<p>I don’t think it’s as simple as that. I do think ED and EA applicants tend to be a bit more organized than others, and perhaps on average have better stats or are bringing other things to the table (legacy, sports etc.) Colleges generally try to speak out of both sides of their mouths - on the one hand they want students to apply early on the other hand they don’t want anyone to thing that standards are lower.</p>
<p>For my younger son I’m very glad I pushed him to apply early. I think it’s clear that they are not stats driven and that they are almost certainly accepting a much great percentage early this year. My son has a checkered GPA, but I do think he got great recommendations and wrote very good essays and came off as someone you would really like to have around. Of course it didn’t make a difference at Georgetown where he was deferred! (And since they don’t do early rejections we will never know if he even came close to being considered.)</p>
<p>bluebayou, you can parse what colleges say forever. But you said: “Every adcom at an ED to which I have spoken refutes that statement” and I responded with written proof that Brown does not.</p>
<p>My main point here is that when it comes to college admissions, I think it is a bad idea to speak in absolutes. At some schools it is beneficial to apply ED. At some schools there is no benefit, or a very small benefit. At some schools the benefit mainly goes to legacy students. But I think we do a disservice to students and parents reading this forum to present anything as an absolute, that “every adcom” says something.</p>
<p>sorry, Brown’s website is not “proof” of anything. They could clearly state that there is NO admission advantage for ED, but they have purposely chosen not to make that statement. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I agree, but many others do not. :)</p>
<p>Fwiw, I have not spoken to a Brown adcom, and never claimed that I did. (You cannot disprove my statement and I’m not sure why you are even trying since it is my statement.)</p>
<p>Drawing from my sample of 2 (my own kids), I wonder if there is an “ED personality.”</p>
<p>It was very important to my daughter to “find” an appropriate ED school. She worked herself backwards; it wasn’t as if she figured out the right fit/dream school and decided to improve her chances by applying ED; instead, she knew she wanted to apply ED, and found the best choice for her. In contrast, my S says he definitely won’t be applying ED; he wants to keep his options open and have the ability to figure it all out in the end. </p>
<p>As it happens, my daughter was accepted to her ED school and has no regrets. Now that the initial commotion has abated, she remains content with her decision, and in observing her demeanor, I believe it was the right move for her. For my son ( who has yet to go through the process), I could imagine him feeling confined and having some doubts by locking in the college decision at this juncture.</p>
<p>Apart from statistical advantages, I think there’s a certain personality/character who benefits from the ED choice.</p>
<p>To 'rentof2 – if the calculator was accurate for you and not accurate for others, it means you got lucky. It doesn’t mean that the calculator can be relied on. </p>
<p>I mean there are plenty of people on CC who have repeatedly posted experiences like mine. If a parent were to come on to CC and post that they won the lottery, it wouldn’t mean that every other parent should go right out and buy a lottery ticket. </p>
<p>The point is that there is not a uniform “institutional methodology” formula, so therefore it is impossible to design a calculator that magically incorporates the different rules and policies from different colleges. If it happens that the family doesn’t have any particular circumstances or types of income or assets that impact the calculation in an adverse way, then the numbers might come out o.k. But if I throw a pair of dice, the odds favor it coming up with some combination of 7 – but that doesn’t mean that every toss comes up 7.</p>
<p>Drawing from my sample of 2 (my own kids), I wonder if there is an “ED personality.”</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That’s how both my kids approach it (in fairness, I’m sure I’ve steered them towards this). I’ve said – look, guys, you have a secret weapon. You’re full pay. You don’t need to worry about the FA piece of the equation. It’s pretty evident that in most cases, the admission rates are higher in ED than RD (and yeah, yeah, there may be the legacies and athletes and what-not, but you’re not going to be applying anywhere where you aren’t reasonably in the ballpark, so don’t sweat it). So, as we visit this spring, keep a real good eye out towards where you might want to ED. There is not one “dream” college – but many places that you might be happy at, and one place where you might want to roll the dice and lock in and forego seeing where else you might have gotten in.</p>
<p>So the lesson is that if the calculator comes out too low, go ahead and apply ED with FA anyway, because there’s not much predictive value in the calculators. And if the calculator comes out high enough, go ahead and apply ED with FA, but beware that the calculator may not be accurate, and you may be disappointed, and have to apply RD to other schools. As always, this applies only to your one favorite school above all others; don’t apply ED if you want to compare FA packages or you don’t have a clear favorite.</p>
