Early Decision Applications Up despite Financial Meltdown

<p>maiby, I think colleges tend to target a certain percentage of their class to fill with early admits, usually somewhere between 25% and 50% (but a much smaller range at any particular college). That goal isn't much affected by the number of applicants, as long as there is a reasonable pool. If applications zoom or dive one year, they may adjust the target a little -- say, 38% of the class, or 43%, rather than 40%. But generally, fewer applications will mean better average chances for the people who did apply.</p>

<p>I think part of an increase in applications IN GENERAL is that 2009 is the largest graduating class EVER. Doesn't really explain the whole rise in ED, but Dartmouth had record numbers of ED last year as well. So.. this is only news as far as the economy is concerned. And too.. Legacies typically apply ED and get about twice the acceptance rate as others.</p>

<p>JHS, the article implies rejection was solely due to a few spelling mistakes, I somehow doubt it. Dartmouth's dir of admission addressed the very issue of how applications are looked at in terms of grammer and writing in a recent article in the alumni magazine and said content is what counts. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.hudson.k12.ia.us/HEF%20Essay%20Article.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.hudson.k12.ia.us/HEF%20Essay%20Article.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Yes, an ED applicant had a one in three chance as the vast majority were recruited athletes and legacies. It is considerably harder to get into Dartmouth than Cornell so the applicants outcome makes sense to me.</p>

<p>Surprising about Chicago but they were up so much last year for some reason and it would be hard to sustain last year's numbers.</p>

<p>hmom5: It really isn't worth belaboring too much, but it just isn't true that it is "considerably harder" to get into Dartmouth than Cornell. Dartmouth doesn't have an outrageous number of legacies -- 16% last year, 30% admission rate. Even if one assumes the ED acceptees were all athletes or legacies (they weren't, but you are right that the ED acceptance number is phony as applied to a run-of-the-mill applicant), Dartmouth's RD acceptance rate was 11%, and Cornell's 18%. If one could arbitrage that difference, one could make a lot of money, but to an individual applicant who only gets to apply to each school once, the difference is not going to be apparent. The vast majority of students who apply to both colleges is going to get a consistent outcome from both.</p>

<p>JHS, I can only speak of the 3 high schools my kid's attended. At those there is a rather large gap in stats between who is accepted to the 2 schools. I have one scattergram in front of me that covers the last 4 years. Average SAT Dartmouth is 2260, average Cornell 2110. Average GPA Dartmouth 3.8, Cornell 3.45. Virtually all non athlete/legacy/URM to Dartmouth top 3 in class. Ranks for Cornell: top 30% common. Now we are in NY which could skew things a bit, but it's 2 different applicant pools from what I've seen. </p>

<p>I am a big Journal reader but I think they were way off with that article. To have kids think a spelling mistake will get them rejected is just another myth that causes misery.</p>

<p>hmom: you must be in some crazy school district; top 30% to Cornell?? Around here (NJ) you can't even get a GT without top 10%......and 3.45; no way......</p>

<p>Private NYC high schools, extremely competitive places.</p>

<p>^ah yes..............I see......makes sense......</p>

<p>likewise hmom5, D's private Baltimore school scattergrams for accepted:
Cornell avg's: 91.1 GPA, 2070 SAT
Dartmouth avg's: 95.2 GPA, 2230 SAT</p>

<p>I don't want to turn this into Dartmouth vs Cornell thread, but the way to compare those two schools stats is to compare Cornell's A&S vs Dartmouth, not all of Cornell's schools. Cornell's A&S avg SAT is 1461 vs Dartmouth 1446, Cornell A&S acceptance rate of 18% vs Darmouthth 13%. Contract schools of Cornell take other things under consideration besides GPA and SAT (Hotel, Architecture, ILR...). My daughter's NJ school doesn't send as many kids to Cornell because we are out of state and we do not get tuition break at those contract schools.</p>

<p>I don't think the articles says which school at Cornell the applicant applied to. My only point is that it's quite conceivable he got into Cornell and not Dartmouth because as a whole, that's the probable outcome for many candidates, spelling mistakes or not.</p>

<p>My post was more directed at the stats posted on this thread, nothing to do with the article. Students on the Cornell forum had a good chuckle over getting a bad speller.</p>

<p>read link from Dartmouth...are all essays that short?</p>

<p>back to the OP.....its been surprisingly quiet on the college reporting front, & I am a little surprised Penn hasn't released their data yet, but perhaps their new computer system has bogged things down.</p>

