<p>Hence the “through December” qualifier. There are lots of attractive options with “regular” EA that one has to forgo in order to take a shot at an SCEA school, and doing so eliminates the possibility of having a couple of acceptances before the holidays to mitigate stress and prune back from the planned number of RD apps. </p>
<p>(Note: My older child used ED successfully and thought it was great. He didn’t feel as if he had given up anything meaningful to him in the process.)</p>
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<p>This. Above all, this.</p>
<p>But it only works if you have a reasonable chance of admission anyway. If you apply ED to a school that’s an extreme reach for you, you’re just throwing away your one and only ED bid.</p>
<p>(Note: My younger child used ED successfully and did not regret it.)</p>
<p>I think EA can be fun if you can get an acceptance in hand. Takes the edge off the application season since you know you can go somewhere in the fall instead of having to feel like you are on a tightrope.</p>
<p>It’s like the difference between having a job while looking for another one, and looking for a job while living in a cardboard box onderneath the freeway overpass.</p>
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^^^
This.<br>
My son, who has a ‘checkered’ academic history, applied to 6 schools EA. The acceptances reduced stress, and the rejections allow recalibration. Huge wins.
Agreed. A system that fosters 17-year-olds making such a significant binding choice does not sit well with me. My sense is that few are equipped to do so intelligently and advisedly.</p>
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<p>Note that some schools with SCEA / REA have fairly significant loopholes which allow for EA application to such schools as public schools and schools with early deadlines for scholarships – these SCEA / REA schools are among the super-selective schools that probably don’t think that they will lose a cross-admit choice with a public school or one with an early deadline for scholarships (but expect their applicants to apply to such schools as safeties). (Tulane has fewer loopholes for its SCEA option.)</p>
<p>With either more or fewer loopholes, it is still a much less onerous tradeoff than the ED one.</p>
<p>ED schools allow people to apply to open EA schools with the understanding that if admitted they are committing to the ED school.</p>
<p>I know of people who got admitted to Columbia/Penn and MIT at the same time.</p>
<p>Well maybe SCEA hurts the peers the most. But I still don’t really get why they (and Stanford) feel the need to do it. It just seems like a lot of hubris to me. “We want you to looooove us and nobody else.” If 80% of Harvard applicants are going to say yes anyway, why is it so important they don’t apply anywhere else early? It’s really a mystery to me. I still think it’s amusing that when my older son applied to Harvard and was asked at his interview why he hadn’t applied SCEA, he replied because Harvard wasn’t his first choice. He got in, even though Harvard knew there was a decent chance he’d choose a different school. They seemed to want him - he got a call from one of the computer science professors there.</p>
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<li>Why does the single-initial crowd have SCEA?</li>
</ol>
<p>The narrative I have in my head – which may be accurate, may be folklore, or may be something with a grain of truth that I have misremembered over the years – is that Harvard initially tried unrestricted EA and was “swamped” by an unmanageable number of early applications – which at the time I think was 4,000 or so, or a bit more than a third of what Chicago and Georgetown get now. So SCEA was adopted as a governor, to limit the number of early applications filed by imposing a restriction and creating an artificial cost.</p>
<p>And, realistically, it may actually be sort of necessary for that purpose. I would assume that if HYPS took its restrictions off, each of the colleges would receive a number of early applications probably in the vicinity of 100% times its own early applications plus 50% times the sum of early applications currently received by the other three of them, plus MIT and Chicago. Say, 20,000 apiece, give or take. That WOULD be a challenge to process. It would also create a huge incentive to take more kids in the early round – if you defer a top candidate, who’s to say Princeton won’t snap her up? – which would probably shift more applications to the early category in following years, and wind up completely gutting the RD round (which is already at least half-gutted).</p>
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<li> Slithey Tove makes a really good point that has not been fleshed out enough in this thread: It is everyone’s assumption that there is an admissions advantage to applying ED or EA, because the admission rate is so much higher in that round than in the RD round. But we never really know what the actual admission rate for unhooked candidates in early rounds is. The ED and EA rounds at selective schools get used heavily for athletic recruiting. Of the 800+ kids Harvard just accepted EA, as many as 200, and maybe even more, may be athletic recruits. And there are probably some professional musicians and developmental admits in there, too. Those groups really form a separate admission pool with an acceptance rate approaching 100%. The EA acceptance rate for “normal” genius children at Harvard is really the remaining slots filled divided by almost the entire EA applicant pool. The effect may not be so large at Harvard, which after all accepts a lot of kids EA. At schools with fewer EA acceptances, and smaller classes overall, this effect could be really important.</li>
