<p>Having legacy status at both schools, how would you decide whether or if to apply early to either?</p>
<p>Just wondering how you would make those decisions.</p>
<p>By major and which school is strongest in it.</p>
<p>PENN has ED which is binding. H does not. Plus your son is in 8th grade. I wouldn’t presume at this stage he would even want to go to either despite your wishes. I replied to your post on the H forum. Let him go a natural path</p>
<p>If in four years he does consider this question, then the answer is simple: which is his first choice? With SCEA at Harvard, he can have applied to UMich and already have an accept in hand. Not possible w/PENN</p>
<p>T26e4 I though one could have applied to Umich, but it they get the Penn acceptance they have to withdraw their application and any others that they may have already sent. Yes, he is bound to Penn if he gets in, but he doesn’t have to hold all of his other applications. Even if the restriction is that you can’t apply ED to other schools, I think you can still apply EA to your state school especially if there are date restrictions for honors colleges.</p>
<p>why don’t you look at the questions on their supplemental app.
I think Harvard and Cornell are the ivy schools don’t ask legacy. I remember that I was disappointed b/c harvard is the only ivy school that two of my relatives graduated from.</p>
<p>@parentofpeople : you’re correct. OP’s kid can apply UMICH and PENN ED. My bad.</p>
<p>Holy Jesus. Your kid’s only in the 8TH GRADE and you’re ALREADY asking these types of questions?</p>
<p>Taking parenting to the extreme…</p>
<p>^God, I know. I detest “tiger” mothers and fathers with a passion.</p>
<p>On the other hand, there is so much that many parents and students don’t learn until its too late about admissions.</p>
<p>Gathering info, especially if your kid is unaware, is not being a “tiger” mom or dad. That’s just being prepared.</p>
<p>In 8th grade I was much more concerned with testing into a good high school than going to college haha. </p>
<p>The answer to your question is that you can apply to both. Harvard’s early admission program is non-binding, while Penn’s is binding. Therefore, you have the option to apply to both under the limitation that you will definitely attend Penn if accepted.</p>
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<p>That is NOT correct. Harvard’s early program is SINGLE CHOICE Early Action (SCEA), and not just Early Action, meaning that you CANNOT also apply ED to Penn:</p>
<p>[Harvard</a> College Admissions § Applying: Early Action](<a href=“http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/apply/application_process/early.html]Harvard”>http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/apply/application_process/early.html)</p>
<p>I’m afraid to say if your kid wants to go to an Ivy League school you need to start in the 8th grade. My daughter was accepted (and will be enrolling) into Penn and she started to prepare back when she was an 8th grader. At that age they can do some volunteering, do neat Summer work, get involved throughout junior high with activities, etc. Ivys aren’t just looking for straight A kids they want to see lots of different things they can do.</p>
<p>Gtbguy: your singular experience (start prepping for Ivy admissions in 8th grade), although successful, is not a surefire plan nor a necessity for others.</p>
<p>Frankly, I would say you had the fortunate combination of a super talented kid and great opportunity and guidance. Others, with a kid who does not have the “it” factor, no matter how early they try and with unending parental support, will never have a chance. </p>
<p>And others, possessing the “it” factor, still will get in even if they achieve greatness w/o the structure you gave your daughter.</p>
<p>I advise west coast kids on college and the reality is, in many ways, Harvard and Penn are very different schools, despite showing up on the same lists. Size, location, attitude, vibe, neighborhood. Even Wharton or Engineering at Penn can be very different than CAS, for that matter. Ability to participate in certain sports, clubs etc. are different at each school. Housing situations. You name it. The differences may be small, but they will matter to a young person spending four years in a new city.</p>
<p>For a student who has a realistic choice between two excellent schools like Harvard and Penn the decision should be based on the student, their goals, their likes, dislikes, etc.</p>
<p>For instance, my kids are also legacies at both, but we have much stronger ties to Philadelphia, and almost none to Boston anymore. One of my kids would choose Penn hands down, based simply on lifestyle/access to relatives (Grandparents, aunts and cousins they love), if and when that were an option. I could see my other kid being more likely to want to go to Boston, simply because they are more of an adventurer and might like to discover a new city for themselves and not be too close to relatives.</p>
