrainian ( PDF , 352 KB , 1 page )

COVID-19: reduce the spread of infection with the people you live with (infographic) Urdu ( PDF , 461 KB , 1 page )

Added easy read on testing positive for COVID-19.

Added easy read.

Added Russian and Ukrainian translations.

Added translated versions of the infographic.

Added translations.

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≫ Nationalism and Covid-19 Pandemic Free Essay Sample on Samploon.com
Me & COVID-19: An Essay Writing Contest
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Impact of COVID 19 on human life|essay writing|write an essay on Impact of Coronavirus on human life
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COMMENTS

Covid 19 Essay in English
100 Words Essay on Covid 19. COVID-19 or Corona Virus is a novel coronavirus that was first identified in 2019. It is similar to other coronaviruses, such as SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, but it is more contagious and has caused more severe respiratory illness in people who have been infected. The novel coronavirus became a global pandemic in a very ...
How to Write About Coronavirus in a College Essay
Writing About COVID-19 in College Essays. Experts say students should be honest and not limit themselves to merely their experiences with the pandemic. The global impact of COVID-19, the disease ...
Writing About COVID-19 in Your College Essay
This essay is an opportunity to share your pandemic experience and the lessons learned. The college admissions process has experienced significant changes as a result of COVID-19, creating new challenges for high school students. Since the onset of the pandemic, admissions officers have strongly emphasized a more holistic review process.
How to Write About COVID-19 In Your College Essay & Application
This year, the Common App is including a special 250-word section allowing students to describe the impacts of COVID-19 on their lives. Here's the official word from the Common App website: . We want to provide colleges with the information they need, with the goal of having students answer COVID-19 questions only once while using the rest of the application as they would have before to ...
Writing about COVID-19 in a college essay GreatSchools.org
The student or a family member had COVID-19 or suffered other illnesses due to confinement during the pandemic. The student suffered from a lack of internet access and other online learning challenges. Students who dealt with problems registering for or taking standardized tests and AP exams. Jeff Schiffman of the Tulane University admissions ...
Covid 19 Essays: Examples, Topics, & Outlines
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on individuals, societies, and economies worldwide. Its multifaceted nature presents a wealth of topics suitable for academic exploration. This essay provides guidance on developing engaging and insightful essay topics related to COVID-19, offering a comprehensive range of perspectives to choose from.
Positive Impacts of COVID-19
Introduction. The global outbreak of COVID-19 has certainly taken an overwhelming toll on everyone. People have lost their jobs, their homes, and even their lives. There is no getting past the fact that the overall impact on the world has been negative, but it is important to realize that positive aspects of the pandemic have been overshadowed ...
What We Learned About Ourselves During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Alex, a writer and fellow disabled parent, found the freedom to explore a fuller version of herself in the privacy the pandemic provided. "The way I dress, the way I love, and the way I carry ...
Essay: COVID-19 and humanity's interconnectedness
As COVID-19 continues to creep its way into each of our communities and impact the way we live and communicate, I find solace in the fact that we face what comes next together, as humanity. When the day comes that my generation is responsible for dealing with another crisis, I hope we can use this experience to remind us that moving forward ...
How to Write About the Impact of the Coronavirus in a College Essay
October 21, 2020 · 7 min read. The global impact of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, means colleges and prospective students alike are in for an admissions cycle like no ...
Paragraph Writing on Covid 19
Paragraph Writing on Covid-19 in 100 Words. Coronavirus is an infectious disease and is commonly called Covid-19. It affects the human respiratory system causing difficulty in breathing. It is a contagious disease and has been spreading across the world like wildfire. The virus was first identified in 2019 in Wuhan, China.
Essay On Covid-19: 100, 200 and 300 Words
Also Read: Essay on Abortion in English in 650 Words. Short Essay on Covid-19. Please find below a sample of a short essay on Covid-19 for school students: Also Read: Essay on Women's Day in 200 and 500 words. FAQs
'When Normal Life Stopped': College Essays Reflect a Turbulent Year
This year the Common App, the nation's most-used application, added a question inviting students to write about the impact of Covid-19 on their lives and educations.
What Life Was Like for Students in the Pandemic Year
In these short essays below, teacher Claire Marie Grogan's 11th grade students at Oceanside High School on Long Island, N.Y., describe their pandemic experiences. Their writings have been ...
Covid-19's Impact on Students' Academic and Mental Well-Being
For Black students, the number spikes to 25 percent. "There are many reasons to believe the Covid-19 impacts might be larger for children in poverty and children of color," Kuhfeld wrote in the study. Their families suffer higher rates of infection, and the economic burden disproportionately falls on Black and Hispanic parents, who are less ...
PDF The Impact of Covid-19 on Student Experiences and Expectations ...
We nd that the substantial variation in the impact of COVID-19 on students tracked with existing socioeconomic divides. For example, compared to their more a uent peers, lower-income students are 55% more likely to delay graduation due to COVID-19 and are 41% more likely to report that COVID-19 impacted their major choice.
12 Ideas for Writing Through the Pandemic With The New York Times
Publishing Opportunity: Submit your final essay to our Student Editorial Contest, open to middle school and high school students ages 10-19, until April 21. Please be sure to read all the rules ...
The pandemic has had devastating impacts on learning. What ...
As we outline in our new research study released in January, the cumulative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students' academic achievement has been large. We tracked changes in math and ...
12 moving essays about life during coronavirus
Read these 12 moving essays about life during coronavirus. Artists, novelists, critics, and essayists are writing the first draft of history. A woman wearing a face mask in Miami. Alissa Wilkinson ...
The impact of COVID-19 on student experiences and expectations
Our findings on academic outcomes indicate that COVID-19 has led to a large number of students delaying graduation (13%), withdrawing from classes (11%), and intending to change majors (12%). Moreover, approximately 50% of our sample separately reported a decrease in study hours and in their academic performance.
The impact of COVID-19 on student achievement and what it ...
Virtually all K-12 students in the United States are currently missing face-to-face instruction due to COVID-19. Many parents and educators thus share a common worry: When the pandemic subsides ...
8 Lessons We Can Learn From the COVID-19 Pandemic
The CDC reports that the percentage of adults who reported symptoms of anxiety of depression in the past 7 days increased from 36.4 to 41.5 % from August 2020 to February 2021. Other reports show that having COVID-19 may contribute, too, with its lingering or long COVID symptoms, which can include "foggy mind," anxiety, depression, and post ...
Report Writing on COVID-19 for Students
Sample Report on COVID-19 in India for Students. The spread of COVID-19 in India began with the first case being reported in Kerala on January 30, 2020. In a year's time, more than twenty-eight million people were tested positive for COVID. Around five million people - the highest recorded number of diagnosed cases - were from Maharashtra ...
Investigating Adult ESL Students' Experiences with Learning English
The outbreak of COVID-19 forced the world population to find new ways to improve their productivity. It also significantly changed the course of education and instruction entirely. Like many students worldwide, adult English as a Second Language (ESL) students have been dramatically impacted by the sudden switch to online courses due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
People with symptoms of a respiratory infection including COVID-19
Infographic text alternative. If you have COVID-19, there is a high risk that others in your household will catch it from you. There are several things you can do to reduce the spread of infection ...
Economic Impact Payments
Didn't Get the Full Third Payment? Claim the 2021 Recovery Rebate Credit. You may be eligible to claim a 2021 Recovery Rebate Credit on your 2021 federal tax return.
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