EA is the new RD

Parents Forum
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<p>In talking to a lot of parents about college decisions this year, I noticed a striking probability that kids applying EA were often admitted, while those with the same and even far higher stats were wait-listed in regular decision. In fact, I've heard of more WL'd kids this year than I have in the past 10.</p>

<p>IMHO, it's mostly the early bird getting the worm theory at play (vs the EA applicants being better qualified etc), but it made me wonder if we aren't upping the college application deadlines to EA and ED deadlines across the board. And therefore, by putting forth January 1 deadlines, schools should offer a disclaimer to say, "but if you apply by this deadline be aware that, really, you're too late."</p>

<p>Certainly it's about the odds of admission. But it's becoming less about your stats and very much about being "early" which is now the new "on time." When you consider that schools were filling between 40-50% of their classes during the ED round, and even schools like Harvard etc are back to doing early action, it just seems that overall, the "real" application deadlines have now been moved up two months!</p>

<p>Net/Net: If a school has an EA option and you want it on your possible list of choices in April, get the application done. </p>

<p>However, I think there is already great fallout from this practice. WLs are huge in number and it ignores just how much personal growth occurs during the senior year (schools that were at the top of a list in September may not even be on the list come April), and a lot of the EA kids I've been talking to aren't even taking advantage of those acceptances! If EA is the new RD, how long until ED becomes RD? Slippery slope in my opinion. If the trend continues, you're going to end up with a lot of transfers on your books. </p>

<p>The other phenomena is that EA acceptances suddenly turn them into safety schools! I think it further messes up college admissions in general because folks think because they got in EA to a school that may have been a match or a slight reach, they then start believing they are deserving to get into ALL matches and reaches only to find themselves disappointed with the results of RD round. And of course, now that they have an EA in their back pocket, why not apply to 20 elite schools? It lets the schools believe they have all the applicants they could ever want (and a nice little chunk of admission fees). But is it really about doing what's best for the development of a "student"?</p>

<p>And finally - if your kid applied EA and was accepted, be proud that he/she were early birds, but don't think for a moment it's because they are just that much more "qualified" than the RD kid who was WL'd, and for those to yet go thru the experience, don't think that any luck in EA acceptances means RD results will be similar.</p>

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<p>Having an EA acceptance become a safety (assuming sufficient financial aid, if needed) is a great thing to have, in that it allows eliminating applications to any school less desirable than that school. But the student should not become overconfident about admissions to other schools.</p>

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<p>We had to use EA for a different reason. Since we were a family that was chasing merit money, the time between early acceptance and April 1 was spent going to scholarship weekends, DS writing multiple essays for internal scholarship committees and jumping through numerous hoops. Without EA these schools would not have their pool of applicants. That fine print in EA often mentions that you must apply early for full scholarship consideration. To us it felt like two application cycles. On one hand DS was able to get away with the Common App for most EA schools, never being concerned with extra essays over the summer. What we didn’t realize was that the average scholarship competition required two additional essays that needed to be written while juggling a full classroom workload. </p>

<p>Truthfully, I don’t really see how the schools could enhance or change this. They only consider people who are serious contenders. Still it made for a long cycle (which hasn’t ended in our case until final scholarhsip notification next week).</p>

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<p>Exactly… they fail to see that the EA is perhaps the extra bump that got them admitted EA and that bump is gone in RD. But this is just timing and says nothing of stats, essays etc. </p>

<p>And in full disclosure, maybe because my own kid got WL’d at a few schools where other classmates were accepted EA, I am a little over their implication that it had anything to do with below par stats! (Or in other words, “my kid must just be ‘smarter’ than your kid” attitude.) Of course, these are also families where status and rankings mean everything, having absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with financial aid considerations. Believe me. When the question is “Why school X over school Y when Y’s average stats are higher?”, saying she just likes the school better doesn’t seem to be reason enough.</p>

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<p>I guess my son is indeed extremely fortunate that he was accepted SCEA to one school, rolling to three, and RD to his remaining 6, including an Ivy and three low admit tech schools.</p>

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<p>Remember that what you read on CC is self-reported, and so you can’t treat it as a statistically meaningful sample. People who get waitlisted at a lot of schools will tend to make noise, while those who don’t might well be quieter. My daughter was 7-for-8 in acceptances, all of which were RD.</p>

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<p>Well, I think there is a difference in schools that just practice EA versus SCEA and ED, which I think is what most of the “very elite” institutions practice. In SCEA and ED, students are very much declaring that your school is my top choice. I think it’s reasonable for these institutions to accept a higher percentage of the kids willing to commit to the institution as their top choice. I realize SCEA isn’t making a commitment, but in choosing that school as SCEA it does seem their making something of a declaration that it is a top choice school. Do schools ever publish matriculation rates for SCEA vs RD admits? </p>

<p>Anyway, I totally agree with you that waitlisted students and many rejected students are as deserving as the admitted students. There just isn’t enough room at some institutions for all of the deserving applicants.</p>

