Introduction: Just over one year ago, in the spring of 2020, a pandemic of unimaginable proportion began wreaking havoc across the globe. As health concerns escalated, businesses shuttered, stock markets tumbled, and education was forced to transform at warp-speed from traditional in-person instructional models to virtual instruction. At nearly all postsecondary institutions, students residing in college-operated dorms dispersed, as instructional and residential buildings closed. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted higher education just as many admissions offices across the country were gearing up to send out acceptance letters to students slated to enroll in the fall of 2020. Traditional recruitment strategies, such as on-campus previews for accepted students, were suspended and students faced great uncertainty over whether the pandemic would subside in time for in-person lecture and laboratory sessions. Abundant precautions were taken as colleges acted swiftly to protect the safety of their staff, faculty and students, without completely ceasing operations. At the same time as colleges began dismissing residential students to curtail the spread of COVID-19, they also began to express concerns over whether prospective first-year students would commit to beginning their postsecondary studies in the fall. Predictive modelling strategies that help colleges admit just the right number of students to meet enrollment targets suddenly became obsolete (Schifrin, 2020). While wealthier colleges braced to weather a storm of uncertainty around college waitlists and declines in enrollment, tuition-dependent colleges with less robust endowments wondered whether COVID-19 would be the proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back"- an economic shock that was too severe to bounce back from (Seltzer, 2020). A poll from the Art & Science group in March, 2020 prefaced a potentially alarming disruption in postsecondary education. Nearly one in six four-year college bound students were re-thinking their decision to enroll, and two in three expressed concern about attending their first-choice college (Goebel, Strauss & Hesel, 2020). To counteract this loss, some colleges stretched out their deposit dates and a few even reduced tuition and fees (Gardner, 2020). Optimism over a quick rebound waned during the summer of 2020 as new daily COVID-19 cases continued to increase throughout July (The COVID Tracking Project). Despite this bad news, initial reports indicated that the first-year enrollment declines were not going to be as grim as many had feared (Jaschik, 2020). More students than normal were taking gap years, by deferring enrollment until the fall of 2021, and colleges with active waiting lists were able to lean on these lists to backfill spots opened up by deferring students (Dickler, 2020; Horn, 2020). Leading up to the fall of 2020, much of the media covering American higher education tended to focus the traditional, selective, brick and mortar four-year colleges, and the students attending them. Waiting for the pandemic to subside in order to enjoy four years of the quintessential college experience is a luxury. Not all students have the inclination or the means to sit on the sidelines for a year, delaying college and future earnings, especially during a time when employment opportunities are severely limited. Under most economic models, postsecondary education and unemployment are counter-cyclical. For individuals weighing between the two options, a poor economy tends to redirect some from the labor market to college. Under favorable economic conditions, the reverse is true. Most recently, this pattern was identified by Long (2014) when studying the impacts of the Great Recession that began in 2008. Though these patterns emerge and re-emerge under ordinary economic circumstances, the COVID-19 pandemic is extra-ordinary. Opportunities for traditional postsecondary education vanished in tandem with employment opportunities, potentially keep students weighing between these two options unable to pursue either. Though the initial emphasis on COVID-19 and college enrollment centered on well-resourced colleges, early data has indicated that less well-resourced colleges seem to be bearing the brunt of enrollment declines. As an example, year-over-year enrollment at California's two-year colleges declined by 16.8% between the fall of 2019 and the fall of 2020, including both first-time and returning students (Burke & Willis, 2021).Research Study: In this study, using both data from the College Board and the National Student Clearinghouse, representing nearly 90% of all high school graduates, we estimate the enrollment and retention impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic using an interrupted time-series approach. This approach allows us to account for trends in college-going and retention over time as well the gradually shifting sociodemographic composition of high school graduates. Since nearly all students who take at least one College Board assessment or examination, including the PSAT/SAT/AP, provide rich demographic information, including race, parental education, and gender, we can isolate the pandemic's differential impacts on the nation's most vulnerable populations. Our findings confirm that the largest declines in enrollment occurred within the two-year sector, where enrollment rates declined by nearly 12% because of the pandemic. By contrast, enrollment rates declined by 5% in the private nonprofit four-year sector and just 3% in the public four-year sector. Heterogeneity analyses illuminate how differential decision-making differed across postsecondary sectors. In the two-year sector, enrollment rate declines were largest among students from traditionally disadvantaged backgrounds (first-gen and URM students). In the four-year sector, enrollment rate declines among students from disadvantaged backgrounds were actually lower than those among students from traditionally advantaged backgrounds. These contrasting findings are consistent with two separate enrollment dynamics taking place due COVID-19. Underrepresented students with the academic credentials pointing to a high likelihood of four-year college enrollment continued down this path after COVID-19 struck, likely because deferring enrollment was unfeasible from a financial perspective. Among students pre-disposed to enroll at two-year colleges, many of whom attend part-time, while juggling employment, family care, and education, the pandemic disproportionately impacted the enrollment plans of the most vulnerable students.