<p>It is a pity to use the average in this situation........it is always the easy way out.</p>
<p>I think part of the problem is that HS students have an inaccurate idea of what it takes to get into an Ivy-caliber school, whether RD or ED or EA. An acquaintance of mine applied to Yale early, and applied to several other selective schools RD (Amherst, Middlebury, Swarthmore, Northwestern, etc). The problem was that she had attended a very small, Christian private school up through 8th grade; the transition to our medium-large public high school didn't go well, and she was not able to "hop aboard" the Honors/AP track until later on. She was always very sheltered, and just didn't seem to realize what she had to do in high school in order to get into these schools; she had unremarkable SAT scores, a top-10% rank, few outside awards, and almost no extracurricular involvement. Looking at her, you had to know that she wouldn't get into Yale, but the rejection was a huge blow to her. Now, she's only been accepted to her safety (state) school and waitlisted at a few others. </p>
<p>Then again... the process did work for me. I got into Brown ED- but I only applied because I really loved the school and its location, and I was a lot more realistic about my chances.</p>
<p>I think am not happy with the whole ED thing. My son applied RD to an elite LAC and got waitlisted. This school was definitely his first choice. He is one of those kids that when people find out he got WL, they shake their heads and wonder why on earth he was not accepted outright. (The fact that he got WL means he was qualified.) Several folks have stated that he would have most likely gotten in had he applied ED and my guess is they are right. However, while we are well off financially, he is the third of 3 to enter college. First one is graduating this spring and #2 is a sophmore. We did not feel that we could commit to a school without seeing the FA package, so that lets out ED. So essentially you fill up 25-35% of the class with kids who agree to attend regardless of cost. It just makes it so much harder for kids like mine. I would like to see ED eliminated. But no one ever said life was fair.... :)</p>
<p>Shennie, I'm so sorry. I dislike ED for several reasons, including those you mention. I think of it as affirmative-action-for-the-wealthy.</p>
<p>Sorry to hear that Shennie. It's not fair. I would love to see ED eliminated. The money factor is a real problem for so many. But, even in cases where the money is less of an issue, there are so many other reasons why ED is a tough road. Kids grow and change so much in their senior year. The student who makes a binding commitment with an application sent in by September or October may have a different outlook on things by the following spring when RD results normally come in.</p>
<p>shennie, I agree with you in general about ED -- I too really oppose the practice for several reasons and wish it could be abolished -- but I'm not so sure that we can assume that the fact that someone is waitlisted means they would have gotten in ED. </p>
<p>I think the more likely scenario is that an applicant who is waitlisted in RD is they type who would most likely be deferred ED. </p>
<p>My daughter applied early, though not ED, to Brandeis through their Blue Ribbon app - the plan that gives notification by early February - and was waitlisted; and she applied EA to Chicago, was deferred, and then later accepted. I realize that EA is not the same as ED, because it doesn't give the college the advantage of a firm commitment. But EA does give the advantage of a smaller applicant pool, and an earlier consideration, ahead of potential competition from the larger pool - so it should confer some advantage for a fully "qualified" applicant.</p>
<p>My interpretation of my daughter's waitlist & early deferral was that she was (a) qualified, but (b) didn't quite have the stuff in the application that was enough to move them. I know that ad coms generally use some sort of numerical ranking system or letter code to tag the apps - and I figured that my daughter's app had been tagged a "maybe" on the first read-- and maybe's tend to get pushed to the back for later reconsideration. </p>
<p>Keep in mind that at a highly competive school, "maybe" isn't enough. The application needs to have a "wow" factor - something that makes the ad coms think, "we need to grab this kid while we can." That isn't to say that your son wouldn't have been accepted ED -- just that I don't think you can read all that much into a waitlist. Being "qualified" isn't enough at schools that regularly reject qualified applicants. </p>
<p>I also had a son who was waitlisted in the RD round from a school that I thought might have accepted him in ED round, because he was a very high stat applicant. But then, I spent a lot of time stressing this year because my daughter was applying RD to a school that takes 30% of its class from the ED pool -- and she ended up getting in, despite poor test scores, which I thought put her at a competitive disadvantage. So I think we tend to want to rationalize why our kids didn't quite make it, but the reality is that we don't really know, and to assume it is because they couldn't use ED is engaging in the same logical fallacy as to assume that their "spot" went to an athlete or a URM. </p>
<p>I know that ED confers a significant statistical advantage- but ED pools tend to be smaller and they may include a lot of students who are hooked in various ways (legacies, recruited athletes) -- so that may tend to skew the results somewhat.</p>
<p>Obviously I don't know if he would have gotten in if he had applied ED. Who knows? There are very few kids from our state who attend this particular school and I don't think very many apply. We thought that geography would tip him in given his very high stats, excellent ECs and wonderful recs. It is possible that they accepted a couple kids from our state during the ED round and therefore it was no longer an edge. Just hypothesizing of course. We will never really know and he has several excellent schools from which to choose, so it is not a huge deal. But I do believe that ED at highly selective schools is inherently unfair.</p>
