<p>Many school’s legacy hook is “use it or lose it.” You could understand how they feel, right? If you want special treatment, then they would also want commitment from you to go to their school if admitted. By applying ED, you are showing your commitment.</p>
<p>“Common sense tells me that a school with a particular academic track record has no reason to accept students who are below that profile just because they apply ED.”</p>
<p>A reason is that schools have learned from experience that students who feel so positively about a school often bring more to campus than those who are less enthusiastic but may appear slightly more qualified.</p>
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<p>This strengthens the case for applying ED to School #2. At quite a few colleges, the legacy preference is stronger for ED applicants than RD applicants. </p>
<p>But it all really depends on how your son feels. If he would regret for the rest of his life that he didn’t take a shot at School #1, than applying ED to #2 is not for him.</p>
<p>If he has legacy status at School 2, he should apply ED there. Chances are the school will not give him a hook or tip in RD.</p>
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<p>I said “early bird status” which was not suggesting he apply ED to both schools, but only suggesting he get his application in long before the deadlines. Sorry if that wasn’t clear. Frankly, I find the whole ED second guessing based ONLY on bettering your chances to be ridiculous. And while S applied ED, I think he is glad he got to truly see where all he was accepted even though he could have gone ED II to a couple of places. But after the first rejection, knowing so many other schools wanted him to attend was a definitely needed ego boost.</p>
<p>And for the OP… there’s also the response in the middle, which is deferred.</p>
<p>MidwestMomW/2Kids posted this yesterday:</p>
<p>[Brown</a> Admission: Facts & Figures](<a href=“Undergraduate Admission | Brown University”>Undergraduate Admission | Brown University)</p>
<p>It is figures for Brown showing GPA and SAT I distributions for applicants and accepted applicants as well as enrolled students. What it tells you is that – as you would expect – people with test scores equal to the third quartile of enrolled students represent far more than 25% of applicants, and somewhat less than 25% of acceptees. In other words, their admission rate is meaningfully below the overall average. </p>
<p>Amherst also provides similar information, and the pattern there is the same. I think it probably holds true for most or all hyperselective colleges.</p>
<p>Re: The ED Advantage. I think everyone who has looked at it believes that it is considerably less than might appear. A college like Dartmouth is admitting a lot of its recruited athletes ED – that may represent as much as 25% of the ED class, and certainly not less than 15%. Factor them out, and the admit rate moves a lot closer to the average. Then consider that the colleges are probably not lying when they say that the ED applicant pool is stronger than the RD applicant pool, that the students who apply ED have it more together and have good records (and are richer). A goodly number of the ED admittees ARE very strong applicants who would be admitted RD without much discussion. