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@socaldad2002 Iâm sorry but I would argue that the RD pool at Duke is actually more competitive than the ED pool as it consists of all the kids who were rejected from Ivies and their top choices as is the case with most of the top 20. ED even unhooked is your best shot at Duke.
@collegemom9 Again, I have not seen any real data to draw a formal conclusion but you need to remember that because the yield is a lot lower in RD, they need to accept many more kids to round out their class as many will choose to go elsewhere after R&D decisions.
The bottom line for me is that for the âaverage excellent unhooked kidâ, ED is more in line with RD acceptance rates for most top colleges. It is what it isâŠ
âLook, no one has a better shot with ED or other Early apps,:â
I think they definitely do, the Harvard data is pretty convincing on the advantage of SCEA. Itâs not going to make an uncompetitive applicant get in, but if youâre a hyps caliber applicant, you should seriously consider scea at harvard, the other three you canât definitively tell because their data is not public like Havardâs is. You do yourself a disservice if you donât pay attention to the analysis coming out of the Harvard case.
The bottom line for me is that for the âaverage excellent unhooked kidâ, ED is more in line with RD acceptance rates for most top colleges.
For Duke, the ED acceptance is 21%, the RD is 6%, I know that you have athletes, urms, legacies etc but 21 to 6 is not a rounding error. And as collegemom9 says, youâre competing in RD with the kids that got deferred by the ivies and similar colleges, in ED, itâs just the Duke applicants. If youâre an electrical engineering major and Duke is one of your top choices, do you apply ED or RD vs the kids that just missed the cut and got deferred by Stanford or MIT? Hint: go with Duke ED.
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^ The important point is, âif they are not fully the candidates the college is looking for.â If you want EE and arenât among the stronger applicants, the various sorts of Early wonât put any sheen on your app. Thatâs the challenge for the kids and families: are you truly a strong candidate? More than stats, some titles or awards, etc.
Youâre right that RD will pull in applicanats who didnât get into an Early cycle elsewhere. Plus kids also applying RD to S or MIT and using, say, Duke as a back-up. But for Early, you still need to be compelling, among the top kids applying, as the college sees it. Not just what you want.
The focus on admit stats on many threads takes away from this awareness.
The question is not whether an unhooked applicant has a better shot at admission by applying early with a weak application that doesnât meet the standards of the school. If s/he submits the same strong application, does s/he have a better chance if s/he applies early? Many colleges say no, but evidences indicate otherwise (with a few exceptions such as MIT). We wonât know for certain unless the colleges release more detailed data on the applicant pools. The colleges prefer you apply early to their colleges. But even if you didnât, they still want you to apply in RD. They want it both ways and the ambiguity helps them.
Something that seems to be overlooked a lot is what is happening at oneâs high school. Which kids are applying to which schools. We are at a large public high school. Elite colleges can say all day that they donât have quotas but schools like Duke, Vandy, Wash U, Emory, NU, Chicago and Ivies seem to take about the same number each year. This year, for us, kids decided to use ED more and almost all of the spots for these schools from our high school were gone in ED. Four kids got into Duke ED (very very strong students) and then none RD. NU - five got in ED (out of 144) and one (ONE!) got in RD. The incoming juniors are noticing this and already trying to talk their parents into letting them use ED.
Canât comment as much on Ivies since our Ivy spots are always early apps - athletes or legacies. No exceptions this year.
As mentioned several times above, ED is a chance to lock in early to the place you want to go. It is a luxury good that affluent families can attempt to purchase before the store opens to the general public.
The trick to ED1 and ED2 is the ability to rank the schools you are interested in and live with the notion of âlost opportunitiesâ or âwhat might have beenâ.
Funny enough this conversation came up last night at dinner.
We have 2 children who have gone through the application process. I have toured Bowdoin 5 times. Maine has been a vacation spot for us for years, so we literally jump-started our eldest search early with a tour after Sophomore yearâŠjust to see what a college campus was like. Loved it (the kids liked it OK too). Junior year tour, interview visitâŠno application (ED I at another school).
Our second child was down to Bowdoin and 2 other schools for ED I. Too hard to differentiate after Junior year visits, so we embarked on a 3 overnight tour (5 days) at the 3 schools. Bowdoin visit was great (including time with a high-school friend who was a freshman)âŠbut eventually, the application was for a better fit elsewhere.
Fast forward to dinner last nightâŠâdo you ever wonder how things would be if I went to Bowdoinâ?