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<p>There’s another feature, too, that I believe does not apply to HYPS but does apply to almost all of the rest of the colleges we are talking about. Many colleges do not allow foreign students seeking financial aid to apply EA or ED. As a result, those applications swell the RD round, and really constitute a separate pool there, one with a much lower than average chance of admission. So if the Early pool contains a decent number of 100%-chance applicants, and the Regular pool contains a huge number of ultra-low-chance applicants . . . then maybe for domestic, academic applicants, there really isn’t that much difference in acceptance probability between the two rounds. At the very least, the difference is probably far less than we commonly imagine.</p>
<p>JHS, finally an explanation for SCEA that makes total sense!</p>
<p>Mathmom, I am with you 100% on that one (post 67) Thanks for the explanations and theories, JHS.</p>
<p>There have been intricate studies done some years ago on ED and EA when some schools were insisting that the early options conferred NO advantage at all, due to the heavy preponderance of hooked and highly qualified applicants. I can’t remember the study, but it dispelled that claim effectively as the researchers/authors were given access to the records and stripped the hooked applicants out of the early pools and still came up with a distinct advantage. Notre Dame, in particular, got a lot of egg in the face from that, as they were absolutely insistent that EA did not give any advantage due to the composition of their early pool. Nope. They were wrong. And I do believe that ND believed what they were claiming (in writing on the admissions materials, no less). It took the break downs and the raw numbers to show them that it was not the case at all. And this was for EA, not ED. </p>
<p>Schools for which there exist no advantage truly work to make sure that is the case. THere is a huge psychological push to accept early on the part of the Admissions department. It’s easier to get a seat in a near empty room that has to be filled, is the bottom line Also, you can look fresh and more interesting at the beginning of an admissions process than in the midst or end. How many grandpa dying, and the winning game, and whatever essays can one read without getting tired of it, and after the umpteenth app that looks so similar, things that seemed impressive at first (and absolutely ARE impressive) look old hat after a while. </p>
<p>Except at small schools with a lot of recruited athletes that are accepted through the official channels of early admission programs, there really isn’t that big of an impact with the athletic card. My son was a recruited athlete ast some schools, not at others as the coach did not so flag him, and when we were in that world, we could see how a lot of this is done. I saw kids accepted with no deadlines during times when most of the pool weren’t getting any letters. I know a kid who was accepted in late January/early February to Georgetown, for instance. He did not make the EA round, but was accepted before the RD and where GTU put his situation, EA, RD, who knows? I see this a lot, by the way, he was not an exception. My son also got some rolling acceptances, as did another kid of mine when the schools did not have rolling admissions mentioned anywhere. So there are cases that are neither fish nor fowl, rare, but they do happen more in athletic admissions, as that is where I see them the most.</p>
<p>So those who now apply to REA HPYS may find themselves unable to compete for merit money at those private schools that require an EA app to beconsidered for those awards. Not that many of them, I guess.</p>
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<p>If the high school’s schedule makes this possible, it could work.</p>
<p>But at some high schools, the deadlines for submitting requests for transcripts, counselor recommendations, and teacher recommendations are set so far in advance of the colleges’ deadlines that a student who is rejected ED or EA cannot apply to extra RD schools. One of my kids had to submit ALL her teacher recommendation requests a month before her ED school’s application deadline. (This requirement was set by the teachers.) Thus, she had to finalize her RD application list in September so that she could get those requests to the teachers by October 1.</p>
<p>In such instances, the only recalibration that’s available if the student is rejected ED or EA is for the student to work harder on the essays for the RD schools.</p>
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<p>Early deadline for scholarship schools are a specific exception for Stanford REA:</p>
<p>[Restrictive</a> Early Action : Stanford University](<a href=“http://www.stanford.edu/dept/uga/application/decision_process/restrictive.html]Restrictive”>http://www.stanford.edu/dept/uga/application/decision_process/restrictive.html)</p>
<p>However, HYP do not appear to have this exception.</p>