<p>Just because schools are near each other on some meta-list of “best” something or other does not mean the academic, social or personal experience will be the same. You can’t really go wrong from a scholarly angle at either place. So your kid will, eventually, need to figure out which feels more better.</p>
<p>Another thing that the other posters haven’t mentioned yet is the high ED acceptance rate for Penn. If your kid likes both schools equally, he has a higher chance of getting into Penn ED than Harvard. Penn accepts half their class ED. </p>
<p>And whoever posted the second post is COMPLETELY wrong. Its the opposite. It’s more strategically beneficial to apply to Penn ED and apply to other schools (like UMich or Chicago) EA than to just apply to Harvard Single Choice EA.</p>
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And Harvard accepts MORE than half of its class through EA:</p>
<p><a href=“Early Admissions Statistics 2013 - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com”>Early Admissions Statistics 2013 - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com;
<p>Not to mention that Harvard’s EA acceptance rate this year was 18.4%, compared to Penn’s ED acceptance rate of 24.9%.</p>
<p>Bottom line: I wouldn’t let the early admissions numbers determine a choice like this (assuming it’s the appropriate time to make such a choice). Personal preference and fit are much more relevant.</p>
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<p>Ugh. That’s so misleading, although given this year’s numbers “so misleading” may mean really only a little misleading.</p>
<p>Penn admits 1,150-1,200 students per year ED. That represents half of its normal class of 2,300-2,400. All but a few (if that) of the people accepted ED will enroll at Penn, because that’s the deal with ED. But Penn’s ED acceptance letters constitute less than a third of Penn’s total acceptances. To fill its class, it has to over-accept in the RD round, because slightly fewer than half of the people accepted RD actually enroll at Penn. (Remember, over 1,000 of the strongest applicants who had identified Penn as their first choice were already accepted ED.)</p>
<p>Harvard this year accepted almost 900 people EA, and that’s well over half its normal class of 1,650. But as with Penn, it’s well UNDER half of all the people it will accept in total when the dust clears. Harvard usually accepts about 2,100-2,200, although last year, its first after re-instituting EA, it was only a little over 2,000. This year, having accepted so many kids EA, Harvard may dip below 2,000, but probably not by that much. It’s likely to hand out more than 1,000 acceptances next week. That’s because even at Harvard, not everyone accepted decides to enroll, even if they were accepted EA, because they are not bound to enroll. Harvard’s EA acceptees may convert into 50% or more of its enrollees, but maybe it’s 45% or less. We don’t have a way of knowing.</p>
<p>
But given that Harvard’s overall yield is generally around 80%, wouldn’t you expect that the yield for its accepted EA applicants is generally higher? Isn’t that the reason Harvard reinstated SCEA–to get those accepted EA applicants used to the idea of attending Harvard months before their other acceptances come at the end of March? At least that’s what the NY Times seems to assume, when it identifies 53.75% as the “Approx Pct of [Harvard] Freshman Class, Fall 2013, Now Filled” by early acceptances.</p>
<p>The bottom line is that Harvard now accepts a signficant portion of its class–certainly in the neighborhood of 50%, if not more–through early admissions.</p>
<p>LASFVdad, you are right about the different feel even between the various colleges at Penn, but the Housing situation is the same for everyone. Wharton students, might end up with an Engineering roommate, or a CAS student might wind up with either one of them, or any combination of the colleges.</p>
<p>45%er: The New York Times does not have some sort of magic software to estimate how much of a class has been filled by EA acceptances. It uses the same function for EA colleges that it uses for ED colleges: It takes the number of early acceptances and divides it by the expected class size. </p>
<p>In Harvard’s case, 895 early acceptances divided by 1,665 normal class size = 53.75%. And in the cases of Caltech, 250 early acceptances is about 106% of the projected class of 235, which the NYT dutifully reported. In both cases, that’s not a reliable number, although in Harvard’s case it’s not as ludicrously far off as it is with Caltech.</p>