Fellow parents: Now that ED 1 decisions are in the rear view mirror, do any of you have any anecdotal evidence (or gut feeling) if your child (or perhaps a friend of your child) that applied ED to a highly competitive school without having any hook* (i.e., not an athlete, not a legacy, etc.) saw a notable benefit from applying ED?
My kid did not apply ED to anywhere (her first choices are not any schools that have ED), but judging from the small sample of her friends, it was kind of all over the map. A double legacy friend got deferred, a few friends with no discernible hooks (except for being top-notch students, etc.) got admitted to early Ivies and MIT. The kid I found most impressive, with a unique talent, got deferred at Harvard.
My kid’s ED school had a 23% acceptance rate for ED. I wonder what it is for unhooked kids though. It didn’t help him at all. But the hooked kids seemed to do very well. So it works well for them!
@Moonshot99 how would one know if applying ED helped? For all we know,the adcoms saw something in the application for accepted ED students that impressed them. And for all,we know…these students would have had the same outcomes RD.
My son had two friends who applied ED to the same school. One was definitely unhooked but had strong scores, the other had lower scores but had been having discussions with one of the athletic coaches (it wasn’t clear how much, if at all, the coach wanted him although he did a few camps there). The definitely unhooked one got accepted and the maybe sports one got deferred. We later heard that the ED acceptance rate for this school was 12%. I do feel that the definitely unhooked one was a great candidate for this particular school and in my opinion would have also gotten in RD.
My D ED’d at Lafayette College, a LAC that takes about half of its class through ED. The college even posts class profiles that shows ED versus RD stats. She was an “unhooked” applicant. The school was her definitive top choice, we are thankfully in a position where we did not feel we needed to compare financial offers, and she is a kind of anxious kid who wanted the process to be “over”. We all felt applying ED was beneficial not only in terms of gaining an acceptance to her top choice school, but also for allowing her to relax and enjoy the second half of her senior year.
My S’s top choice was an EA school so he did not ED anywhere. In the end he got a number of great acceptances and he thought long and hard (we went to a few accepted student days) before deciding to attend his initial top choice school. In the end he was glad that he went through the entire process.
Bottom line, ED is great for particular schools (which have higher ED acceptance rates as compared to RD acceptance rates) and in particular circumstances (student has a definite top choice, family has no need to compare financial offers). It is not right for everyone or every situation.
It was not a benefit for either of my kids.
Perhaps the most obvious situation where applying ED may help in admission is if an “overqualified” student is applying to a school that considers “level of applicant’s interest”.
However, that may have a detrimental effect on the chances of getting non-automatic-for-stats merit scholarships or preferentially packaged financial aid.
@thumper1 I don’t know if it is possible. I run into opinions from both camps - those who say it does help and those who say it doesn’t - so I’m trying to see if anyone has more more insight now that another ED season has passed. In the end, I am trying to come to a final opinion on the value of ED before my first child applies next fall.
I think ED was beneficial for my son. His 6 year older big sister was an RD admit when there were 13,000 applicants for 2500 freshman slots. By the time my son was ready to apply, the applicant pool was 30,000 for the same 2500 spots. Their stats, scores and ECs were similar, so he applied and was admitted ED. If he would have waited - maybe, maybe not - only the AdCom knows.
It sure didn’t help my son at Brown! They deferred, then WL, then rejected him. Ouch. But he is now doing well at Oberlin, his second choice, and that school gave him merit money, so we’re very happy about the reduced price tag.
Right…only the adcom knows if ED really was a tip. There is nomway for anyone to know for sure if ED was the tip,for,their kiddo. Ther kiddo might have been accepted anyway.
My D was accepted to her top choice ED1 (Pomona), but as others have pointed out it’s hard to know if it made the difference. She was an unhooked high stats female with good EC’s, and it really was her first choice so it made sense to apply ED. Almost everyone she knew with her stats was applying SCEA to HYPS, and I like to think she stood out among the non-hooked applicants in the ED1 pool. But I don’t really know. I do see a lot of students on CC who seem to be applying ED in the hopes of making up for a deficit in GPA and/or test scores (they are on the low end of the 50% range or even in the bottom 25% for the ED school). Most of the time that doesn’t seem to work out, based on my anecdotal observation of the results threads.
