This article explores a promising new approach to college admissions: direct admissions. Direct admissions bypasses traditional college admissions processes such that students are automatically and proactively admitted to college. There are both state and institutional direct admissions systems. In some state-level programs, all students are admitted to all open-access universities in a state and those who meet or exceed a pre-determined academic threshold (measured by high school GPA, ACT/SAT, class rank, or a combination of metrics) are automatically admitted to selective institutions. With institution-level programs, each institution can set its own academic performance threshold. Typically, students, plus trusted adults such as parents/guardians and high school principals and counselors, receive letters stating that a student has been proactively guaranteed admissions at a set of institutions and describing how to "claim their place" in college.