<p>I would just add that my d. had BELOW MEDIAN test scores when applying two colleges which admit a substantial number of their class via the ED process, and she was admitted RD. </p>
<p>It is very easy to rationalize a successful ED application post-decision with the idea that the kid would not have gotten in RD (because they were too well rounded or too lopsided or scores too low or whatever) – and I am sure that it would also be easy for an unsuccessful RD applicant to rationalize that they would have been admitted but for their decision to apply RD. But that’s simply engaging in a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. </p>
<p>The bottom line is that the college itself is not going to act against its own interests. It is not going to tie up spaces in the ED round with unhooked, lower-stat, financially needy students knowing full well that there will be better students to choose from in the RD round. They are going to fill those limited ED spots with hooked applicants, high stat applicants, and full payers to the extent that they can. If anything, ED would then be a boost to chances of high stat applicants – those who the college would be sure to want, but could be passed over later on simply due to the college running out of space.</p>
<p>“If anything, ED would then be a boost to chances of high stat applicants – those who the college would be sure to want, but could be passed over later on simply due to the college running out of space.”</p>
<p>I also think this is correct. And for need-aware schools, also due to running out of money for high-stat financial aid applicants.</p>
<p>I previously posted this and I may have generalized too much. However, after I asked a Yale adcom personally about chances between ED and RD, he told me I should only apply ED ( or SCEA in Yale’s case) if it was my first- choice school. He also said that if an applicant was accepted SCEA than he would also be accepted RD at Yale, because the applicant already demonstrated that they are good fit, have the credentials, etc… He also said that if an applicant was accepted RD than the the applicant could have been either accepted or deferred SCEA. </p>
<p>Of course this does not apply to every school, but a Yale adcom personally told me this himself when I was deciding between which school to apply EA/ED to, since Yale’s early program is restrictive. That is my reason for stating my previous post.</p>
<p>I now know to stay away from the parent’s forum if you are not a parent.</p>
<p>Calmom, I never said that because the online calculator worked well for us that it would work well for everyone. However, as a balance to your experience that they are not predictive, I add mine that they are. Why should just your negative experience stand as an absolute experience? It is not. Neither is mine. Both outcomes exist. And, no, having the calculators work is not like winning the lottery. Please. No point in hyperbole. The kids I know who have applied ED got something pretty close to what they were expecting. Maybe they’re just better about their pre-application research, but no huge surprises. Doesn’t mean others are not surprised – I’m not saying that, I offer in advance of your retort – just saying people need to do their own homework and exercise their own best judgement.</p>
<p>Pop, as to angular vs. more typical applicants… I have no idea about that really. I was just describing our situation. I thought it was interesting that at my son’s school they said the biggest advantage to ED was that they had more time to spend on each application. That may be meaningful to people in a wide range of angularity or non-angularity. It just depends on their individual kid, I think. It was just an interesting way of describing the difference in application processing. I’m not sure too many people (angular or otherwise) would think that having 30 minutes instead of 5 to consider their app would be anything other than a good thing.</p>
<p>feel free to chime in anytime. What you have just learned however, is that there can be a rather large difference between Early Decision, which is binding, and Early Acceptance, which is not. (And, I have little doubt that there is no difference between SCEA and RD at Yale and Stanford.)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Feel free to rationalize a successful RD application post-decision…which is “simply engaging in a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.” </p>
<p>Anecdotes are just that, yours, mine and the moon’s. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>I think I read something in my college paper today saying that they only consider applications on a need-blind basis for early decision applicants.</p>
<p>'rentof2, thanks for the reply. Your prior post raised a very interesting question.</p>
