@blossom you are absolutely correct. ED is for competitive applicants who want the extra boost ED gives and really want to go to that school.
@blossom You are 100% correct. ED will never turn a reject into an accept. But the fact is that there are many more than qualified kids whose stats fall well within the accepted ranges who get overlooked all the time. That’s who the bump goes to. And those are the kids like my own who fall through the cracks in RD. When applying ED it should be to a trarget school, not a true reach.
“A lot of these kids simply peukdnnot get in RD. The pool is too competitive. ED doesn’t just benefit the wealthy, you just aren’t willing to hear the facts.”
The RD round being so difficult to get in is artificially created by colleges using ED for more of their class, that’s one of my points. It doesn’t have to be that way, if they didn’t have ED, the RD round would be easier and more fair to get into. Georgetown’s EA rate is 12%, it’s RD is 16%, for overall rate of 14.5%. That’s how it should be, early should be tougher than regular, that’s the way it was, until colleges used ED to game the rankings.
There are a lot facts and evidence out there that ED benefits wealthier applicants, the JCF is probably one of the more famous ones:
"The Cooke Foundation study found that only 16 percent of high-achieving students from families with annual incomes below $50,000 applied for college admission on an early-decision basis in the 2013-14 academic year. But 29 percent of high-achieving students from families with incomes above $250,000 applied on an early-decision basis. Is it any wonder that so many more upper-income students gain admission?
The blatant unfairness of early admissions was obvious even before they became as widespread as they are today. In 2006, Harvard University, Princeton University and the University of Virginia eliminated early admissions to give all students a fairer chance of being admitted."
@thelonsiusmunk I disagree that if you got rid of ED, then RD would be easier. ED does take a lot of high stats kids out of the RD pool. Without ED, those kids would now be applying to lots and lots of schools in the RD round, thereby increasing the number of applications and admit rates may actually go down.
The admission rates clearly indicate that there is an advantage to applying ED. Students pay for this advantage by limiting their options. Because of financial concerns, lower income students are less likely to apply ED. Therefore, ED biases college admission toward higher income students.
Putting all students in one pool is always going to be the fairest option.
Is it the fairest option for the colleges? It denies them the ability to plan a class. It exposes them to the possibility of being over or undersubscribed with real repercussions ot the school. It makes it harder for them to plan their finances. People here like to give the example of Harvard’s SCEA, but Harvard has a 38 Billion dollar endowment. Other schools don’t. They also don’t have the cache that Harvard and Princeton have and know full well that they are being used as safeties by high stat kids. Harvard doesn’t have that worry.
If the choice is a better outcome for the college or a better outcome for the student and parents, my bias is always towards the student and family. I’m not going to cry for any college that needs ED to plan their college enrollment at the expense of denying lower income students an opportunity.
“Therefore, ED biases college admission toward higher income students.”
Exactly.
And the net result (for all but HYPSM et al) would be much larger use of the WL. Colleges have a fixed number of beds, and cannot over enroll by 100+ students. (Don’t want to under-enroll either since that costs them paying customers.) Thus, many kids won’t be hearing/choosing final colleges until May or later, as the trickle down rolls thru the system.
An alternative would be to move up the RD App date from Jan 1 to Dec 1, with earlier decisions.
ED is not going away, it will continue to be adapted by more and more colleges.
This assumes its a choice and not more like a necessity. Colleges don’t run on wishful thinking. They need to make budgets, pay salaries, allocate resources and have some ability to plan for the future. The ones who can’t do this, close. Look at Hampshire and the others in the college closing threads. College of New Rochelle is closing and that is a huge loss the the community. I know people who got their nursing degrees there. They will be sorely missed, but that doesn’t change the fact that the business didn’t work. I would rather see colleges use the tools they need to keep afloat and provide aid to some students rather than running on dreams like Hampshire and closing.