dd has doubt on early decision application. any advise?

I suggest converting the ED to RD. Neither my daughter nor I would be able to stand taking the risk of getting accepted ED into #2 choice when an acceptance to #1 choice might arrive the same day.
We played with timing issues with my daughter’s #1 and #2 choices - one had ED and the other ED 1 and II. She applied ED to her #1, but we were planning/hoping/praying timing would work out to apply EDII to second choice if she was rejected at choice #1. I did a lot of checking in, calling, and confirming - although GC was unwilling to confirm she would be able to turn around her piece to get EDII application in on time. This was really nerve-wracking for us both, and I think sometimes you need to take the step that minimizes anxiety. I don’t think there is anything ethically wrong with your plan, as long as your daughter enrolls at choice #2 if she is accepted ED.

@PetraMC I was quoting theloniusmonk, not you.

I agree best thing would be to change to RD but OP still seems loathe to do that and endanger D’s admit chances. I don’t think I can contribute anything more to this thread in that light, cards are all on the table now and the game is clear, OP still trying to have her cake and eat it too.

So many of S19’s schools are reach schools as well. His favorite schools are reach schools. Didn’t apply ED because he wasn’t ready to choose one. That’s not a justification for applying ED with the possibility of declining. Hardly anyone applies to a match or safety ED. That doesn’t even make sense. I don’t like it when people try to get a leg up using ED when they don’t 100% intend to use it.

For whatever it’s worth, the opinion often stated and restated by the ex-ivy admissions officer/ex-competitive LAC admissions director on the other blog I follow, is that the COLLEGES very much DO “game” the system, worse every year, a lot to do with how ED and info about it is not transparent or is quite misleading to the applicants, and that the “game” is stacked against the applicants with the colleges “gaming” it worse than the students are able to “game” it. NOT that it excuses unethical behavior of EITHER side, BUT we shouldn’t feel sorry for the colleges , if this is so.

Glad you opted not to go with the “let the chips land where they may” decision you referenced late yesterday. I sincerely hope it works out for her!

“Don’t mess it up for those who use it in good faith and who it does actually work for.”

Here’s the thing, in today’s college admissions, you can’t assume that everyone that applies ED is doing it in good faith, in fact many apply to their second or third choice college with the hopes it improves their chances. This happens a lot in stem, in a high school, e.g the best stem applicants will apply to basically to ea and scea colleges, and the next best who also have those colleges as their top, know they can’t get in vs the best (students have a pretty good idea of the pecking order of their classmates), so they apply ed. Look they will go if they apply ED, but they’re definitely gaming the system.

The way ED is going, more will apply not in “good faith” in your terms.

@homerdog

I don’t believe OP ever said they wouldn’t honor the ED if the student should be admitted. They are just hoping they could find out from EA before they change ED to RD. As long the student changes ED to RD before the school’s deadline for changing then they should be fine. I am in no way suggesting OP’s kid should back out of ED if she is admitted.
College admission is not straight forward. There is no reason why people shouldn’t use every hook/option they have.

“I don’t like it when people try to get a leg up using ED when they don’t 100% intend to use it.”

You’re ok with colleges using ED to get a leg up, but not students and parents. Why the double standard?

"whether we each get to individually decide which rules we want to follow "

Protesting against rules and maybe violating them is how change happens. According to this, Rosa Parks should have continued to sit in the back of a segregated bus. Ok this is not exactly civil rights, but it is a predatory practice and hopefully will be made illegal by the courts or justice system. Until then, protest or gaming is the only way.

This practice doesn’t hurt the colleges, it hurts other students. Even if another ED student will eventually get the slot, down the road, they wont know now when they should. That has all kinds of implications and potential costs for accepted student visits and the like.

Applying ED to a school is a choice. If you don’t like the concept, don’t apply ED.

@theloniusmonk I stand by my statement. S19 would have most likely gotten in to manybof his reaches if he had gone ED. I’m fairly sure of that. I said above that I don’t like ED and we’ve chosen not to use it because there are rules. Maybe this doesn’t apply to the OP because he never said they would back out of an ED agreement but wanting to switch to RD this late in the game shows that they only wanted to use the ED bump in case EA didn’t come through. They need to change to RD so they aren’t in a position where his daughter will have to go to her second choice school even if she eventually gets into her first choice.

I also think the plan was disingenuous because they were counting on the EA decision coming in before the ED decision. If that EA decision date wasn’t explicitly stated, then there should have been no ED2 app sent. They knew they could be hanging out with no answer from the EA as ED2 decisions were being made. I think the only honest way to use ED2 is when no other early options are in play. People use it when they weren’t ready to pull the trigger for ED1 or they were turned down by their ED1. It’s just not the right thing to do when an EA decision from a favorite school hasn’t even been sent yet.

Gotta disagree there. Many kids ED the school they love the most and think would be a great fit. Many times that’s a match school and they want to try to lock it in early by going ED

Agree, but with the caveat that the emphasis there would be “the school they love”, in which case the reach/match/safety model doesn’t really apply.

Maybe I missed something, but why wouldn’t you have applied ED to the #1 school? @bahamabreeze

@wisteria100 ok. I hope that true. No one here does that. They use ED for the hail Mary.

@Britmom5 I’m guessing that the OP’s number one school only had EA.

It is very common to apply to an ED school, as well as few EA schools, but knowing one would have to pull out of EA schools if admitted by the ED school. It is what D2 did. She applied to 1 ED school and 3 EA schools. She notified the EA schools after she was admitted to her ED school. Any one of those schools would have been a good fit for her if she should have been admitted. Again, was her ED school her #1 choice, maybe not, but did it work out well for her, yes. At the same time, with so many similar schools out there, how could someone say College X is my #1 choice, and not College Y.

I was unaware of OP’s other thread. I think if you legitimately want to change to RD from ED because you’ve had a change of heart, that is fine. However, I do agree that “gaming” the system is questionable. My S19 did ED2 to a reach school, but not before we discussed it at length. We ran the NPC and he was advised that if he did get in and the NPC was close to accurate he has an obligation to go.

ED was created by colleges to avoid competitions among themselves (and yes, so was SCEA or REA, but a lessor extent). It may not rise to the level of collusion, but its rules are certainly designed to benefit the colleges at the expense of applicants, and aren’t legally enforceable for good reasons. I don’t condone what the OP seemed to have done, but the colleges themselves bear some responsibility for creating these dubious rules.

“use ED for the hail Mary.”

Different areas obviously have different approaches, but around here the “hail Mary” type apps tend to be to SCEA colleges. ED apps tend to be kids who have a clear first choice, the choice is a great fit both ways, the stats look reasonable and they want to be done with the app process. I can’t think of one ED applicant for any of the kids we know where the college was a reachy reach for that kid (although I can think of several SCEA apps where the kid had a snowball’s chance in Hades). Maybe why that’s why so many ED apps were successful around here - they weren’t hail Marys, they were kids who were a great fit and ready to commit.

@1NJParent , except no one told this family to apply. It isn’t the colleges’ problem that OP’s daughter is trying to hedge her bets. It’s their choice and theirs alone. No one is forcing them to do this.