<p>Oh, I agree that it is inherently unfair, but mostly because of the issue related to finances and requirement students are bound by the decision. It's just that I don't think we can ever read too much into an outcome. When my son was waitlisted from Pomona years ago, I called afterward and asked why he was waitlisted, and they said it was because his class rank wasn't high enough. </p>
<p>But I'm more sophisticated now, and I know that there is no "because" -- the people who answer the phone simply are going to point to a factor that will satisfy overinvolved parents who make these post-admission phone calls. This time around I haven't made any calls. I'm sure when parents call they point to the exact same "reasons" for rejection or waitlist that exist in the files of those who accepted. That is, I'll bet Pomona accepted some RD students with lower class rank than my son, and I'll bet my daughter's colleges rejected students with higher test scores, but will tell those who call to ask that they were rejected because of poor test scores.</p>
<p>Bottom line, its a highly competitive selection process with some very subjective elements -- the most significant one being that people you don't know and usually have never met are the ones making the decisions.</p>
<p>We will qualify for need based aid and hope for merit aid -- in the above posts ED is cited as a deal breaker for financial aid. Is EA also not an option for kids who need to see the FA? Or is it different without the binding aspect?</p>
<p>EA is not a problem at all, because it is not binding and you still have until May 1st to decide. So for financial aid, it's exactly like RD.</p>
<p>While ED may be an advantage, not applying ED isn't really a disadvantage. For example, at Shenni-son's ED school, only 17% of the total acceptance letters were mailed during the ED round. That's a fairly moderate impact on the overall accepted class. 83% of the total acceptance letters were mailed in the RD round.</p>
<p>What may have more impact is that only about 40% or 41% of the acceptance letters went to white US citizens. When you start breaking that down into the actual number of acceptance letters "available" to white US applicants, it's a very small number -- under 360 in this case.</p>
<p>interested==
can you break that 43% ED down into gender percentages?</p>
<p>i am looking for a huge backlash against the PC thinking--</p>
<p>doubtful it wil influence college admission though. too many schools are on the bandwagon of building a "community".</p>
<p>sorry--meant the 40% not 43%ED</p>
<p>Applying to a binding ED program means that you won't get to compare award letters, of course, but I think this is more of a problem for middle-class families. If you're truly bottom-of-the-barrel poor, many selective schools will offer you plenty of need-based aid. This was a concern for me when I applied ED, but between my need-based aid award and one outside scholarship, 95% of my college experience (including room and board, books, and fees) is either paid for or will be paid for with (a small amount of) loans.</p>
<p>interesteddad - Because such a large portion of the schools class was minority or international (I am not complaining about the demographics), my guess is that most of the students accepted in the ED round were white kids from the USA. My guess is he would have compared well with that pool, but who knows. However, our financial situation made ED very unadvisable. So it goes.</p>
<p>Do you think that a student who is deffered in an EA or ED round is negetively effected in the RD round. If Student A is is deferred ED or EA and Student B with a very similar profile are both going RD at the same school do you think that being deffered casts a negative shadow on the applicant A.</p>
<p>Just wondered.</p>
<p>It probably differs depending on the school; however, I think my daughter's EA deferral from Chicago put her at an advantage. But the reasons may be unique to Chicago. At most colleges, the statistical chances of a deferred EA applicant are less than the statistical chances of the RD pool as a whole; but we don't know why. At Chicago, the percentages of kids accepted EA, the percentages of deferred EA candidates accepted in the RD round, and the percentages of acceptances in the regular RD pool are all about the same. </p>
<p>The reason I think it helped my daughter is that after being deferred EA, she submitted some supplemental materials that might have helped round out her application. (Her EA application has a very humorous essay; the supplemental submission showed her more serious, academic side). Of course she had to guess at what it was that caused doubt the first time around -- and for all we know they simply wanted to see midyear grades. But essentially, EA gave her two bites at the apple. </p>
<p>But then again, Chicago has uncommon application procedures. ;)</p>
<p>Being deferred Early Anything is not a shadow a most schools. A couple of colleges have a Admit-or-Deny policy on Early Apps...no deferral.</p>
<p>MusicToad, there is no "fair" way of doing admissions and the general pattern used today isn't any less "fair" than any other solution you propose. </p>
<p>Give me any solution you propose to implement and I'll show you who relatively "wins" and "loses" under the system. </p>
<p>It is truth to be univerally acknowledged that an applicant who is Denied under one system will often tout the merits of an alternate system that, oddly enough, increase his/her relative odds for success.</p>
<p>It's tough to determine the effect of applying early in the RD round if deferred because a fair number of students take themselves out of the running. They decide to apply somewhere else EDII, or never communicate to the school that they are still interested. The relevant statistic is knowing what percent of those deferred who expressed interest are accepted, and I'm not sure we could ever know that.</p>