<p>First of all thanks to all who have supported us and given us ideas and feedback for the past year. It's been enormously helpful. Here's where we are right now.</p>
<p>My son will be a senior any minute now. His five reach schools are Stanford, Vanderbilt, Clairmont McKenna, Chicago and Northwestern. His safe school is Tulane.</p>
<p>Of the reaches the only schools that he might prefer a little more than the others are Stanford and Vanderbilt.</p>
<p>I'm thinking he should apply SCEA to Tulane and here's my logic. He will almost definitely get in, and Tulane usually lets you know pretty quickly what their decision is. So even if we are on the later side in getting the application in, he'll still know that he has that to count on. When I reminded him that there's no guarantee for any of the others and he might have to go to Tulane, his response was something like "That's OK, it's a good school and a great city." So I'm thinking that knowing that he's in from December on, and especially knowing that in April, will make life a lot easier around here.</p>
<p>Also, if he's not accepted that's early enough for a wake-up call and we go to the next group of safeties.</p>
<p>I'm also thinking that EA doesn't seem to help with most schools....and I guess here's where I need your help. Of the five listed reaches, is there any one where EA might significantly make it easier for him to get in? That could turn our planning around.</p>
<p>Or is there anything else we might be missing?</p>
<p>Be sure which schools are SCEA or are EA or are ED. Northwestern is ED, so you can’t really apply early to any other school. Stanford is SCEA, so again, you can’t apply early to any other school. I don’t know which of your other schools are EA or are ED.</p>
<p>Xiggi, those stanford SCEA figures include acceptances sent to the many recruited athletes, DA’s, alumni and and faculty kids. When those numbers are teased out, the chances for a regular student without any hooks is much closer to 10%. In addition, Stanford only defers around 10% of early applicants for consideration in the regular round. The vast majority rear are either accepted early or rejected in Dec.</p>
<p>Here are a few numbers that show the different rates of admissions for Early versus Regular applicants. The first number is for total applications and the second one for early applications. </p>
<p>Stanford University 9% 16%
University of Chicago 28% 33%
Northwestern University 26% 40%
Vanderbilt University 25% 36%
Claremont McKenna College 22% 28%</p>
<p>The smallest benefits for applying early are at Claremont McKenna and Chicago. The biggest boosts are Northwestern, Vanderbilt, and of course Stanford where applying early are doubling your chances.</p>
<p>If your son is seeking merit aid (scholarships) or grants and wants to be able to compare financial aid packages, then applying ED is not something that you’d want him to be doing. </p>
<p>please be sure you clearly understand what ED requires. it’s likely none of my kids will ever apply ED but that’s because we want to review financial aid packages and they’ll be seeking grants and/or scholarships.</p>
<p>has he considered case western? do they have EA? how about Grinnell? do they have EA?</p>
<p>i really do like the option of EA that is available and i plan to encourage my younger 2 to consider applying EA to some schools. It was successful for my oldest D. with EA, getting early notification that the student has been admitted is a good thing.</p>
<p>Menloparkmom, as we know there are many ways to look at early admissions. There are people who swear that the higher admission rates reflect a pool of better “qualified” students. There are others who espouse the views of Avery and his co-authors who wrote about the Early Admissions racket. </p>
<p>Fwiw, even after teasing out the hooked applicants, for some a 10% chance is still better than the 6% or 7% for the RD pool. </p>
<p>Where one gets the bigger bang for his or her EA or ED buck remains in the eye of the beholder. Also, one has to account for a very dynamic world of admissions for a number of schools such as Tulane and Chicago. For instance, there are few comparisons between the word of early admissions at Chicago and Tulane of a few years ago and … today. Doors open and doors close! </p>
<p>What made “some” sense a couple of years ago might be quite a waste of an early admission for the Class of 2014.</p>
<p>We considered Case Western very briefly, but had to draw the line somewhere. And my son is politically moderate and open-minded and goes to a school which is dominated by liberals. He’s sick of it and won’t consider any LACs, except maybe Trinity.</p>
<p>Does anyone have any thoughts about the psychological side of it? The idea of having one in the bag early so you’re not going crazy in the spring.</p>
<p>If Tulane is a true “safety” for him, he should not go crazy… It is a huge relief to have an admission in December. But it generally makes more sense to apply early to a school where you increase your chances of admission by doing so. If the admission is a sure thing, there’s no reason to go EA.
Does he have any rolling admissions safeties?</p>
<p>Psychologically it was great for my D. She applied to UMich and UPitt “early”. Pitt is of course rolling and UMich- well, I’m not sure what their methodology is exactly, but very similar to a rolling admit. Pitt she heard very early and was offered full tuition. Michigan accepted her in their first “wave” and she got a generous offer at the end of October. Worst case scenario, barring no other acceptances, she knew she could go to Michigan and be happy there. As it turned out, she was deferred from her top choices that she applied “early action” to (w/December notification); a bloodbath then followed in April which would have been very demoralizing were it not for a UVA acceptance w/a great financial offer and scholar status. I highly recommend applying early to a rolling admit school. It was a huge stress reliever for our family.</p>
<p>“Does anyone have any thoughts about the psychological side of it? The idea of having one in the bag early so you’re not going crazy in the spring.”</p>
<p>Believe me, it can be a HUGE relief to KNOW in Dec that you WILL be going to a college of your choice come Sept. I second the recommendation of applying EA to colleges whenever possible.</p>
<p>S1 was accepted at two schools (his #1 and #3 choices) and deferred at a third via EA. Talk about stress disappearing… He dropped several schools from his list, added one, probably could have dropped more, except we wanted to see how the financial aid/merit packages shook out.</p>
<p>I think I’d SCEA at Tulane and have a bird in hand, assuming Tulane a) truly is a safety and b) your S would be happy to attend. Were Tulane not now SCEA, I would have said UChicago and Tulane, no question. </p>
<p>I like EA because it can not only give you an early acceptance, it can also give you an assessment of your strength in the applicant pool. S2 will be doing two schools EA this fall and either adjusting his list as needed or considering an ED II app.</p>
<p>mathson got deferred from both EA schools - which let him know that maybe he should beef up his application a little. By then he’d heard from one of his safeties (it had a priority application, that was a bit like rolling admissions) so he did know he was in somewhere at least.</p>
<p>S1 applied EA to a USNWR top 10 school ranked # 1 in his field. He got accepted. that made the rest of the RD application much simpler: after that, he dropped a whole lot of schools that would have been more matches and safeties and he only applied to the holy grails plus Berkeley with an RD deadline before the EA decisions were out and a public flagship in another state very highly ranked in his field for a full ride whose scholarship application deadline was again before the EA decisions were out. He got accepted to Berkeley, got the full ride from an OSS flagship, and did not make it to the holy grail schools. He will be attending the EA school this year paying a sticker price (this is a whole can of worms for controbversial subject matter discussed ad nauseum on this forum) </p>
<p>I think well thought out EA application really alleviates a lot of stress and legwork if the student gets accepted. Even if the student is rejected, it serves a very good purpose: it may be an another important data point: e.g., the need to cast the net wider in the safety region.</p>
<p>I don’t like the SCEA option: it limits the flexibility on the part of the applicants without providing a meaning lift for the admission chance (e.g., UPenn’s ED boost the admission chance considerably).</p>
<p>Xiggi, is there a more comprehensive or fuller list showing RD vs ED admission rates for the top 50 or so LACs and universities? Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>But if you don’t get into your EA school, psychologically it can be a real downer. You won’t get good news till March/April. For psyhological reasons, I’d rather NOT apply EA or ED. When a rejection comes, then you’ll have an acceptance soon to make you forget the rejection.</p>