I wish D22 would apply ED to my alma mater or another of his top 3 but he doesn’t want to decide in advance. He applied EA to UVM, deferred…3 friends including the school valedictorian were also deferred.
Back in the day I didn’t apply ED because my top choice, dream school, etc. was Stanford, which didn’t have any early programs. I applied regular admission to all 8? schools, accepted to 6. No regrets… I loved my second choice. Occasionally I wonder what if?
In case you missed it, it’s a seller’s market at all of the top schools.
Your school also does not have the toxic mix of “if it’s not an Elite you’re a failure” and “I was accepted to a more prestigious college than you” that is almost certainly going on at your Long Island Friend’s school. ED generally offered by expensive private “elite” colleges, a couple of publics who consider themselves to be more like private “elites” than like public universities (UVA and W&M), and, for some reason, three smaller SUNYs (ESF, Geneseo, and Maritime College).
So most “elite” colleges have ED applications, and, at high schools which serve a population of which at least 25% consider it a “must” to attend an “elite” college, and at which attending an “elite” is a status symbol, many students and parents will be engaging in any possible strategy to increase their chances of being accepted to an “elite” college (some of those strategies not being legal, as we have seen).
Then there is the fact that high schools which serve high-SES families also have many legacies for “elite”, and many “elite” colleges only provide “legacy boosts” to students who apply ED.
Finally, these same high schools also have many students who engage in sports-for-the-wealthy, or the school itself has a competitive lacrosse team, crew, etc. So there are also the recruited athletes who apply ED.
High schools which serve lower or middle income families generally have fewer than 3% (more often fewer than 1%) who even consider attending an “elite” college to be a viable option, so colleges which have ED are rarely on any of the student’s radar at these schools.
So GCs are
I don’t necessarily agree that Early Decision is just about getting into the most elite college possible. Our S had a clear, realistic top-choice school that ED gave him a much better chance at acceptance than RD. Yes, there is a tendency to overreach with ED! and pressure to get into an “elite school.” However, I believe for the majority; Early Decision is part of an overall strategy that is driven by the type of school you are looking at
So, for example, if Tulane is at the very top of your list and you have a strong chance of getting in ED and a slighter chance of getting in RD, what do you do? You get into Tulane ED and kick yourself because you got into total reach school EA. Then, you do RD at Tulane and kick yourself because you don’t get in.
Our college counselor (with close to 30 years of experience, selective small public school) didn’t encourage ED at all. In fact, she almost discouraged from applying ED, saying it’s good for colleges but not so good for families, because of the financial pressure and the lack of options to compare. My daughter wanted a LAC, but she didn’t have a clear forerunner and, most importantly, we needed to compare financial aid/merit offers. It all worked out for her–she got into every single school she applied to RD with merit (and, in fact, the school we kind of forgot about emerged as the top choice–not just for financial reasons, but as a better academic fit, after we looked more closely at their offerings). She did apply to her two safeties (including our public flagship) EA, so she had acceptances in late November–mid-December, which was nice. Most of her friends didn’t do ED, either, but we know one who did, because the family had no financial constraints and he had a clear top choice (also a LAC).
I see the advantages of going ED for those who know they can afford it and have a clear top choice, but I’m glad we had no pressure to pursue this route, given our circumstances.
I see all the issues with ED stated on this thread but I want to mention just a few benefits to the student since some are saying it only benefits the school.
We are lucky enough to not have had to compare financial offers - to me that is one of the biggest issues about ED and I hope gets addressed somehow since RD may be getting even tougher now with more accepted in ED. Anyway, both my D21 and S22 are high stats kids and both had a clear top choice and applied ED. One very helpful thing about ED for them was they it showed the school it was their top choice. My D21’s school is an Ivy back up for some students so the ED was her was of showing that school wasn’t her back up. Without ED it is hard for students to let the school know it is their top choice.
And then the other benefits of being done in December and not having to do a bunch more apps.
I am not saying what I think of ED overall, I just wanted to say it isn’t just one sided in favor of the school all the time. In fact, I am intrigued by the idea of this whole process being replaced by a rank ordering system…
Let’s make an assumption that kids have not gotten smarter in the last year or two, and that every graduating high school class falls on basically the same distribution. For the sake of this discussion, let’s also assume that the population of kids interested in 4 year colleges is roughly static (there is some evidence it is actually shrinking, at least for boys).
If that is the case, then the high likelihood is that the increase in applications over the last few years is just the same kids applying to more schools. And the big increase in EA applications at the T25 publics this year is just kids applying earlier. I think that a lot of kids that get accepted to schools they like in EA are unlikely to send applications out in the RD pool to similar universities to the ones they are already accepted at. They may take a flyer on a top school, but if a kid is accepted to a 40 to 70 ranked school that they already like, how likely is that kid to send an application to another 40 to 70 ranked school, or even a 20 to 40 ranked school? If they really wanted that marginally better ranked school, they would have applied early to that school. And the increase in ED acceptances will definitely pull a lot of kids out of the applicant pool in RD. Finally, if a kid is sitting on an acceptance from a good public school that will cost $50,000 a year out of state, that kid’s parents are not going to be super excited about applying to another school that is $70,000 or $80,000 a year.
