Early decisions rates are high?

Applying to College
1

<p>It seems early acceptance rates are high by about 10% points. I know the only caveat is they are binding meaning you won't be able to compare other offers. For places like Cornell, Rice wouldn't that be a non issue as they mostly meet 100% need. What do you guys think?</p>

2

<p>There may be very significant differences in the out-of-pocket costs for the same student offered acceptance at several different “meets full need” schools. Someone posted their results a few years ago, listing their net price after financial aid offers at about half a dozen schools that all claim to meet full need.</p>

<p>The differences come in:

  1. How the institution defines your need. Schools that use their own institutional formulas may come up with a very different calculation of what your need is.
  2. How much of the aid package is grants vs. loans. There is a huge difference between offering to lend you $20K/year and actually giving you a $20K/year scholarship.</p>
3

<p>Whatever aid packet they give you, it’s going to be same for early admission as well as regular admission. Is this Correct? I’m not sure. I’m talking about applying early to those universities which are known to offer generous aids such as ivies. Not to any other university. This way all things being equal, you are getting advantage of higher acceptance rates. This is the point I want to understand. </p>

<p>Unless you are one of those types where you can get selected by many top schools and in that case you want to see which ones gives you the most so ED may not be the best option for you. </p>

<p>If they decline ED, do they automatically roll you in for RD?( I don’t know how it’s going to help considering ED acceptance rates are high) or you can’t apply to that college anymore.</p>

4

<p>Meeting 100% need simply means that the college will provide a level of financial awards that will meet estimated total annual costs (tuition, room & board etc.) minus an amount that your parents will be expected to contribute. It is the amount that your parents are expected to contribute that is often a shock to the parents, particularly for many middle class to upper middle class families, and often it is an amount that the parents conclude they cannot possibly afford if they want to continue enjoying such obvious luxuries as eating, heating the house, having a 10 year car, and having clothes on their back. Moreover, the type of awards given vary. If all the awards were grants that you need not repay, they would be ideal, but too often a very large portion is loans that will result in your accumulating an enormous amount of debt if you actually decide to attend such a high cost college. It is a result of those factors that ED colleges generally allow the applicant to opt out if the financial aid package offered is unacceptable to the parents</p>

5

<p>Yes, agree with above. Just doing the net-price calculators on several “full-need” schools will show you that they can vary by several thousand dollars… as in it might cost 8000 at one and 18000 at another with the same financial stats and both in “meets full-need” colleges. Loans are also an issue… some schools say “no-loans” but others do not or will expect loans after a certain income level.</p>

6

<p>Okay let me be little more specific, let’s take Cornell for E.g. </p>

<p>Whether you do ED or RD, their Financial aid package is whatever it is. Unless someone thinks aid package will be different. So COA will be same whether you are enrolled through ED or RD. </p>

<p>But acceptance rate is 17% in RD and 27% in ED. So if you can afford it, it may be advantageous to apply ED is what I’m saying.</p>

7

<p>Note. First the acceptance rate for ED is higher because there is a smaller pool of applicants but they have better overall credential and demonstrated interest for the school as one can only apply to one ED. For RD, all those got deferred from other ED schools and those who were not ready for ED are applying. So there is a much larger pool of applicant. the acceptance rate is expected to be lower. One should decide on whether to apply ED based on his/her credential, financial affordability, and commitment to attend that particular school, not simply hoping to increase the chance of acceptance. If you are depending on the financial aid and need to compare different financial package, ED is not for you. If your credential is significantly below admission average particularly for a prestigious school, ED would not help your chance either.</p>

8

<p>The same college (Cornell or Rice in OP) will NOT necessarily provide the same FA package to a student accepted in the ED round as compared to the same student who is accepted RD.</p>

<p>Every college has formulas and rules for applying to accepted students. At the most selective colleges, these rules are firmly established. However, every rule is subject to some level of interpretation and no case is black-and-white.</p>

<p>There is simply no incentive to ensure that the most attractive FA package possible is presented to an ED student. If an offer is 2% more expensive, the ED student will be required to accept it, and likely thrilled to do so. If the ED student is forced to withdraw based on a lack of FA, that extra 2% is highly unlikely to have made any difference in the decision.</p>

<p>Since every FA decision made in Nov/Dec is obviously an ED applicant, adcoms can still claim to be “need blind” in the admission decision while squeezing out a bit more revenue in the FA process.</p>

<p>I have never heard an adcom state that every FA application will be evaluated identically regardless of ED or RD. However, I have heard many equivocate when faced with blunt questions along this line.</p>

<p>For many reasons applicants who must consider FA should never apply ED. Reduced FA for ED acceptances is only one of these many reasons.</p>

9

<p>*<strong><em>First the acceptance rate for ED is higher because there is a smaller pool of applicants but they have better overall credential and demonstrated interest for the school as one can only apply to one ED</em></strong></p>

<p>The number shouldn’t matter as the acceptance rate I was referring to is in %. </p>

<p>rmldad</p>

<p>The information you presented is interesting. In your view FA package may not necessarily be same</p>

<p>If your ED application is rejected, are you automatically rolled in for RD?</p>

10

<p>^ It does. For a smaller pool, the accepted rate appears larger. You should look into the actual numbers which has been published at many places. Note that not only the applicant pool for ED is much smaller, they choose the school as the single choice for ED with a commitment to attend. That is the way to ensure a high yield rate. In general, around 10% of total applicants applied ED for each school, while around 20% of students are admitted from ED. So, from the 10 times more applicants in RD, they only accept 4 times more student than ED.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/right-school/timeline/articles/2009/09/30/colleges-where-applying-early-decision-helps[/url]”>http://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/right-school/timeline/articles/2009/09/30/colleges-where-applying-early-decision-helps&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“http://theivycoach.com/2013-ivy-league-admissions-statistics/[/url]”>http://theivycoach.com/2013-ivy-league-admissions-statistics/&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“2013 College Acceptance Rates - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com”>2013 College Acceptance Rates - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com;

