In 20 college tours, we never heard anyone say there’s no benefit to applying ED. We heard everyone say that they don’t have lower standards in ED. Those are not contradictory.
If the school is building an orchestra and picks up a piccolo player in the ED round and needs only 1, the 10 piccolo players applying in the RD round are doomed. Maybe the school will stretch for one of them but the early bird got that worm. So there is most certainly an advantage in applying ED, but not a relaxation of standards. The CCs at our school encouraged students who had a first choice they could afford per the NPC to do ED for that reason.
Deferring a student to RD (versus rejecting them) is not yield protection. It is an important piece of enrollment management, especially if merit is involved. This is partly why I asked if “yield protection” meant the same thing to everyone here.
As your friend probably told you, managing that merit budget line is a nightmare for admissions. One on hand, they can use it to entice students they really want and on the other, there’s heck to pay if somehow there are more students taking them up on this than there are dollars to cover it. The practice of conveying merit offers with decision makes it tough but it is admissions ’ tool to use, so that’showit is done.
I wish your son2 success. It sounds like you are savvy and understand the need to ensure the applications convey fit and interest and don’t telegraph anything that suggests they wouldn’t seriously consider an offer if they get one.
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On the one hand, there’re surely some who believe their high-stat kids were deferred/waitlisted because of yield protection. On the other hand, there’re some who think yield protection is imaginary because high-stat kids can be deferred/waitlisted for a variety of reasons. Guess what? There’s some truth in each but the real truth is somewhere in-between, just like almost everything else in today’s world.
Before we can determine whether yield protection exists or not, we have to define what it is. To me, yield protection isn’t yield/enrollment management. It’s a practice that purposely defers/waitlists/rejects applicants who would otherwise be in the college’s admit pile (i.e. meeting every admission criterion and the college’s special needs) except that the college had some doubt about whether they would enroll if admitted. Since no college will ever admit to such practices, we can only infer from experiences. I’ve observed repeatedly instances like the following:
A very strong applicant who applied (all non-binding) to a number of tippy-top schools and a couple of the lower-tier schools. S/he paid special attention to demonstrating mutual fit to all schools, particularly those known to consider “demonstrated interest”. S/he was accepted by the tippy-tops but deferred/waitlisted by lower-tier schools. Could s/he be a poor “fit” for the lower-tier schools? S/he obviously met all the criteria and the special needs of the tippy-tops, but apparently not the lower-tier schools.
What’s common in all those instances is the applicant’s “overqualification” for the lower-tier schools, most often in academics. But we’ll never know for certain.
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citivas, One need only spend a few minutes looking at admissions data for schools to see that most schools have higher acceptance rates for students who apply ED than those who apply EA or RD. This is especially true for schools that are typically the “second choice” for a more popular or prestigious college. It seems silly for schools to claim that there is no advantage to applying ED.
If a student has a clear favorite school, especially if it is a reach, the only reason not to apply ED would be financial considerations.
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And I’ll add that many schools are starting to fill more and more of their class in ED, and now adding EDII. (This maybe should go in the students applying to more schools thread because this is definitely a way to better manage yield).
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The devil is in the details though. The ED round often includes a significant proportion of the recruited athletes (and at some schools this is a significant proportion of total admits), Questbridge/Posse/Other access org applicants, legacies, and other hooked candidates. For an example, do the analysis at an LAC like Middlebury and their ED round. Get an adjusted ED acceptance rate by taking out about 75 recruited athletes, 30 Posse students, and make some assumptions for URM/legacy/other hooked candidates and compare to the RD round acceptance rate.
I do believe that ED still offers a benefit in most instances, but it’s less than a few minute look at relative acceptance rates would suggest.
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Sure, but many schools have long said the higher acceptance rates in ED are deceptive because of athletes, legacies and other hooks, and that students should not have the impression that ED is actually any easier for the unhooked student than RD. I attended many info sessions where they made this point. (A few did the opposite and straight up said ED was an advantage for the student.)
The point my associate was making is that usually the schools claiming it is not an advantage for the unhooked students are not being honest. In most (not all) cases it is. I doubt that’s surprising or controversial here, but I threw it in since there has been debate about it (here and elsewhere) over the years due to the contradictory statements from the colleges, and the fact that most schools don’t provide enough public data to settle the issue definitively.