I would not be surprised if the RD pool is actually less competitive this year than it was last year. Acceptance rates may still be around the same, but the profile of the applicants could be less competitive. I think there will be more kids applying to reach schools in RD, whatever a reach school is for that kid, which may maintain the application numbers but a lot of these kids will not be realistic candidates for admission.
I thought so too, as I commented in this thread earlier, that RD might become less competitive with more kids withdrawing due to EA/ED acceptances.
But while the denominator ( number of applicants in RD) will shrink so is the numerator ( no of open spots available). Hence I am skeptical about RD becoming less competitive especially in T40 schools.
At the end of the day, all that matters is the total number of students starting college in a given year. I believe it’s dropping.
From what I’ve seen, NPCs on websites have made it easier for students who need aid to apply ED. So while more students are getting in ED, the pool has also become more inclusive. The big question is how we ED has changed for the bucket you fit.
While I would hope that NPC has made ED pool inclusive, my suspicion will be that its not and has made process more skewed in favor of demographic that don’t need aid especially in need aware colleges. I don’t know if colleges do share the data on “$ aid distributed” during ED round.
My speculation ( I have no data to support) is that colleges use ED to get to the $ tuition figure of where they want to be for a certain in coming class and then assess the aid they are comfortable giving out in RD round.
For those interested, of 143 school tracked in the attached, the maximum possible percentage was 50-60% for 34, over 60% for 10.
I’ve made this point before. But the “schools must be harder to get into, just look at the falling acceptance rate” “logic” seems to prevail.
I DO think that ED is, and always has been, helpful in getting the full pay students.
At the school my son attended, many students who need aid also do ED – IF the NPC shows it will be affordable. They are, of course, giving up the opportunity to see if somewhere else might be more affordable. But the full pay students are giving up the chance to see what kind of merit they could get elsewhere. ED does not allow optimization for anyone. But if it gets you admission where you can pay it, it works.
Programs like Questbridge also use ED spots. As noted, not all buckets are the same!
My daughter was ecstatic to get in ED. She would utterly disagree that there was a con in being locked in November of her senior year. She had absolutely zero doubt what her top choice was in August. She loved having the decision made and just being able to move on with the transition. For some kids, it is a HUGE relief. Some kids don’t have a clear favorite and want more time to decide, some want to weigh financial aid or merit offers - some know and want to be DONE - she’s always said it was the best Christmas present she ever received to not have to submit the waiting RD applications.
Every student is different. For my son, he didn’t want to make any commitment to any college by Nov. 1, even though we’d visited all the colleges (and a few of them more than once) on his list. We kicked the tires as much as we could in the two years leading up to his applications. He sat in classes at colleges that offered them. He visited departments of those colleges that could provide such arrangements. He even slept in the dorms at a few colleges. But he still felt he needed to assess his options more closely the following March and April.
Having the options in March and April turned out be wonderful. Colleges hosted admitted students’ days or weekends, or even individualized visits (at least pre-pandemic). Students would have much greater access to schools’ resources including department faculties. The shoe was on the other foot and the student was in the driver’s seat.
My D feels the same way. While there were other schools she could have been happy at, she was sure what her top choice was, we were pretty sure that based on the NPC it would be affordable, and she could not be more relieved to be done. I think the holidays, not to mention months more of waiting, would have really worn on her. Now she can just sit back & enjoy the rest of her senior year (in theory, if COVID would just cooperate). For her there was little to no downside to doing ED. Not true for everyone but she was relieved to apply EA & ED to all but one of her schools. Had she not gotten in ED she still would have had choices & would have put in a RD app or two as well, but it’s just wonderful to be DONE.
My son had no preference before Nov. 1 and still is unsure what his #1 is. We haven’t seen any schools except UCLA and USC as we are local and didn’t fly anywhere to visit schools during COVID. However, in my unscientific observations- in our very high performing and $$$ zip code area- not many of our high schoolers went ED because they are waiting on our excellent and affordable options at the UCs (most certainly a majority would be full pay). We had a lot of REA/EA instead.
Glancing over the numbers, it appears schools with RD admission rate of <= 12% had a ratio of >= 2 (except for one). Of course, it could be that the low RD admission rate is due to the high ED ratio.
Just a correlation that stuck out…
If by “inclusive”, you mean “increase the number of low income students attending popular colleges”, it has likely made little difference, one way of another. ED admissions also likely made little difference in the chances of an individual URM to be accepted to a popular college. As more students apply to these same set of already popular colleges, the chances of individual URMs drop, but that particular process has little to do with ED applications.
What ED does which reduces inclusivity, is that it provides a way for students who apply ED to substantially reduce college application angst by getting it done early, while, at the same time, increasing their chances at their top choice of college. However, since applying ED does not really work for kids who need to compare financial aid packages, it is mostly kids from wealthy families who benefit from these advantages of ED.
sorry deleted too much of the message, no longer makes sense.