Hello again,
Since my thread ‘BS grade deflation’ took a slight left turn, I thought I’d start a new topic: BS early decision matriculation.
There has been some discussion on this topic about Loomis Chaffee and where their kids end up (great thread btw), but I’m curious to know about other BS schools. Are the BS kids who were accepted by ED all hooked? I’m curious to know people’s thoughts. TIA!
Data point of one; this unhooked applicant was accepted by his SCEA and EA schools.
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Great! (What’s SCEA?)
SCEA - Single Choice Early Action.
Apply early action but only to one school. And it’s not binding like ED.
As far as I know there are only a few schools that offer this including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford.
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Single Choice Early Action. Some universities call it Restrictive Early Action.
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OMG… I can barely get my head around M10… and now this? How will I survive high school? hahaha!
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I would guess the majority of bs students apply ED, both the hooked and the unhooked.
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For sure… what we are curious about is how many get IN… that’s the question… an in-the-know Lawrenceville pal of mine said around 30 kids (that she knew about) got in ED… out of a class of…? She had no idea bout hooked/non-hooked. Curious to know about other BS.
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Groton / Ivies EA/REA all hooked (legacy, athlete, urm) but 1. Uchicago ED something like 8/10 accepted (but they love us). Duke denied, Williams denied, Georgetown denied, Vanderbilt accepted (but possibly development hook). Trying to remember all the ones I’ve heard…
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I seriously doubt ALL Ed acceptances are hooked…plenty of kids apply ED/EA regardless…
https://www.instagram.com/deerfieldcolleges2023/
https://www.instagram.com/taftcolleges2023/
https://www.instagram.com/proctordecisions2023/
https://www.instagram.com/peddie2023collegedecisions/
some of these say or imply if kids are committed to a sport; and if you are super into such things some schools have on official page photos of kids who are committed, etc. No way of knowing about development/legacy status, etc.
(Ps these are just random schools I found quickly) and obviously kids have to chose to submit, so not everyone is included.
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True, not all ED/SCEA/REAs admitteds are hooked.
However, at the tippy top colleges, ED for unhookeds doesn’t give much of a boost anymore. When you strip out the athletic recruits, legacies, developments, URMs, and other institutional priority admits, there are very few ED spots left. For the unhooked in ED at ultra-rejective schools, the acceptance rates aren’t very far off what the acceptance rates are for Regular Decision. Some BS counselors will actually tell kids they have a better shot in RD than ED at certain elite schools. From what we’ve seen, the few ED spots left go to sky-high stat and class rank kids.
ED still does provide a significant boost for unhooked kids at most LACs.
As mentioned by several here, Chicago is an outlier, which continues to admit unhooked kids in ED and ED2 rounds at much higher rates than its peers - even those that don’t have super-high stats.
The Harvard Westlake handbook that was uploaded here in the forum gives great insight into unhooked acceptance rates, along with GPA buckets. The HW data is a great proxy for BS kids.
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At our school, many kids did ED and many were successful. Few were hooked and many needed FA.
While it doesn’t necessarily give a huge boost, it can help to be one of the earlier applicants in your buckets.
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Agree, I didn’t mean to imply anything contrary…
Also a data point: I do alum interviews for an ivy, mainly LPS students, so not BS/prep schoolers. I see unhooked kids get in ED and RD. No way to draw strategies from my sample size, but confirming it really does happen:)
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PS that Harvard Westlake Handbook is super interesting! Hadn’t seen that before…
L_NewEngland- You’re amazing! I’ve searched high and low on IG for Exeter, Choate, Andover, etc. and can’t find the decision accounts. How did you find these?? TIA
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The year our son graduated (2015) was the first year Choate stopped publishing names-to-colleges in the graduation program and no mention as students accepted their diplomas. Choate was quite adamant that matriculation results are not the focus of a Choate education. During college info weekend as parents filed in to take their seats in the auditorium for the opening session, a silent “Where did they go to College?” trivia game looped on the screen—all famous names, not a single famous college. The message couldn’t have been more blatant.
There have been many (many!) repetitive discussions about matriculation lists in this forum over the years, nothing really new to add. Here’s one about Deerfield that covered a lot of ground about why some schools stopped publishing more granular data.
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FWIW I can’t find ig w/ college acceptances for those schools either. Not all schools do it, I don’t think. Choate seems to have a page, but nothing on it. (possibly fake).
I follow our LPS ig, which has a very active one…The neighboring LPS not at all. So kind of random across board.
Students don’t make them. Talking about college all the time is considered a faux pas here, and I imagine it’s similar at those schools.
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interesting you think all of these are made by school’s admin? It doesn’t seem that way for most, though I have seen admin-run ones. e.g CHCH has it on their main page: https://www.instagram.com/chchschool/
Many have poor graphic design, weird logos and don’t even follow the school’s main pages. It is abundantly clear for my own prep school, the acceptances page is NOT run by the school unless they are proactively strategizing to make it seem student run, which would be very bizarre thing.
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I have no idea what is happening with the seniors at D24’s school, but last year in D22’s school with the exception of certain Ivy League schools (where many accepted students were hooked in some other way), plenty of unhooked candidates were accepted in the Early decision round at highly selective colleges and universities.
Most of D22’s classmates seemed to have at least one acceptance in the early rounds (ED1, ED2, EA, and REA/SCEA) though some went on to apply to others. The college advisors strongly encouraged everyone to apply early to at least one school. I think well over 50% (maybe 60-70%?) already had at least one option by January/February though not always their first choice.Obviously those who applied ED were completely done with the process because their acceptances were binding. Most kids who had a REA acceptance were also done --school discouraged kids from continuing to apply elsewhere if they had an REA acceptance. So unless it was a financial aid issue, both those groups were done by winter.
Maybe 30% of students from D22’s class were still waiting to hear from the regular decision round. Those were mostly kids who were deferred or turned down from their ED or EA applications as well as some kids who were accepted EA to colleges that weren’t their first choice, but they wanted to put in some RD applications as well. Overall, the strong advice from the college office was to identify schools that you love and apply to those schools in your early round in hopes of a one and done experience. With the exception of kids who needed financial aid, most kids did not put in additional regular decision applications.