NoâŠwas the answer. I never think about it, because itâs not a decision that was ours to make. EDI at Bowdoin could have been a rejection, at which point EDII at another school might not have been successful.
You have to make your decisions before the applications and accept the results from your strategy. That includes athletes, who litter these forums with their rejections after an âearly readâ or positive vibes from a coach. ED is asking someone to marry you. Thinking about who you might have married had you been single after that is pointless (unless you decide to get divorced and start over againâŠan option).
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This is not necessarily true. If the school looks affordable per the NPC (with all the typical npc caveats) and itâs the students #1 choice, and there is a bump for ED vs RDâŠI would encourage that student to apply, regardless of their SES standing.
@Mwfan1921 agreed 100%. This is what we did. If the numbers ended up varying from the NPC we could have just declined which really would have been no more disappointing then having to say no in the RD round. It all worked out and Iâm so happy my son applied ED. One suggestion that was made to me was to print out the results of the NPC and hang on to them in case they were needed.
I agree with the notion that anyone should apply if they know their first choice of school, but the ability to invest the time and money to see the schools and meet the students is significant. Knowing where to apply ED is hard, and I imagine very difficult sight unseen.
I also think itâs VERY hard to commit to a financial commitment without knowing options. If you are running the NPC, then in the back of your head there have to be questions about ROI and options. Am I better off at school A for $20k or a free ride at school C? If you know youâre paying retail for college and that your child is likely to gain admission to a place without merit moneyâŠitâs dramatically different.
ED without financial concern is much easier.
Hard to argue with the Harvard litigation data on the advantage of SCEA there. I suspect YPS might yield similar results. I would say though that what the data might not account for are certain subjective factors, especially in the ECâs and essays, that might make the SCEA candidates a better fit in Harvardâs eyes. The final decision was not based on which X number of kids had the highest combination of scores, but still involved subjective debate of all those who made it to that cut. You would think that a vast majority of SCEA applicants for H (and YPS) have that school as their personal top choice and their essays and how they portray their ECâs in their essays are more finely crafted and tailored to H (or YPS) than the average also highly qualified RD applicant. Speculation on my part, and from a sample size of 1, S wrote more finely tuned essays for his SCEA school than others, some of which were derivative to his SCEA essays when the subject matters overlapped. I donât think he is unique. Canât fully test my theory because he saved me application bucks by dropping his other apps after he got in.
What I find most problematical are parents/kids who are working the problem backwards. That is they have a list of 15 ± highly selective schools and are trying to game which is the most highly ranked (by prestige, not their own fit) school the ED (esp) or SCEA card will be the most advantageous for them based on published admit rates between ED, ED2, EA and RD rather than ranking the schools by personal fit and then determining if applying the ED/EA card for one of their top picks is worth it. The other rookie mistake is ascribing a greater value to ED than it is worth based on hope (like assuming 20 local ECâs will make up for below average academics â oftentimes the same people). The ED/EA boost is for the qualified candidate who is right on the fence â the one who makes it to Committee in the first place imo.
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For EA, SCEA & ED at elite 20-25, only ED adds advantage for students. If you are trying to benefit from early admission forget HYPSM and apply ED to colleges who wants to lock you away from HYPSM and increase yield. HYPSM already have a high yield, they are not going to admit you just because you applied early.
âThat is they have a list of 15 ± highly selective schools and are trying to game which is the most highly ranked (by prestige, not their own fit)â
A lot of kids pick say Stanford for computer science without visiting the campus or knowing itâs a fit. Are you saying those kids are making a mistake by choosing Stanford for CS based on itâs prestige? Youâd be the first. And just to show Iâm not totally stem-biased, people picking Yale for English because of its prestige are making the same mistake? Wow, a whole lot of kids making mistakes picking those colleges.
âThe other rookie mistake is ascribing a greater value to ED than it is worth based on hope (like assuming 20 local ECâs will make up for below average academics â oftentimes the same people).â
Again this is a huge generalization without anything to back it up. Are you saying that people applying to Columbia or JHU ED have below average academics and 20 fluff ECs?
^ You are totally misreading and taking my comments out of context.