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<p>Some admit-by-formula schools give decisions quite early, even though they do not officially have EA or rolling admissions, or any promise to give decisions before March. Some CSU campuses (whose RD frosh application deadline is November 30) have been reported as having already given decisions, for example. However, HYPS probably are not worried about cross-admits choosing such schools over them.</p>
<p>My D didn’t apply to any HYP caliber schools this year but a number of solid west coast LAC’s and public universities. At every opportunity, she applied EA. It worked out well for her. She got her apps out in October and November before her year became truly crazy (not trying to do finals or sport at the same time). I can’t help thinking that getting in early helped not only with the great success she’s had getting in but earning merit aid as well. She is a solid but not dazzling student and has been more successful than we would have dared hope. I can’t help believing getting in early gave her an edge. It certainly takes the pressure off as we hit winter break. She only has a couple left to hear from but she already has terrific choices.</p>
<p>Lab, for any given student, the EA process is usually an advantage and is a good thing. For those who can get their stuff together and get those apps out , and who do not have some issue that makes it beneficial to get an extra term in there before applying (say someone with low GPA but improving trends or low test score that has studied profusely and wants another go at it), it is a great advantage. </p>
<p>My kids went to all male schools, and getting those young men to get the apps complete, essays, recs out, etc, was a tortuous thing, and that was with a private school pushing them along too. Without the support, many of those kids would not have made the RD deadlines, much less the early ones. So in the big picture, that these kids who are so privileged to have this kind of support (boot at the rear) is at the expense of those kids who do not, and those kids are already disadvantaged in many ways. So EA, ED can be a boon for those who are from families that can support this. There are kids who do it all on their own (I was one of them), but those are rare birds (and yes I 've read their posts on this board too–my hat goes off to them). But it’s one more boost to the already privileged. I want to point this out–and I have been clear that I and mine have used this boost. It’s there, use it, but be aware exactly who benefits from this. ED even more so.</p>
<p>Just read an ED post on this forum. International kid from an economically challenged famly. Great stats. A great catch for a school. Applied ED, and is short on the money to do it. What to do? This may be the best/only deal, and it might be doable with great sacrifice from family. Impossible to gauge whether this will be the best deal in which case it might be worth it to borrow, scrimp, scrape up the money, or if other better deals would be coming. IF those choices were known, it would make for a much easier decision and possible avoid a lot of hardhsip. Not something a person who needs no aid would be facing.</p>
<p>So ED and EA are good for those students who can benefit from them.</p>
<p>Such a thoughtful response and so true cptofthehouse! I feel for the kids who don’t have that support. The common ap was a nightmare early this year and I couldn’t help thinking there must be kids who just gave up with all the problems. Our kids are very, very lucky to have parents in the game. You are right too that EA may just put more of a burden on those kids that don’t. This just isn’t easy and it seems insane that it is so challenging.</p>
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<p>Plenty of misremembering in terms of numbers, except for the introduction of a restrictice mechanism. What happened --as I described earlier-- is that the number of EA applications at Harvard became counter-productive. For the Class of 2007, this number ballooned to close to 8,000 and about three times the number at Princeton (2300) and Yale (2600), and about a third of all the applications. Harvard admitted about 1150 students for that EA round, or more than Penn and Cornell did in their ED round. All in all, not the ideal scenario for Harvard. </p>
<p>The following year, Harvard received fewer than 4,000 SCEA applications and admitted fewer than 4,000. Yale had long toyed with the idea, and when Richard Shaw moved to Stanford, SCEA became the norm at the Farm. </p>
<p>As far as the narrative, there is an interesting one but it was about which schools should adopt ED. It came well before the changes in the class of 2007.</p>
<p>As far as the difference in the pools of early and regular admissions, nobody has ever found a way to debunk the seminal research of Avery et al on this subject. It is safe to assume that little has changed, including the number of theories riddled with idle speculation. What has not changed, is that --contrary to the myths, speculations, and wishful thinking-- the early pool is LESS selective than the RD pool, even after controlling for the athletes and rare development admits. Hence, the advantage that was dubbed the Early Admission Racket by someone quoted earlier.</p>
<p>Thanks, Lab317. Thank you Xiggi, too for your information. I learn so much from those of you who have done the research and/or are on top of these things. I appreciate the sharing that goes on here.</p>
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<p>Please read "The following year, Harvard received fewer than 4,000 SCEA applications and admitted fewer than 1,000. " </p>
<p>Oops.</p>