<p>Admissions is a zero sum game. The number of acceptances does not change based on how slowly or how quickly adcoms read the apps. If, by reading the apps more carefully, the likes of your son get better chances, then some other applicants must have the opposite effect. What are those applicants like? In fact, if anyone believes by reading his/her app more carefully, his/her chances would go up, then there must be another applicant whose chances would go down. In other words, what kind of applicants would be negatively impacted if the adcoms read the apps more carefully?</p>
<p>I take it that you don’t know what a null hypothesis is?</p>
<p>If the premise is, “the calculators are accurate”, then even one instance of an inaccurate prediction is proof that they are NOT accurate. </p>
<p>If you had a large amount of data, you might have enough to determine some sort of statistical level of reliability – for example, with enough data you might be able to determine that the calculators are accurate 30% of the time, or 60% of the time, or whatever. But we don’t have that – we just have anecdotal evidence that is enough to prove that they are not always accurate, and thus should not be relied on by a family needing financial aid.</p>
<p>PaperChasePop – I don’t think any one whose application can’t survive a careful read is going to do well no matter what. The admissions department is fully capable of reading all of the applications before them to the extent that they need to. Anyone involved any sort of profession requiring reading and sorting through a lot of paperwork develops a knack for quickly skimming for the most salient bits of information, and the admissions staff knows what the institutional priorities are. A weak application is weak no matter when received – and the highly competitive colleges aren’t in the business of granting admission to weak applications. </p>
<p>My guess is that in a highly competitive environment, if something doesn’t stand out or pique the interest of the reader in the first 2 minutes, its unlikely that more time spent on the application is going to make a difference. They aren’t going to approach application-reading like a hunt for buried treasure. </p>
<p>An applicant who does the research needed to get a sense of the institutional priorities and who carefully targets applications to the schools most likely to be responsive to whatever the applicant offers is way ahead of the applicant who looks at raw percentages and assumes that their chances of admission are somehow better because of the statistical score range or reported percentage of admissions during the ED round. Of course that applicant also needs to shape their application in such a way that it is easy to read and get the point. </p>
<p>I’d advise anyone who thinks their chances depend on a careful read of their application to focus on doing a better job with presentation on their app. There is no one point in the process when ad coms are not busy – on the contrary, during the ED round many of the people who make admissions decisions might also be juggling a large number of additional responsibilities. The admissions officer featured in The Gatekeepers was also required to travel extensively visiting high schools, giving presentations, interviewing students, etc, during that time frame. It was only when the RD deadline passed that he could shift to reading apps on full time basis. By that time some RD applicants had already caught his attention, perhaps because he met them at their high schools or their gc’s had put in a good word. So there is a lot more to the attention-getting task than timing of the application.</p>
<p>Since an ED applicant can decline an acceptance offer if the financial aid is inadequate then they don’t really have to rely on the calculators, they can use them for reference – we did and it was useful – or not. If someone wants to apply ED with significant financial need, then that is their perogative. There is a lot of scare-talk on CC about that, but hopefully people will do their own research and come to their own conclusions.</p>
<p>What is it that makes some people so disparaging of ED? I understand criticism that it favors the well-prepared and the well-to-do… but if students needing aid are scared off by the don’t-apply-ED-if-you-need-aid mantra, doesn’t that just perpetuate the problem?</p>
<p>There are a few people on CC (I’m not the only one these days) that will continue to provide examples of excellent outcomes for students with high need applying ED. When we were making that decision I only got that message from people here by private message (they were not interested in stirring the pot, I guess), but I have chosen a more public expression of it as a matter of balance on the board. You should carry on, as will I.</p>
<p>But the point is that the ED applicant is forced to make a decision accepting or declining the offer without knowing what other options are going to be in the spring – AND the declining applicant may also lose the ability to apply to any other private schools, either because their name shows up on a list of accepted ED students that other colleges will honor, or because their guidance counselor refuses to assist them after they have reneged on the ED application. So it becomes an all or nothing shot, with the potential that in the end the choices are no better – and perhaps far worse than they would have been had the student simply applied RD.</p>