11

<p>

</p>

<p>Almost all such schools also have an expected student contribution, usually between $4,000 and $10,000 (varies between schools; e.g. $4,600 at Harvard, $5,000 at Stanford, $7,000 at Virginia, ~$8,500 at UCs for California residents), to be covered by student loan and work earnings (often with a work-study subsidy to make it easier for the student to get an on-campus job).</p>

<p>So a “meet full need” school will offer:</p>

<p>Grants = COA - EFC - ESC</p>

<p>and some combination of direct loans and/or work-study for the ESC. Of course, each school may calculate EFC differently, resulting in another way for the financial aid and net price to differ.</p>

<p>More ways to think about it, at a “meet full need” school:</p>

<p>Net price = EFC + ESC = COA - Grants</p>

<p>Due to the ways EFC can be calculator and the varying levels of ESC, it is not necessarily true that a “meet full need” school will have a lower net price than a school that does not “meet full need”.</p>

<p>Bottom line is, run the net price calculator on each school’s web site, rather than assuming that “meet full need” means a sufficiently low net price.</p>

12

<p>OP, if you are rejected ED then you are not considered during RD. Some ED applicants are deferred from ED and reconsidered during RD. Rejection is rejection.</p>

<p>Higher ED admission rates often reflect special classes of applicants, notably recruited athletes and legacies. Penn, for instance, tells legacy applicants that legacy is only considered during the ED round. Would applying to Cornell ED really be an admissions advantage if you’re not a “hooked” applicant? Hard to tell.</p>

13

<p>Presumably, it suits the ED schools to leave it vague as to whether applying ED is of any advantage and how much of an advantage it is.</p>

14

<p>OP - An ED applicant will receive one of three possible decisions: admit, reject or defer to RD. An applicant is not automatically deferred if adcoms believe she will not be competitive in the RD round.</p>

<p>Also, you are correct - I believe that at most schools, the FA package may not be the same. However there is no way to verify this since an applicant can only be admitted either ED or RD, but not both - the FA package is calculate only once.</p>

<p>The number of applicants in the ED round matters because this round includes many unique applicants: recruited applicants (admit rate approaching 100%); legacies (varying increase in admit rate based on college policy); and other development applicants with increased admit rates. When these unique applicants, and their correspondingly higher admit rate are removed from the ED pool, the ED admit rate drops to much closer to the RD rate. In other words, the increased ED admit rate results from the self-selection of students, not the adcom policy.</p>

<p>Similarly, all of the “lottery ticket” applicants who have no realistic chance of admission apply during the RD round - they use their ED on a realistic school. If these applicants are removed from the RD pool, the RD admit rate increases closer to the adjusted ED admit rate.</p>

15

<p>^^^The number of applicants in the ED round matters because this round includes many unique applicants: recruited applicants (admit rate approaching 100%); legacies (varying increase in admit rate based on college policy); and other development applicants with increased admit rates. When these unique applicants, and their correspondingly higher admit rate are removed from the ED pool, the ED admit rate drops to much closer to the RD rate. In other words, the increased ED admit rate results from the self-selection of students, not the adcom policy.</p>

<p>That’s very nice info. So unless you are in a unique category, the admittance rate is really not very different.</p>

16

<p>Let’s take Cornell for e.g. Last year they had 40,000 application out of which 32,000 were rejected. That’s lot of rejection. I know they look at more than SAT/ACT scores but for sake of simplicity let’s say middle 50% ACT score is 30-34.</p>

<p>When folks apply and they don’t have unique situation, I would think they won’t be too far from the middle 50%.</p>

<p>Does that mean this high number of rejection comes even when applicants are close to 50% mark or people take chances with low scores such as score of 28,29 etc. </p>

<p>I’m trying to understand whether the folks who got rejected were because they were far from 50% or they were right near the 50% mark.</p>

17

<p>It’s hard to say…</p>

18

<p>

</p>

<p>This really varies from school to school. You can see this by hunting up the table of ED and RD acceptance rates that the NY Times publishes every year for many colleges. Some schools, eager to lock in applicants, have dramatically higher ED rates. Similarly, some EA schools have really high EA acceptance rates, hoping that by being the first to show they love an applicant the applicant will think of them fondly. :)</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Again, hard to tell–schools don’t give you info on their entire applicant pool. For another view, take a look at the CC Cornell forum and hunt up the acceptance threads from the last few years showing people’s stats and if they were accepted or rejected.</p>

19

<p>Don’t forget that whenever one compares acceptance rates for ED and RD, one has to also pull out/estimate the number of varsity scholarship students. Virtually all Div 1 varsity scholarship students are in the ED pool – so comparing a 17% RD and 27% ED at Cornell could actually mean that the ED acceptance rate is LOWER … (I haven’t run the numbers).</p>

<p>My husband actually ran estimated numbers at a number of schools, estimating each school’s varsity athletes (NCAA limits the number of scholarships per year) and teams – there are some schools where the ED acceptance rate is not any greater than the RD and in some cases, where it is higher. Although this isn’t for all schools, it did appear that the most highly selective schools were the ones where applying ED may not necessarily get you the bang for the buck that you think you are getting (since the ED pool includes their Div 1 athletes and often the “cream” of the applicants) – whereas schools that have higher overall acceptance rates often have significantly high EDs (a student who is willing to say “you are my number 1” is taken).</p>