EA or ED?

Hi,
Rising Senior Daughter has three reach schools she is considering:

  1. Stanford
  2. University of Chicago
  3. Northwestern
    4.0 unweighted GPA, 4.65 weighted. 7 AP classes so far. 33 ACT and 1480 SAT. Multiple leadership positions, internships, and volunteer activities. She is still undecided on her major.

We think Stanford would be a big risk and are not considering doing any early applications. We are looking at U Chicago EA vs ED, but not sure which one to go with. Does EA really improve her chances over ED II or RD?

Thanks

With these three schools, the best strategy for admittance would be to try all early admissions paths possible. I’ll assume the current order preference is stated above. That leaves 1) REA to Stanford ,if deferred/rejected (Stanford doesn’t defer many applicants like most other schools) then ED2 to UChicago or 2) ED1 to UChicago (if it’s her first choice) then ED2 to UChicago if deferred from ED1 (yes they did this last year) or 3) ED to NW followed by (if rejected) ED2 to UChicago. You really need to decide which school your DD likes best. IMO, it’s not really a good idea not to do any early apps unless finances are a factor and even then EA is still an option. EA at UChicago seems to be only a very small boost above RD. Consider EA at all colleges a way for admissions to get applicants they really. really want for one reason or another.

I have not figured out a scenario where one wants to do UChicago EA other than doing an EA Trio. If UChicago is your first choice then you ED. If not, then you probably EA it because you also want to do MIT or CalTech and just let UChicago tag along.

EA Stanford is risky because you have 80% chance of getting an outright rejection, which can be psychologically devastating as that would be the first and only one college decision for nearly three months.

Thanks, that’s what I was trying to understand.

only anecdotal info here, both female students, one with 1580/4.0 uwgpa/average good ECs, EA Stanford (rejected). RD MIT (accepted and matriculating); another with 34ACT/4…0 uwgpa/state-level music ECs EA Yale (rejected), RD and accepted Stanford (matriculating) and Princeton. I think for students with good stats but don’t have extraordinary ECs/recruited/legacy, EA Stanford does not give you advantages.

Female applicants typically enjoy great advantage at MIT and Caltech; acceptance rate is about three times as high as that of male. Stanford favors art/humanity majors while Yale wants engineering/maths kids. Princeton and Harvard are somewhere in between. I would avoid going SCEA Stanford as engineering/CS or Yale as art/humanity.

You can’t do an EA trio.

Stanford REA - If you apply to Stanford with a decision plan of Restrictive Early Action, you may not apply to any other private college/university under their Early Action, Restrictive Early Action, Early Decision, or Early Notification plan.

Northwestern - only has ED, no EA.

I don’t know if this is true. An admissions offer at a highly ranked stem school said the percentage was similar when you took in to consideration the number of “qualified” applicants.

Accept rate for women at MIT is more like 2x the men now. It’s just getting harder and harder to get in. Women also have a lower yield, perhaps because they typically get juicier stem-related merit offers from other places, so MIT has to admit more of them in order to even out the enrolled class. The number of female applications is 50% lower as of last fall (not sure about this one) and it’s reasonable to think they are a more self-selecting group than the guys.

SCEA Stanford is risky, but I actually think digital is good. Too many kids get deferred HYP (and others) and hang on to unrealistic hopes. If you do apply to Stanford SCEA or UC/NW early, you can still apply to other schools that are more in the line of matches and safeties early or rolling admissions if allowed by the restrictions of the first choice early school (usually state schools are excepted from any REA restrictions). That is the wise strategy in any event so that your kid will likely be in somewhere before January/Feb.

One thing to consider as you gear up for the application cycle is that UChicago seems to be seeing extremely strong candidates in each pool. Since introducing ED, very few deferreds have been admitted in the RD round, and last year a whole lot of deferreds who switched to ED2 were also dinged, if the cc threads are at all representative. While switching to ED2 might still be a path to admission, it remains theoretical and, likely, completely dependent on the strength of the new apps in the ED2 pool. So if you apply ED1/EA, just keep in mind that you might realistically have just one shot, not two.

Agree with JB. We already know that ED1s and EAs going RD face really tough odds from the start.

EA/ED1 to ED2 was great for a while but one has to think that that arbitrage is also tightening as the applicant pool increases