<p>Elon ED - up 1%</p>

<p>Pendulum</a> Online</p>

<p>Thanks for getting us back on track Papa..interesting Elon article--I'm still amazed there hasn't been more application fallout from the financial crisis. I think everyone's still in shock--haven't processed their new financial standing yet. Well, keep those numbers coming.</p>

<p>ED applications:</p>

<p>George Washington University-Up 50%
St. Olaf - Up 50%
Wesleyan - Up 40%
Claremont McKenna - Up 28%
Duke - Up 25%
Pomona - Up 20%
Northwestern - Up 15 %
University of Richmond - Up 14%
Colby - Up 13%
Haverford - Up 13%
Dartmouth - Up 12.5%
Middlebury - Up 12%
Cornell – Up 9% (probably ED, but may be more)
Barnard – Up 8% (probably ED, but may be more)
Hamilton - Up 8%
Bowdoin - Up 7.9%
Union College - Up 7%
Amherst – Up 5% (probably ED, but may be more)
Occidental – Up 3.5%
NYU - Up 2.3%
Elon - Up 1%
Dickinson – flat
Johns Hopkins - <0.6>
Brown - <4.5>
Williams - <6.5> (as of 11/14)</p>

<p>MIT EA - Up 25%
Stanford EA - Up 18%
Yale EA - Up 10.4%
U Of Chicago EA - <15%></p>

<p>Does anyone have any information about this year's ED numbers at Tufts?</p>

<p>Penn ED drops 8%</p>

<p>Early</a> decision applications drop 8 percent | Interactive Feature - News</p>

<p>
[quote]
Furda wrote in an e-mail that as a result of recent layoffs and the collapse of the financial service industry, fewer students applied to Wharton than in past years. Only 29 percent of the total early decision applications applied to the school .</p>

<p>Fifty-seven percent of early decision applicants applied to the College, 12 percent to the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and two percent to the School of Nursing.</p>

<p>While, as usual, almost half of this year's applicants hail from the Mid-Atlantic, the number of applicants from California dropped from 332 last year to 292 this year.</p>

<p>This number is "soft" compared to last year's, Furda said, particularly since the University had increased recruiting efforts in the state this year. Despite the drop, he said Penn will continue its strong California recruitment efforts due to the size and demographics of the state.</p>

<p>In addition, he said next year's recruitment will have an increased focus on the Southeast United States, from Texas to Florida.</p>

<p>International applications remained relatively stable, with 602 applicants compared to 605 last year.</p>

<p>The gender distribution also stayed fairly even with 46 percent female applicants, up from 45 percent in last year's pool.</p>

<p>This year's total, however, does not include the 220 applicants who applied to the University through QuestBridge, a separate application program for low-income students with which the University partnered for the first time this year.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>^ Interesting, but I suppose not surprising that Wharton is taking such a big hit. Wall Street is not looking like an attractive destination right now. Law school applications usually go up during a recession, however. It will be interesting to see how that plays out this year.</p>

<p>According to this admissions blog <a href="http://nuadmissions.typepad.com/ronne/:%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://nuadmissions.typepad.com/ronne/:&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>
[QUOTE]
I thought I would use this blog entry to update you on our early action process. We [Northeastern University] received just over 10,000 EA applications this year. Our admission staff is already busy reading and evaluating each application we received.

[/QUOTE]
</p>

<p>They received 8,134 last year so about a 23% increase over last year.</p>

<p>
[quote]
QuestBridge is pleased to welcome California Institute of Technology, Haverford College, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, Parsons The New School for Design, University of Pennsylvania, and Wesleyan University as new partners in 2008.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>A lot of the increase in early application is due to the new partnership with Questbridge. Of the 25% increase at MIT more than 50% was due to Questbridge.</p>

<p>Also many of the colleges that have increased number of ED applications are on the partner list of Questbridge. So it may be the accounting that last year it was not included in the ED number but this year it is.</p>

<p>Full list of Questbridge partners:</p>

<p>
[quote]
Amherst College<br>
Bowdoin College
California Institute of Tech
Chicago, University of
Claremont McKenna College
Columbia University
Emory University
Haverford College
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Northwestern University
Notre Dame, University of
Oberlin College
Parsons The New School for Design
Pennsylvania, University of
Pomona College
Princeton University
Rice University</p>

<p>Scripps College
Stanford University
Swarthmore College
Trinity College
Vassar College
Wellesley College
Wesleyan University
Williams College
Yale University<br>

[/quote]
</p>