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<p>Without data, this is all speculation. We’re talking EA, not ED. I don’t see any reason to believe that EA represents an admissions advantage, and it certainly doesn’t reflect our experience, or the results from my kid’s HS friends. Of course, my anecdotes are no better than Modadunn’s.</p>

<p>It doesn’t make much sense to speculate about causes and effects without knowing whether the phenomenon even exists. Modadunn, the first step is to go and get some real numbers; a bunch of CC posts won’t do.</p>

<p>Where’s the evidence that EA admissions standards are easier?</p>

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<p>[Colleges</a> Where Applying Early Action Helps - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/applying/applying-101/articles/2009/09/30/colleges-where-applying-early-action-helps]Colleges”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/applying/applying-101/articles/2009/09/30/colleges-where-applying-early-action-helps)</p>

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<p>you sound a little bitter…who cares if they were more “qualified” or not, as long as they got in. I don’t see any reason why kids shouldn’t apply EA , if they weren’t prepared, that’s on them.(or the parent…lol)</p>

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<p>geeps - Interesting link, showing EA and RD acceptance percentages. </p>

<p>But do you have any evidence that EA admissions standards are actually easier? There are many reasons to expect that the EA and RD pools would be different.</p>

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<p>my friend applied and got into an Ivy ED, but also to almost every other school on her list (including harvard, stanford,whatnot) RD. </p>

<p>But I do agree that EA makes a big difference in the college admissions process.</p>

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<p>Some argue that the candidates are actually “better” in the Early round: more mature, send better apps, you know- are strong in the non-stats stuff, which would be in line with two issues:

  1. Higher SES to spend on college trips, test prep, excellent schools/more sophisticated GC’s are behind the Early Apps
  2. Maturity, focus, drive are needed to be ahead of the game.</p>

<p>Yes, the schools do seek to fill quite a few “needed” slots in the Early round: sports recruits, legacies, development, URM’s, QuestBridge…- and they are open about this. The acceptance rates for these are relatively high, but the schools argue that the quality of these hooked applicants is very high and admitting these is not a concession.
Thus, the acceptance rates for the non-hooked applicants in the Early round may actually be lower than the overall RD rate.</p>

<p>I feel that the fact that there are fewer apps in the Early round, and less battle fatigue for the AdComms, makes the selection process more thorough.
SCEA does show a bit of interest on the part of the applicant, so that is another advantage: likely to attend.</p>

<p>No question, though, that a bunch of slots are filled/needs met/types admitted before the RD round- that is tough for the RD applicants.</p>

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<p>No question EA helps at some schools even at MIT which (was - and I presume still is) committed to only accepting 15% of the class early. </p>

<p>My younger son had no problem having U of Chicago as a safety - he jettisoned another safety and stopped worrying that he didn’t really have a match. He figured that while his reaches remained reaches, that he wasn’t crazy to assume he had a chance. He got into two other reachy schools, but not the reachiest schools, results he was perfectly happy with.</p>

<p>Should EA be an advantage? Probably not, but it’s nice for an organized kid to have some kind of an advantage!</p>

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<p>43% of the class at Columbia is composed of people accepted Early Decision.</p>

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<p>When you talk about EA and ED in the same discussion/category, you’re mixing up apples and oranges, they are two very different early programs used by colleges for very different purposes.</p>

<p>EA acceptances go to applicants that would be accepted in any candidate pool, there’s no advantage for schools to accept anyone but exceptional students that are likely to be accepted by other top colleges and who they want more time to woo. See what Ys Dean of Admissions says:</p>

<p>[Early</a> admit rate rises slightly | Yale Daily News](<a href=“http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2009/dec/15/early-admit-rate-rises-slightly/]Early”>http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2009/dec/15/early-admit-rate-rises-slightly/)</p>

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<p>Applicants may think they have a better chance EA because of the higher acceptance rate compared to RD, but it’s only true for the most sought after candidates.</p>

<p>ED is about money and yield.</p>

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<p>I suspect the playing field is not level when it comes to knowing that Early Action exists and how to prepare for it. I speculate that the more affluent high schools have more resources to inform and educate their students on the college application process.</p>

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<p>This article <a href=“http://www.stanford.edu/~jdlevin/Papers/EarlyAdmissions.pdf[/url]”>http://www.stanford.edu/~jdlevin/Papers/EarlyAdmissions.pdf&lt;/a&gt; suggests that EA applicants get an advantage when applying although less than ED applicants. It obviously doesn’t deal with the new SCEA regime though.</p>

<p>Also I believe MIT now admits more a lot of its class EA because a high percentage of the class applies EA. I think they moved from a fixed percentage to roughly proportional to the percentage of EA applicants. For the last admissions cycle, 46% of US applicants applied EA and 49% of admitted students from the US were admitted EA. Another 15% of US admitted students applied EA, were deferred and then accepted EA. International students must apply RA at MIT.</p>

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<p>What does SCEA stand for?</p>

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<p>Single Choice Early Action. It allows you to apply early to only one school (although some allow you to apply to a rolling admission school like your state school). It doesn’t prevent you from applying RD to other colleges, so you can compare financial aid packages, etc.</p>