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<p>I thought that if you apply ED you can only apply to one school. Is that rue? Either way, I guess we should know the answer to that.</p>
<p>Thanks again for all the helpful suggestions. I’ll keep checking in.</p>
<p>You can only apply to one binding ED, because you cannot be “bound” to more than one place–if you were accepted to more than one, you would have to break the contract with all but one. However, since EA is not binding, I believe the rules allow you to simultaneously apply to an ED and to an EA, with the understanding that you are obliged to go with the ED if accepted to both.</p>
<p>You can apply EA to more than one at a time, unless it is Single Choice EA, as Stanford is. Since Tulane still has regular EA and Chicago has EA, those two can be applied to simultaneously–and as JHS and I have suggested, you can also apply to Vanderbilt ED (binding) at the same time.</p>
<p>I am assuming you do not care about need-based financial aid, or merit scholarships. Is that correct?</p>
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Thanks, that is very helpful and means I have to shift my thinking a bit and re-read the above posts and all that. Since you say “I believe” can someone corroborate that point?
Yes, fortunately, money is not an issue. We won’t turn down a merit scholarship but it’s not important.</p>
<p>Your son may apply to one school ED. He can apply to schools EA, but not SCEA.
And he may apply to rolling schools.</p>
<p>If accepted at the ED school, he is committed to that school.</p>
<p>My daughter applied to one school ED, one rolling and several EA. She was accepted by her rolling school and her ED school and pulled her applications for her other schools. She did get in a couple the EA schools, Tulane included, because her notification must have crossed theirs in the mail. She had the school counselor notify the schools again.</p>
<p>You have to look at the rules at each school – there’s no single uniform set of rules – but the most common pattern is that ED schools do not restrict an applicant from applying non-binding EA elsewhere (the only exception to that I know is Brown), plain-old EA (i.e., not SCEA) schools do not restrict an applicant from applying EA or ED elsewhere (but there are numerous exceptions to this, including Georgetown and Boston College, which do not permit EA applicants to apply elsewhere ED simultaneously, although they would permit an ED II application after EA decisions came out), and no one (including SCEA) restricts applicants from applying early to rolling-admissions schools.</p>
<p>Complicated! I know. But it’s worth paying attention, because it really increases your options. In general, EA applications don’t have provide anything like the admissions boost that ED does. EA colleges get many more EA applications than ED colleges get ED applications, precisely because EA is so much more student friendly. There tends to be a higher acceptance rate EA (except at MIT, where the EA rate is sometimes a little lower), but the difference is small enough to be attributable to things like athletic recruitment, Questbridge, and a somewhat stronger applicant pool (i.e., kids who have their stuff together enough to be able to apply early).</p>
<p>The problems with applying SCEA to Stanford and then EDII to Vanderbilt are (a) chances at Stanford are lousy in any circumstance, (b) you wouldn’t get a read of where you stand with Vanderbilt until after all other applications were due, and (c) you couldn’t get an early decision from Tulane, either. So there’s an overwhelming likelihood that on December 15 all you would know was that the applicant wasn’t a shoo-in at Stanford (which you knew already), and would have no idea whether the Tulane-safety strategy was really viable. In addition to applying EDII to Vanderbilt, you would have to apply to a whole bunch of other colleges, including at least one that was a safer safety than Tulane.</p>
<p>If, on the other hand, you forgo SCEA at Vanderbilt and follow the ED/EA strategy suggested above, on December 15 the applicant will (a) know he’s going to Vanderbilt (and he’s happy), (b) know that Vanderbilt is uncertain (or off the table), but that he can go to Tulane if he wants (and he’s happy about that, too), and he should only apply to colleges he might like more than Tulane, or (c) know that he has miscalculated somewhat (and he’s not happy, but he knows he has dodged a bullet), and that he should be concentrating not so much on Northwestern and Claremont-McKenna as on less selective colleges he would like to attend if he isn’t accepted at Tulane.</p>
<p>don’t forget to take a look at the common application as there may be some EA schools on there.</p>
<p>That strategy worked for us. Student was deferred at reach school (which showed he was still in ball park and accepted at another equally reachy school later) and accepted at both EA, as I’ve said.</p>
<p>Since ED school was off the table student went ahead and applied to all super desirable (to him) schools).</p>
<p>Having very attractive EA schools in hand made the process virtually painless, and the day the Williams acceptance came a very, very nice surprise.</p>
<p>On the same day his best friend got his Bates acceptance, and it was the first acceptance he’d received. His waiting period was much more stressful than S’s, although they are now both equally happy in college.</p>
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<p>JHS, I like you. I really do. However, I don’t think it is necessary to misquote my “assertion” to reinforce your point. What I wrote on the first page of this thread was … verbatin, except for the corrected typo:</p>
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<p>Perhaps, we use slightly different qualifiers for safeties, matches, high matches, and reaches, but I’d like you to check my statement and the corresponding data points I added with a tad more attention, especially if you plan to quote me. ;)</p>
<p>How can any college with an acceptance rate below 30% be a solid match for anyone?</p>
<p>^^ For a student whose grades and scores exceed the midrange of freshmen, even a school with an admissions rate of less than 30% can be a match. The higher a student’s scores are compared to the average freshman, the lower the admissions rate can be and still have the school be a match. I would say that the formula no longer works once you get to colleges with admissions rates of say, 20% or less. Everyone should consider those schools reaches. </p>
