Early Decision - is it fair?

Parents Forum
221

Yes, it is absolutely one way to easily manage yield. And one reason that is important is that they only have so many Frosh beds. Over enroll by 50 or 100 students and they have to scramble to find places for kids to sleep, including tripling up and using lounges. Never a good thing. Without ED, one way to reduce that possibility is to use a WL more. In other words, accept fewer in RD and then have a huge WL. That is not a great option either as many won’t get admitted until May.

Of course, the cynic says that ED/EA also helps manage the finaid budget…

222

I don’t know why you need to be cynical to believe this. Schools without Harvard’s endowment really do need to manage the finaid budget. I don’t see what’s wrong with that.

223

As an active alumni doing student meetings, I can tell you that yield is super important, at least to my alma mater. Almost every communication is about getting students excited and making sure that admitted students accept.

IMO, it’s kind of a crock because alumni are not going to swing the pendulum. If they really wanted to increase yield, they’d be giving out merit money and more financial aid. The vast majority of students are not choosing between Ivies (although sometimes it feels like that here on CC), but between lesser ranked schools that have offered huge merit $.

224

I find it more than a bit concerning that many here seem to be viewing full pay students with some disdain and seem to believe that colleges run on rainbows and sunshine. College required cash to pay professors, pay administrators, fund sports programs, etc. These entities are, make no mistake, big businesses with huge operational costs.

Schools could have simply made a calculation of Total Cost Required / Number of Students = Cost Per Student. Under this simplistic plan, everyone would pay the same and there would be no financial aid. This would not preclude loans as this would simply be a student choosing to borrow the funds that the college would collect.

Colleges have not taken this route and choose to subsidize students for academic, athletic, performance and financial reasons.

Using a simple example of 2.5% of a school receiving full scholarships, the remaining non-scholarship students need to pay more to make up for the lost revenue of the athletes. If a hypothetical school of approximately 10,000 needed $330 million of tuition (which is $33,000 per student divided evenly) they would need to raise the tuition to $34,000 per student. That in an of itself would not be an issue as $1k on $33,000 barely moves the needle moves the needle

Now the school has a pool of 9,750 students who are paying tuition (at all). Of these students, many can not afford the now $34,000 theoretical tuition so the school offers financial aid to those it determines have need. Of the students at the school, 50% are determined to have some need and the average amount that they are able to pay is $10,0000 per student.

Well in order to get the $330 million needed in total tuition, the college can not start by simply reducing these students with need from the $35,000 average tuition needed number. It needs to gross up premiums in order to arrive at the needed $330 million. In this case, the numbers work out to a required $53,000 tuition top line number.

If viewed another way, every student at this schools average cost of education is $33,000 per year. Those who receive a $20,000 reduction an are paying $33,000 and are paying the average and are effectively exempt from the effects of this gross-up/net down effect.

The very poor student who was determined to have no ability to pay anything for this school is receiving $33,000 in benefit annually from this school. The full pay student is effectively paying $20,000 more per year than would be paid under a flat payment system.

Is this fair? Well, every student who goes to a college is entering into a willing transaction with their respective University. If they don’t like the price or how the price was determined, they can either choose to study somewhere else or not continue with their education.

The example above is very typical of many private colleges and the dollar amounts and college size was calculated using data from Boston College per collegedata.com. It is also a significant reason why college prices have increased so quickly in the last couple of decades. Most schools have significantly expanded financial aid and someone has to pay for it.

225

Every few years some college has to take over a local motel to house Freshman and you’d think they were putting people in homeless shelters. And every year, there are college’s which make it to the lists in May of “We still have space” which upsets their boards of trustees (every kid who doesn’t enroll is lost revenue), alumni (who feel it “cheapens” their degree) and faculty (professors want to teach kids who want to be there… not kids who end up sitting in their classroom or lab by default).

So that’s why managing yield matters. It can take 5 years to build a new dorm (zoning, approvals, plus the construction) which doesn’t help when enrollment goes over. And for a college without a huge endowment, the “hit” when the class is under-enrolled can trigger a snowball- less revenue, public commentary, etc. You can only spin “small classes and low professor/student ratios” for so long before someone notices.