I think the calculus for many students is their true “dream school” is a high reach, possibly without a true ED or even the ED is a long shot, and they are trying to decide between using the EA/SCEA/ED for the dream school or using in on a lesser reach where they would still be happy and where they calculate their chances of the ED paying off is higher.
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Colleges where level of applicant’s interest (or whatever term they use) is considered or important in admissions are indirectly admitting to such practices.
I don’t necessarily equate “demonstrated interest” with yield protection (based on how I would define it).
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Why not? Tracking demonstrated interest is a key way to manage yield. Then other factors like ability and willingness to pay, success from applicant’s high school or zip code, success from applicant’s state, etc.
I define yield protection more narrowly (and separately from yield management). In the example I gave in my earlier post, applicants who did demonstrate interest (but didn’t apply ED/ED2 for the “ultimate” demonstration of interest) still suffered from yield protection.
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My son, who attends a top boarding school (where roughly 75% of each class attends top colleges), recently got deferred EA by Northeastern and waitlisted RD. Counselor warned him that a few years ago he would have considered Northeastern a safety for him, and almost everyone who applied from the boarding school got in. However, in recent years, most students who did not apply ED have been waitlisted or rejected, likely because almost everybody in earlier years who got in turned down Northeastern because they got into better schools. If you look at the Northeastern RD thread this year, there is a kid who was deferred EA then accepted with Dean’s Scholarship RD. If that doesn’t prove the existence of yield protection, I don’t know what does.
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Or @RosePetal35 , NEU felt they could only admit him with the scholarship but they were at the scholarship limit on the EA date. With some EA students pulling themselves out of the pool because of ED offers, they had funds again.
Schools that get high stats students looking for merit have a very fine line to manage. They know these kids won’t say yes without merit yet they can’t risk having so many merit offers out there that they exceed budget.
This is enrollment management, not yield protection. Yield protection is “we won’t accept you because we know you won’t come.”
I think what we agree that a high stats student cannot count on being admitted to any school simply by virtue of being at the high end of their stats pool. In past, there was more certainty that they would.
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“Any” is too strong a statement, since there are many schools with automatic admission or scholarship thresholds that are published beforehand.
Of course, the problem is that high stats students and their parents often consider such schools “beneath” them.
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“ deferred EA by Northeastern and waitlisted RD”
Isn’t this a form of yield protection? Deferred in EA. Now write a LOCI to prove you want to stay involved. Waitlisted in RD to again show your interest. Each step strings along the applicant while gathering information.
I’m assuming this applicant would be admitted to higher ranked colleges.
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There’s no way to know that this was “yield protection”. We don’t know what other candidates the AO was considering. Maybe if this candidate were from a different zip code, had different academic interests, were a different gender, etc, the result would have been different. Maybe the applicant suggested they didn’t care about the coops while others did.
We don’t know what their enrollment strategy is, what “buckets” they are trying to fill, and what the applicant pool was.
It’s possible that if this kid wants this school and accepts a WL position, he’ll get a call. But perhaps not.
Fwiw, @Lindagaf and I both had kids that ended up on the WL for the same school years ago. (I don’t think our cases were yield protection.) Her D was hands down the stronger student but my S got the WL call a full 2 months before her D did. Why? They needed boys. Just an illustration of the admissions drivers.
When people get hung up on stats and see admissions purely in that context, they miss everything else the schools needs to balance. It’s easy then to jump to a conclusion about intent.
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Was your son above the 75th percentile in both test scores and grades? Colleges in the 40 to 100 ranking range seem most likely to boost apps while carefully managing yield.
A healthy WL at a top private with small enrollment makes sense. Not sure if that’s your case but those types want balance and can’t afford missing the enrollment and income numbers.
@tristatecoog , no, not a slam dunk. Above 75% in only one SAT section. Top 20 LAC. It was probably a high match/low reach for him. They had deferred him in an ED round (another sign it wasn’t yield protection).
Honestly, I think he was just several things they needed at that time – gender, geography, general academic interest, $, etc. And I suspect that it was later on, as summer melt started, that they needed a girl.
Smaller LACs work hard to be 50 50 boys and girls.
I just mention this to illustrate what you pointed out – schools are working really hard to balance so many things in enrollment. It’s not just snagging the highest stat kids they can find.
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