<p>The real trouble, IMO, starts when kids start looking at schools like Vanderbilt, Wash U, Emory, etc. as safeties.</p>
<p>xiggi: Sorry, I didn’t pick up on the qualifiers in what you said, and as you guessed I didn’t go back and re-check it. I’m not certain whether we have any disagreement at all, but if we do, it’s narrow. Inherent in my position, however, is a belief (which I think is logical, but is only circumstantially supported by evidence) that Vanderbilt’s admissions pattern for high-SAT applicants is fundamentally different from that of Brown, whose data you posted.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl: If a college with an overall acceptance rate below 30% (in Vanderbilt’s case, last year, below 20%) has an acceptance rate of, say, 70% for applicants with a specific profile, then it’s a match for applicants with that specific profile.</p>
<p>Which is all this really sort of stupid and esoteric minor dispute (if there actually is a dispute) is about. Vanderbilt, describing its accepted (not enrolled) pool, said that its 75% level was a combined 1560/1600 on the SAT I (and 34 on the ACT). Vanderbilt accepts around 4,000 students per year, this year from an applicant pool of about 20,000. About 4,000 students nationally per class have a combined 1560 or higher on the SAT (which may go as high as 6,000 with superscoring). A little less than 70% of Vanderbilt applicants submit SATs. Therefore, it looks like Vanderbilt is accepting 700 or so students with 1560 or higher SATs, which is something like 12% of ALL of the students in the country with those scores.</p>
<p>Now, if Vanderbilt is getting applications from 2,000 students with 1560+ SATs, and accepting only 700 of them, then it qualifies as a reach even for them. But – and here’s where the dispute, if any, begins – I stubbornly refuse to believe that 1/3 of all high-scoring SAT takers are applying to Vanderbilt. Truth be told, I am surprised to learn that 12% of all high-scoring SAT takers have applied to Vanderbilt. So I conclude that Vanderbilt is accepting a very high percentage of applicants with these very high SAT scores. And therefore that they can treat it as at least a match.</p>
<p>I am not sure a match is a reasonable category any longer with yield management. Both my kids were wait listed and rejected from schools that were less selective than ones they were admitted to.</p>
<p>I found that only two categories really prevailed: reaches and safeties.</p>
<p>If I were to do it again, ensure their list have safeties but then encourage to apply to all “reaches” unless one of the “matches” was a school they especially wanted to attend.</p>
<p>However, I wouldn’t use the concept of “matches” as an admission strategy.</p>
<p>Even with yield management, a school in a scenario that JHS describes would be a solid match for an ED applicant.</p>
<p>I also think that there’s much less “yield protection” by schools like WUSTL, Vanderbilt, etc. then people like to believe. When the school is assembling a class, many factors come into play, and some times it seems that “less qualified” candidates win. It is tempting to say that it is due to yield protection, and the university is not taking some “over-qualified” students. But since they are taking plenty of other just as over-qualified ones (many of whom end up going elsewhere), this is not very convincing…</p>
<p>Given that Vanderbilt has (a) a comparatively small ED program (about 30% of the class), and (b) less than a 30% yield on its RD admissions, it looks like Vanderbilt doesn’t place a high priority on managing its admissions to increase yield.</p>
<p>Which makes sense to me. If Vanderbilt is trying to increase its national profile and the number of non-Southern students it has – and it has been explicit about that – it is probably a better strategy to accept more kids and to try to reel them in than to restrict its acceptances. Accepting desirable candidates from a particular school, whether or not they enroll, probably encourages more desirable candidates in the next class at that school to apply, and fosters a good feeling about Vanderbilt.</p>
<p>JHS – glad to see you mentioned no ED if one applies to Georgetown EA. </p>
<p>pizzagirl, not to pick an argument, but there were a couple of schools on S’s list with admit rates below 30% that we considered “likelies” with S1. (I don’t like to use “safeties.”) He had a very specific profile and focus and he spent a great deal of time crafting his list. He knew exactly what he was looking for and that definitely was reflected in his results, both acceptances and otherwise. </p>
<p>With S2, he would be happy at the flagship and as for the rest of his list, it tends to the reasonable shot/low reach range. (Most are in the 25-45% acceptance range.) He also paid particular attention to schools who have accepted students from the IB program he attend.</p>
<p>From our school everyone with SAT’s over 1450/1600 was accepted to Vanderbilt except one who was waitlisted and one who had much lower grades who was rejected. (The range of accepted was 1200 to 1550.) </p>
<p>Brown had a completely different pattern. Scores in a range of 1350-1600 were accepted, but about 3/4 of those were rejected with no bias at all to the higher end of the scores. Brown even rejected a 1590 scorer who had better grades than the other 1590 score.</p>
<p>Vanderbilt looks like a solid match and close to a safety for S2, while Brown is an uber-reach because of his grades. Now I don’t quite believe that, because Vanderbilt has gotten more selective, but I also know that Vanderbilt’s head of admissions has come several times to our College Night saying they want more of our kids to add to their diversity.</p>
<p>^^If you don’t mind my asking, what kind of diversity does your school offer?</p>
<p>Large Hispanic and African American population, lots of non-Protestants of various flavors. Urban-ish, fair amount of working class kids and semi-urban.</p>
<p>Thanks to everyone who participated in this thread so far. This has been extremely helpful, not just the information gathered, but also the process of having the conversation and thinking about the choices and implications and all that. My wife and son, or as you say, S, and I will have free time this weekend to talk about and digest all this. And I’ll keep checking in.</p>