If you are not a legacy, don’t offer diversity, not a financial aid kid, not a big money donor- do you have any shot of getting in early action despite having a stellar application and are a full paying student from a private school- essentially a white upper class non-connected boy? Did you accept any kids like this in the early round or do you just defer and suggest ed2 commitment?
If it’s your top choice and money isn’t a factor, why not apply ED1? ED2 is VERY competitive, odds of success are low.
Also, it sounds from your loose that you think the school will be answering the question. You do understand that’s not the case here?
Sorry for the typo ^ should be “post” not 'loose"
a top choice of a few
Unhooked EA has a very low chance of success. Even with great stats. If you like Chicago, then def suggest ED1/ED2.
Therein lies the rub. The trend for top selective colleges over the past few years has been to try to focus their admissions effort on applicants who want their college as their first choice. IOW colleges want to find ideal matches rather than the often scattershot approach of previous years where colleges would send out many more acceptances than available spaces and hope things worked out by Fall when classes start. The advantage of selective colleges using this approach is there are fewer disgruntled students who are only there because their top choice didn’t pan out, there are enough spaces in dorms and classrooms and the class is a generally positive group of people who really want to attend and have self-selected. As you’re aware, the downside is that admissions for students who haven’t indicated a college is their top choice and they’d prefer to play the field have become insanely competitive.
If I could offer a bit of advice - for high income, unhooked white boys who are qualified but not world champions of something - ED or SCEA/REA to your top choice is strategically going to offer your best chance of admissions. So if you do have a top choice, think hard before playing the field. If you truly do not have a top choice and won’t be able to make this choice before the application deadline, then ED/SCEA/REA may be a mistake that will leave you with buyer’s remorse.
You still have a few months to make the decision of how and where to apply. Use these months to decide if the increased chance of admission (and it is real for most colleges, including UChicago) is worth locking yourself in or if you’d be happier seeking options but knowing the chance of getting into any one of those options is much lower.
It gets more difficult to assess how much more advantageous early apps are when schools have multiple such programs. It seems intuitive that ED1 would be the most advantageous. ED really benefits the college because it locks in most of those acceptances. ED2, for schools that have it, deals with a a school that has some seats already taken, and for highly selective schools, some of the apps start looking a bit old. And depending on how many taken in ED1, there is that wanting to leave room for RD too and for the “specials” that may be applying then. I’m not sure how EA would work when it’s included with ED.
I’ve noticed that most kids want this process over so if they get a good EA acceptance, they don’t want to continue with the app process. Not to mention the cost. Not all kids have all their RD apps ready to go in case the early returns are not good.
My youngest decided that an EA school was going to be the ONE if his ED bid didn’t pan out. He wasn’t interested enough in going through the RD process when he was perfectly happy with the choices in hand. A lot of kids felt exactly that way. Yes, there were some more driven,who had particular schools they really wanted, had parents that were driving the show, but a lot of them were done EA.
ED or other early options are only an advantage when you truly match. Just promising to enroll isn’t what makes your app special. The lackluster kid without the goods has no tip.
So, hooked or not, try to know more about what they want. That’s more than stats or some titles. Or how much you want them.
If you want an “official” response, it will no doubt be “Of course we accept people like that EA.” How many? “We don’t disclose that information. In fact, we don’t track it, either.”
If you think for a little bit, and pay attention to what Chicago has been doing, you will probably conclude something like the following: At least for the present, Chicago has clearly decided that it’s best for the university to fill its classes as much as possible with people who have applied ED, for whom Chicago will not have to compete against other colleges if it accepts them. EA acceptances will be used sparingly, for students Chicago wants so much, for whatever reason, that it is willing to expose itself to competition over an extended period of time, and probably to use some of its merit scholarship budget, in order to land some decent percentage of them.
For obvious full-pay and no-pay students, the clear assumption will be that if the student has applied EA, some other college, besides any of HYPS, is the applicant’s first choice, or (in the case of a full-pay student) the applicant is looking for meaningful merit money. There’s a good likelihood the student is applying ED to a first choice college. I think the rational response from Chicago’s standpoint will be to pass on the EA application, see if the student gets accepted elsewhere ED, call the merit money bluff, and to look for a commitment at the ED II stage or to evaluate the application at the RD stage in the context of the entire RD pool. That’s what will happen unless there’s something about the application – and it won’t be scores or grades – that tells them this student is so special that it makes sense to put on a full-court press for 4 months to recruit him, accepting the risk that he may be gone to an ED school already.
If all you have to offer is being a really smart, well-educated, affluent kid who appreciates the University of Chicago and would do well there – I know Chicago wants kids like that, but I suspect they think they can get enough of them from the pool of them who are willing to apply ED I or II at this point, with a chance of making a few more offers out of the RD pool. There’s not really a big shortage of applicants like that.
Thank you. Would you say it is the same then for Georgetown?
I haven’t followed Georgetown nearly enough to know much. Have they introduced ED too? They used to be, like UChicago, EA only, and somewhat restrained about the percentage of their class they filled EA. If they still only have EA, it will be a completely different story compared to UChicago now. EA only is a totally different dynamic than EA/ED I/ED II.
A drawback to ED to UCh and other schools that have merit awards, is that it makes sense for these schools to save their merit money for uncommitted applicants. Can’t negotiate. For financial aid, you can. If you can’t afford the school with the aid package offered, you are released from the commitment.
One of the things that has skyrocketed UCh’s ratings and volume of applications is that it is one of the few top schools that have scholarships as well as a more generous financial aid formula
Georgetown acceptance rates are similar between EA and RD: https://uadmissions.georgetown.edu/firstyear/early-action
Georgetown EA is restricted, and those applicants can not apply ED elsewhere.
Off topic but I find it interesting that BC has left the Restricted Early Action troika that included ND and G-Town, and will be ED1 and ED2 beginning with the Class of '24.