226

To summarize why early decision benefits colleges:

  1. The college knows these students definitely will attend and therefore can tailor-design a portion of their incoming class. Colleges may want athletes for each team, players of each instrument for the orchestra, students expressing interest in each major, etc. (although students can always change their mind later about the major and activities they will pursue). Colleges want students from a diversity of states- all 50 if they can manage it, plus some from other nations. They want students of backgrounds that vary in race and in gender and in socioeconomic levels. They want enough legacy students to reassure alumni that their kids are welcome but they also want to make sure that the number of first generation students substantially exceeds the number of legacy students, so that the college embodies progressive values.
  2. And, as others have pointed out above, it is not just the composition of the class that is better controlled through ED. It is also the size. They know these students will be coming, for sure. Every RD admit can pick another college instead if they so decide, so colleges admit a number of RD students based on predicted yield based on past data. But their predictions may be incorrect. ED is not based on prediction; it is based on definite knowledge.
  3. If a fairly large portion of the class already has been admitted early decision, then the college can admit fewer students RD to meet all the goals listed above, and thus they can brag that their college is among the nation’s most selective colleges.
227

@gallentjill

You are hypothesizing an unusually cooperative ex. One who is willing to fill out CSS Profile info early in the season, and make personal financial records available to a wide array of colleges in the fall, only to have to update the same info in the spring. Given that my ex was self-employed, that means business statements as well as tax records.

I’m assuming you do understand that the CSS Profile is set up to enable the NCP financial info to be submitted confidentially?

And since I’ve never done a “preread” – how do the college get the info for that? Are they looking at verifiable CSS profile info and financial documentation, or relying on info informally provided info from the applicant.

228

Agree with your first two points GreyKing, but if ED was banned, the bragging of most selective college would not change. In fact, Harvard et al would receive even more applications so that their acceptance rate would decline even more. (All of those who receive early acceptance and are one-and-done would now have to apply to a bunch of similar colleges. Instead of SCEA and done in Dec, apply to the top 10, 20?..)

229

You are right. I have my own complicated family situation which is different and also made ED unavailable. It would be presumptuous of me to assume that ED is available to every family where FA is sufficient to make the college affordable. I know it is definitely unavailable where a family needs a combination of merit and FA. My only point was that it doesn’t only work to the benefit of the wealthy. It can also be used by many low SES families where the EFC might be affordable.

I still believe that if one gets an affordable estimate from a top choice school, one should be able to ED. The fact that some other school might be more affordable doesn’t change the equation. If a family’s situation makes it impossible to get a reliable estimate, they can’t use the ED tool. I don’t see that you would have to do it with 15 schools. By definition, you would only be doing it at 1 or 2 schools where were clear first choices.

230

Note that even with this feature, some ex-spouses may be suspicious enough to refuse to cooperate, since if you know the student’s actual FA and one parent’s finances, it may not be that hard to reverse-engineer ranges of the other parent’s income and assets using the college’s net price calculator.

231

Especially with the idea of getting multiple pre-reads.

I think that some of these posts about pre-reads simply reflect a fundamental misunderstanding about how need-based aid works in practice, perhaps because upper-middle-class families whose FAFSA EFC’s are too high give up expectations early on, with the mistaken assumption that the process is more simple and transparent for families on the lower end of the middle-class spectrum who do qualify – when the reality is that it gets quite convoluted & unpredictable.

My personal experience was that merit money was actually more easy to predict for my high scoring (NM) kid… though completely obscure for the kid with the weaker test scores. But I don’t remember the schools that were more generous with merit money having ED-- instead, many went the route of early deadlines for scholarship applications. That makes sense for the college-- it gets the merit-money seekers at the head of the line, all accounted for early on – but no particular benefit to the college in locking in a student whose tuition is being subsidized by the college.

232

If Harvard or Stanford said 100% of the spots are going to be awarded ED, they’d still have 10 applicants for every spot.

Some schools are quite honest that 40 or 50% of the spots are being given to ED applicants, which include legacies and athletes, that if you want a bump, ED is where you will get it.

A lot of schools have very early deadlines for the first rounds, merit consideration, or for some other reason (housing preference?). I was sitting in a guidance counselor ‘going to college’ meeting on Oct 15 and learned the application deadline for public schools was Oct 16! Obviously, my kids couldn’t meet the deadline. I had no idea that deadlines were that early. Was it unfair for them to set deadlines that early and give away 75% of the seats for freshmen and all the good housing? Well I thought so but those who got those seats and beds were happy.

I don’t see why colleges should change. ED works for them. They are getting the students they want locked in early. Many state they want to see interest and what better way to show interest than ED?