On the first point, sure there are kids who are picking Stanford and Yale without ever visiting their campuses or knowing for sure it is a fit and are not making a mistake, but there certainly are those who are blindly picking or ranking based purely on prestige. How many threads do we see on this site with kids wanting âchancesâ for every/most Ivies, MIT, Caltech, Duke, Chicago, etc⊠and 5 selective LACs. Many of those are making mistakes. For purposes of this thread, I am referring to the imo backwards process of blindly ranking schools on prestige and then trying to figure out which ones give you the best ED/EA bump relative to RD rather than ranking schools based on personal fit first and then seeing where ED/EA makes the most sense. Prestige certainly is a legitimate factor, but so are things such as size of student body as a whole, class sizes, departmental resources for undergrads, geography (weather, big city, suburb, ruralâŠ), social life and whether or not you are in fact competitive academically. The non hooked kid who chooses Stanford and uses his/her SCEA/ED bullet there when letâs say his/her SAT score is 1450, is ranked not in the top 3-5%, but 6-15% of a non-feeder school and has no national recognition is making a mistake. Same for the kid who could have Stanford level statâs but whose personality is more suited to a small school environment, say Harvey Mudd and could have EDâd there.
On the second point, I have no clue how you could have interpreted what I wrote to how you translated it. I made no qualitative comment about any school. My simple point was people incorrectly assuming that they could elevate an otherwise noncompetitive application to a âyesâ by using the ED magic bullet. It is akin to people assuming a bunch of not particularly unique ECâs/recognition (president of 10 clubs, shadow a doctor, all district debater, etcâŠ) will make up for subpar (for that schoolâs) academics. My last sentence very clearly put the prior sentence in context, âThe ED/EA boost is for the qualified candidate who is right on the fence â the one who makes it to Committee in the first place imo.â As to correlating overly optimistic people, of course no, I didnât do a statistical study over a valid sample size, but it is not a wild observation of human nature that people who fall short in an area many times look/hope for something else to make up for the shortfall. Maybe I shouldnât have used âoftentimesâ so I will replace that with âsometimesâ.
I wouldnât read into the Harvard lawsuit too much on the advantage of SCEA, there is the real possibility that the SCEA pool is just stronger.
Admissions officers at top tier clearly state that the ED pool stronger. Yes, for the high GPA and SAT candidate with 5s on all APs, strong ECs and top 1-2% of class ED has an advantage. Not uncommon for Naviance to only show ED or SECA acceptances from your HS.
Guidance tells students to search and if they have a #1, apply early. I have to wonder; if a couple of students are accepted early from your HS, are any candidates considered RD, especially those lower ranked?
Again, in holistic, âstrongerâ means more than stats and strong ECs. (Chance threads show lots misunderstand what strong ECs are.) In Early, you still present a full app pkg, incl the written parts/supp questions.
The assumption is every kid going for ED knows the school well, deeply, and can ace this. But not necessarily. Sure, many can, but stats/ECs donât predict that.
Various people have done the math, using reasonable assumptions and whatever info is available (in the case of Harvard, thereâs a lot more as a result of the court case). When you knock out the recruited athletes and the hooked kids, thereâs still a meaningful statistical advantage to applying early, although less than some think. Directionally, it looks to be similar across the SCEA and EA/ED Top 20s. Why might that be?
The early applicant pool is certainly higher-quality on average, in the sense of being able to produce an attractive application. Early applicants are savvier about the process, wealthier and at higher-quality schools with better college counseling on average, enjoying many advantages. So youâd expect applicants in that pool to produce better-looking applications that check all the boxes (including making the case for why they match a particular school), and to be admitted at a higher rate.
Yield is also not insignificant to these schools. They have a certain number of beds and locking down a big chunk of the class early has value, too (some cynically say that locking down the required critical mass of full payers early matters too, even at the supposedly need-blind schools). Itâs a little different for the SCEA schools, because you arenât required to accept the offer, but if you used your bullet there and got in, youâre very likely to enroll. It was your first choice in November, and will probably still be your first choice in March. You might say that HYPS donât have to care about yield, which is mostly true, but leads on to the final point.
These schools use SCEA and EA/ED as an important tool to shape the class. If they need exactly one elite bassoonist, and youâre one and apply early, your odds are significantly enhanced, because you indicated that this school was your first choice and are very likely (if SCEA) or virtually certain (if ED) to enroll. By admitting you early, the school avoids a potential jump ball with peer schools for elite bassoonists in the RD round.
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cptofthehouse, roycroftmom, and BKSquared:
I donât buy it. I donât think that youâre correctly interpreting the Harvard admissions data regarding SCEA. Do you have a link that shows definitively what you state, or is that just your interpretation?