Early Evaluation - How does it benefit Wellesley?

[GnocchiB]

I’m curious about the formalized Early Evaluation process at Wellesley. What benefits does it have to the college?

This is how it’s explained on their website:

On the Common Application, select the option marked Regular Decision. After selecting Regular Decision, you will be prompted by the question, “As a Regular Decision applicant do you wish to receive an Early Evaluation from the Board of Admission and notification of the probability of your admission as ‘likely,’ ‘possible,’ or ‘unlikely’ in late February?” Select “Yes” as your response. Your choice of Early Evaluation will be noted in our process.

My guess is that it’s a way for applicants to express their love for Wellesley and that it benefits the college by having a number of interested applicants get their materials in a month before the RD deadline.

Curious about what conventional admissions wisdom says about it.

[ssn365]

In my opinion, I think Early Evaluation just makes the logistics of going through applications easier. By chunking up applications into ED I, ED II, EE, and RD, admissions officers are able to space out their workload easily. I may be wrong, but that’s what I would see as a benefit if I had to go through thousands of applications. And for applicants, it makes the process easier with more decision plans available.

[3puppies]

Wellesley attracts a large number of stellar candidates who also may be applying at multiple top schools, all of which deny far more qualified students than they can possibly accept.

For the students deemed “likely” - it means that Wellesley wants them. Wellesley understands that many of these students will have applied to other places and ultimately may have multiple acceptances to choose from. By telling these students they are likely, ahead of the RD date, Wellesley not only takes the waiting pressure off the student, but they hope to get these students to think positively about Wellesley for a couple months ahead of the other schools they are competing with. Presumably this positively affects Wellesley’s yield.

I agree with @ssn365 that this also makes the logistics of this massive project much easier, not just for the admissions office, but for the Financial Aid office as well. There are lots of students who apply for admissions, and who submit the CSS profile info, but they don’t initially follow through and get any supplemental info that Wellesley might ask for (like a tax transcript). Getting a likely status early means these students will wonder about their FA, so when they look into what else they need to submit, they are ready to get their FA application complete so the when the actual acceptance is provided, the FA office can also release its FA offer.

[CheddarcheeseMN]

If saying yes is a signal of interest and there is no cost to saying yes, what students wouldn’t check the box?

[magtf1]

Wellesey is probably trying to determine how EE fits now that ED2 is here. EE applicants dropped sharply with the introduction of ED2 last year. It seems they are viewing EE as a “lite ED”…where applicants can display high interest without the binding commitment of ED.

Wellesley is clearly using EE to fill a large number of slots, with acceptance rates more than double the RD rate.
Class of 2021:
Plan / Applicants / Acceptance %
ED1&2 / 714 / 34%
EE / 1488 / 32%
RD / 3489 / 14%

Would be interesting to see the yield metrics for EE vs. RD.