That data sure looked strange, but I checked the CDS for last year and sure enough, they accepted a higher % of RD candidates than ED candidates (approximately 70% vs 63%). Anyone more familiar with Virginia Tech know why that might be? OTOH, it may solve the problem for OP - get the best of both worlds and apply RD! And the data shows that it is slightly easier for a female to get admitted, so more good news for your daughter.
I don’t have first hand experience with Tech, but I have heard nothing but good things from students and parents of students, so I hope she gets to be a Hokie!
@RockySoil Thank you! She’s obsessed with VTech and would love to be a Hokie, and if the best path there is applying RD vs ED, that indeed solves my original question. Glad to hear girls have an edge, I had no idea, all I know is that not being a VA resident decreases her chances dramatically. But here’s hoping! And if anyone has any more insight into why RD has a better %age acceptance that ED, I’d love to hear that as well.
Cost of college has to be the first filter criteria. She can be obsessed all she wants…but you have to figure out what you can afford per year (taking into account other siblings) and let her know how much you can afford.
If that means VT, then great! If not, then she will have to find another college.
I don’t like when people set up one school as a kind of dream college. If you haven’t yet, I would be very upfront with your D about finances, what you can afford etc. Let her know that ED is not an option as you need to see what the financial aid will be at different schools. Being honest and upfront at the start of the process is a huge help.
I would encourage her to come up with a list of reach, match, and safety colleges that appear affordable and that she would be excited to attend. VT is a great school, but there are tons of other great schools out there as well.
The kid isn’t " committed to paying full price, no matter what the $$$ is like elsewhere"-- it’s the parents who will be taking on that commitment.
If you’re not happy with the price tag, then tell your daughter she can’t apply ED. It’s as simple as that. And if the pricetag of her “dream school”-- how I HATE that term-- isn’t something your family can’t handle, then the school should be off the table. Why take a chance that she’ll have her heart broken when she gets accepted and then you have to introduce her to the realities of your family’s finances?
@happy1 If you’re implying that I set up this school as a dream college, I didn’t. We visited and she loved it. All her. It’s not my top choice for her, actually, as it’s very far away and expensive. But it is HER top choice. And she does have a list of colleges, including match and safety.
@bjkmom I’m sorry the term I used offended you. It’s tossed around a lot. I had no idea it was offensive. I intended the phrase as a descriptor of my daughter’s feelings about the school. And as I said several times in previous comments, we CAN afford it. If she gets accepted she absolutely can go. It just would be substantially more expensive than her other options, and we would prefer to pay less for college, not more, which I don’t think is extraordinarily unusual.
@Stellaluna27 Sorry – I think you took my comment the wrong way. In no way did I mean to imply that VT was “your” dream school – in fact I thought it was quite evident from your posts that it is your D’s dream college. Students develop “dream schools” for many reasons and all I am trying to say is that as a parent you can work to temper her enthusiasm for the one school – one way to do that is to be upfront about the financial realities and your need/desire to compare financial offers among different schools (and why that takes the ED option to VT off the table).
And the suggestion of having a good set of affordable reach/match/safety schools is one I and others on CC routinely give, it was not meant as any type of personal affront – trust me many people do not take the time to develop good application lists – I’m glad you did.
No worries. “Dream School” is indeed used everywhere. I’ve just taught far too may seniors who fell into the trap of putting one school on a pedestal, then being crushed when they weren’t accepted.
As a result, the mantra in my house last year was “You’ll bloom where you’re planted.” My daughter is now totally in love with a school she had never heard of when her first (somewhat disappointing) round of apps went out in the fall of last year. She’s thinking of getting a tattoo of a flower to remind her of that saying.
My son was much more level headed. He had a list of schools he liked, though one more than the others. When that acceptance came in, he was done.
Visit your instate schools, she may find she actually likes them when she sits in a class and takes a tour. Definitely ask to sit in a class or two. These may be safeties and you want to make sure she has a safety she will be ahppy attending.
As others have said, it is not just higher acceptance rates for ED, but who is being accepted. What percentage of ED accepted students are athletes, legacy, etc. And ED vs EA is usually available if you google it.
I agree with this, yet being straight up about this can be uncomfortable and just cause her to dig her heels in.
But given that many students fall in “love” with a school without knowing much about college in general or their dream school in particular, maybe an indirect way of pointing this out would help. Suppose every few days the OP was to ask a couple of questions about her D’s expected college experience to help mom understand what college will be like at Vtech:
[ul]
[]How does enrollment work at Vtech? Are you guaranteed your first choice of a certain number of units even as a frosh, or do you get what’s left over when everyone with more units is finished choosing?
[]What are the typical class sizes for frosh? For upper-classmen?
[]How do you get an advisor? Do they even have one for each student?
[]Where are you planning on living as a frosh? Is that building close to campus?
[]Where’s the dining hall for your chosen building if you get it? Can you eat anywhere on campus or just in your assigned hall?
[]So after frosh year are you guaranteed housing? If so will they put you with your friends if you all request?
[]If you want to move off-campus, where do kids go? How much is rent?
[]What are the popular things kids are doing on the weekends?
[]You like playing sport X. Do they have leagues where you can keep playing? Can anyone sign up and be placed on a team or do you have to join as a team?
[]If you wanted to go abroad for a term or a year, where can you go? How much does it cost? Can you stay on track academically?
[]A lot of kids change their major. How do you do it at VTech? When is the last time you can change?
[]If you decide you don’t like a class, how long do they give you to drop it? To take something else?
[]Do you get priority enrollment for classes in your major?
[]What kind of help does the career center give? Can they set you up to talk to an alum in your field?
[/ul] And so on. Perhaps her crush will fade a bit as she starts to realize maybe it isn’t everything just the way she wanted or she’s just assuming everything will work out…
Before asking those kinds of questions, I’d be very certain that the other schools on the kid’s list compared favorably in those respects.
For my own kid, I found it worked better to frame the money talk as a money talk, and to be very forthright about how much influence money would have, both in where applications could go and in the final decision. Mine did not want to know specific dollar amounts, just that a specific one was significantly cheaper and a specific one definitely the most expensive, with the rest clustered towards the expensive end.
It looks like EA is a brand new thing for this school, so there probably is no way to compare ED and EA acceptance rates. It does seem this is NOT a school where you gain a huge advantage by applying ED, so applying EA would seem to be way to go if she will agree. One of the things I am most grateful to the CC community for is the advice to at least a couple of EA schools. Our son was accepted EA by both of the schools he applied to, and while we are still waiting for the RD responses to come in, the pressure is a lot less knowing he’s already been accepted to a school he’d happily attend. He received merit at both of the schools where he was accepted EA and both have also followed up to offer him the opportunity to apply for additional scholarships.
All we are saying is that you should start letting your DD know what your budget is now so it won’t be a surprise…
if you she is admitted and you say but we can only afford $25K per year you can’t go there, then you are the baddie.
if you say we can only afford 25K per year, and VT comes back with a net cost of $45K then they are the baddie.
I think that a lot of folks apply ED to Virginia Tech specifically to engineering, which is extremely competitive.
As for ED vs RD, I know twins that were interested in a top-40 school last year. They had basically the same grades and stats, same extracurriculars. One of them applied ED and the other couldn’t commit and applied RD. The ED kid got in and the RD kid was waitlisted. It was an interesting real-life example.