I think it was a benefit for my unhooked kid and my hooked (legacy) kid, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
It’s hard to tell. My unhooked D applied ED to a SLAC last year and was admitted. Would she also have been admitted RD? I think so, but I have no way to really know. The ED acceptance rate is much higher, but most or many of those ED kids were legacies or recruited athletes with the “support” of a coach, so I’m not sure that her chances were really better in the ED round. She was certain that this is where she wanted to go, though, and wanted to be finished with the “college process” in December instead of waiting until the end of March. It definitely made for a less stressful senior year of HS. According to Naviance and our CC, she had the stats/scores to make her a competitive applicant from her HS. ED did show them that this really was her first choice, though, and not a back-up, so perhaps that made a difference. The college gives no merit aid, so we didn’t worry that ED would lessen any awards she could get. I’ve also seen great candidates and legacies apply ED and not get in early, so perhaps they saw something in my D that they really wanted and gave her that early acceptance. Without being in the room when the decision is made, it’s impossible to really know.
My D was accepted ED to a LAC this yr. She was a solid candidate, so perhaps she would have had the same success RD. But it was her clear first choice, she was happy to have it resolved early and didn’t want to risk getting ‘lost’ in a bigger pool of RD applicants. For her friends, a mixed bag at ED. Some with hooks got in, some with hooks denied or deferred, and the same for unhooked kids - some good news, some disappointing. I do think ED gives a boost at certain schools, but it won’t make up for an application/stats that is weak for the school.
The likely non-hook situations where ED may boost admission chances:
a. “Overqualified” applicant at a school that considers “level of applicant’s interest”. Such schools may suspect that “overqualified” applicants are using them as last-choice “safeties”, so they reject or waitlist them to protect their yield. But an ED applicant has declared that this school is his/her first choice and will attend if admitted, so that is not a concern.
b. Well qualified applicant, but has a similar profile to numerous other well qualified applicants, at a school which actively tries to build a “balanced” class (for whatever definition it has of “balanced”). So being among the first well qualified applicants of that common profile by applying in the ED round may be helpful, because as that profile “fills up” in the RD round, it may be harder to be admitted then.
But applying ED may result in a lower chance of merit scholarships or preferentially packaged financial aid.
ED is a system designed to benefit the colleges and their agendas.
It benefits them to lock in students who they are absolutely certain that they want.
It does not benefit them to lock in students who are not clearly offering something better than they will be able to get in the RD round, when they may have many more students to choose from.
Things the colleges want are:
-specific qualities that fill their goals, which are not otherwise easy to come by. Those are the “hooks” – recruited athletes, meeting diversity goals, etc.
So higher than typical SAT scores can be a “hook” in some cases if the college wants to keep its numbers up.
Anything that does not benefit the college as compared with what will invariably be available to them in the RD round is simply not a good reason to support ED admission. That’s the mistake in thinking that an applicant with weaker-than-typical stats will get a leg up somehow because of the higher admit rate in the ED round. If, for example, the median SAT is 700, then there is no benefit at all for the college to admit the student with a 650 in the ED round - absent other value-added qualities (i.e., “hooks”) – in that case, it is merely tying up a spot with a student whose numbers are bringing their stats down, creating extra pressures to find higher stat students in the RD round.
No one can ever say what was in the mind of the ad coms, but in the RD round, the college also has to consider yield. Students are most likely to accept an offer from a school which either is the “best” (most selective/most prestigious) school that admits them, or the one that offers the best financial aid (or a combination of both). So in the RD round, the agenda might shift somewhat, depending on how well goals were met in the ED round.
For example, if a lot of very high stat students were admitted ED, then the college has more flexibility to offer RD spots to students with somewhat lower stats who may also be somewhat more likely to attend, while perhaps waitlisting higher stat students (who might be assumed to be likely to get into competitor schools that tend to win out when students are admitted to both).
That RD applicant obviously still needs to have something that the college wants, but the college agenda and goals would have shifted.
ED worked wonderfully for my son. This was several years back, but I think the premise is still valid. Plus, there were two unexpected kickers that were revealed later.
His selective LAC was his #1 choice. His scores and grades were mid-range. He did have very strong ECs and a compelling life story, but I’m not sure that you would call either a hook. We knew we wouldn’t be getting need based aid and merit aid was unlikely. He was accepted and we were all grateful.
The first factor that made us glad that admissions were done and dusted was that his first semester senior year grades were the weakest of his entire high school transcript. (Ironically, the second semester, when it made no difference whatsoever, he got all A’s.)
Then, four months later we learned something that made us really glad that ED had worked out. No one from his small international school had attended – or even demonstrated interest – in this LAC for as long as any of the counselors could remember. It was completely off the radar.
In April I got a call from a parent whom I had never met telling me that her son had also chosen the same LAC out of a sterling group of acceptances. Of course I knew her son – he was the class salutatorian, almost all A’s, top IB scores, near-perfect SATs, two varsity sports, several languages, all around good person – and he played the trombone! I think if my son had applied in the RD round with this kid, because of the size and profile of their high school, only one would have been admitted. Guess which one.
So the takeaway for me is that sometimes NOT applying ED can be risky too.
Thanks everyone! I appreciate all your thoughts.