233

@bluebayou - Point #3 in post 226 was not imagining a sudden ban; like the other points, it was speaking of the current advantages that lead colleges to offer ED under the actual current conditions.

But you made me think about the scenario you propose. You may be right. But I wonder if the impact would begin one layer down from Harvard. Brown may lose more to Harvard, Williams may lose more to Brown, Middlebury may lose more to Williams… making all of those colleges have to admit more students to fill a class. Would the greater number of applicants to each college, because now students apply to more colleges, offset the greater unpredictability of all-RD? I don’t know…

In the meantime, in the real world, ED helps many colleges keep the admissions percentages lower as they fill half the class ED.

That also may be why HYP offer SCEA, but the other Ivies and most of the small liberal arts colleges offer ED… and of the small liberal arts colleges, most of them except Amherst and Williams also offer ED2, and many admit almost half the class through ED plans.

234

sorry for being so late, I just saw post 102 asked me a reasonable question.
I agree most students rely on parental money, at least as far as step 1 goes. So, if there is any unfairness in your query(referencing post 102) , it is the unfairness the parents have done to their child that may have shortchanged the student’s opportunities. But really I don’t see that as unfair. The adults made the choices they made, and different choices might have made different outcomes, but that isn’t a measure of fairness as I see it.It is not the college’s unfairness or other students or parents that may be better off financially.
Let’s remember, colleges offer grants and loans to those students. Is that fair to better-off students, to have to pay their own way? If there is a public college that gives grants, is that fair to taxpayers that maybe didn’t even attend college, having to chip in for someone else’s college?

I’m sure I could go on, asking what is fair. But I still have the opinion that those that have better outcomes because of making better choices isn’t unfair.

235

Does it matter for how you determine fairness whether the better/worse outcomes are due to your own better/worse choices, versus other people’s choices that you do not control but that are better/worse for you?

236

@greyking Almost all top universities admit ~ half of their classes via ED/EA, with a few exceptions.

237

If you wish to argue(post 235) that parents have made poor choices, and as a result the offspring have limited choices, then maybe you have a point that the prospective student has been treated unfairly by their parent(s). But if that’s the case it wasn’t the school, or other prospective students or their parents that are being unfair to the poorer student. They aren’t the ones that made choices for the student to be poor.

238

Not everyone has been on CC for years and know the in’s and out’s of college admissions, to the extent that’s knowable. Is it fair to demand a HS student, especially one from a disadvantaged background, to know for certain his/her first and only choice before the start of his/her senior year? Is it fair to ask a family needing FA to forgo his/her option to compare FA packages? Is it fair to a RD applicant, perhaps one even more qualified that some of the ED admits, that half and more of the seats have already been taken so s/he has to to apply to many more schools in order to even up the odds somewhat, and in the process driving down the RD acceptance rates even further?

239

2 years ago there was a similar discussion on CC about the merits & problems of ED. One interesting notion that emerged (from @northwesty I think) was this:

What if a very large consortium of competitive private colleges presently offering ED switched to offering REA, like 2-choice Early Action. (non-binding, but you can only apply to 2 schools early.)

Pros:

  • non-binding, so everyone can compare late merit offers. The primary complaint about ED goes away.
  • 2-choice EA shows a stronger indication of ‘demonstrated interest’ to the colleges than unlimited EA
  • students get two bullets… ideally using one for reach and one for a target. Hopefully colleges give a modest bump for Early applicants over RD
  • (maybe) the number of applications that students have to prepare, and colleges have to read, goes down.

Cons:

  • Universities don’t get the commitment so there is much higher uncertainty on the decisions of the Early acceptees. (yield on Early admittances drops from ~97% to maybe 33%.) This alone may doom the idea.

What do all of you think?

240

There is no fixed rule. Different “top universities” use ED/EA differently and admit different portions of their class in the early round. Some of the top colleges in tech (MIT, Caltech, CMU, Elon, …) typically admit 20-30% of their matriculating class via EA/ED. Some of the top publics do not have an early admission program at all, such as the UC system. At the other end, some of the top LACs approach or exceed 60% admitted via ED. For example, Bates admitted 71% of their class via ED, according to the 2017-18 CDS. A few non-LACs also exceed 60%, such as Wake Forest in the most recent CDS. If by “top universities” you mean HYPS… (not MC…) type colleges, then admitting 40-55% of the matriculating class early is a typical range. Brown tends to be on the lower end and is sometimes under 40%. Harvard tends to be on the higher end and was over 60% in some previous years.