In past years, applicants applying EA to BC could not apply to a binding ED program. For the upcoming admissions cycle, BC has seemed to sorta, kinda adjust that policy. The new policy states;
“Candidates who have selected the Early Decision I option at another college are free to apply through Early Action to Boston College. However, such candidates have identified that college as their absolute first choice. They have entered into a binding agreement to enroll at that college, if admitted and therefore are not free to fully consider a possible acceptance from Boston College. Thus, we strongly request that Early Decision I candidates consider not applying Early Action to Boston College”
Sop how to interpret this? Seems like they don’t want you applying EA, if you ED elsewhere, but then why re-word the policy? Ambiguous or not?
Perhaps they want to increase EA apps(which tend to be a stronger pool) to increase selectivity and average test scores? It doesn’t make sense though because a few years ago by adding a supplement, BC gave up a few percentage points from their lower acceptance rate to increase their yield. If BC allows people to apply EA who clearly had another top choice to go as far as to ED there, then they would decrease their yield by accepting some of these kids who won’t even get to make a choice. As a current student, I’m interested in how this will affect our admissions stats for the class of 2023. It might not even do much since the wording is so weak that it might get glossed over by many people who did not hear of the change beforehand.
Well that’s a change. (And it looks like they just changed the website format in the past few weeks.) @wisteria100 The change is unambiguous - their EA policy now explicitly allows ED1 elsewhere whereas before, the EA policy prohibited ED1 elsewhere.
For 2022, the EA rate was around 31%. BC didn’t specify this year what portion was deferred to RD, but if, as in prior years, about a third of EA apps were deferred, then the RD rate was only around 22%.
Could it be that they feel they didn’t have enough spaces in RD for highly-desirable candidates that got rejected from ED schools in the early round and they’d prefer to get a look at these candidates during EA?
The yield question is also a good one because the winter article on admissions mentioned a desire to boost yield, though the students this is aimed at are EDing to schools with very low acceptance rates.
I wonder what keeps them from adding ED themselves for yield purposes - my rising senior wishes BC had ED. This change makes me uneasy about the coming season.
I think it’s weird that they included the 30% figure on this particular webpage, because I might expect that to change. The second sentence looks like it belongs in the middle of the next paragraph rather than in this one.
I also believe an ED option would have solved both goals for BC to lower their acceptance rate and increase yield. I don’t like the idea of ED in general because it forces students to make a binding commitment and not see all their choices, gives more advantages to those who are well resourced enough to finish apps early, among others. However, they could have both ED and EA, with some colleges now even doing EA, EDI, and EDII.
My only guess is that its because the other top Catholic schools(Gtown and ND) are staying with EA, so they’re following that pattern. BC’s RD acceptance rate might fall below 20% next year, but I can’t imagine this new policy helping yield at all.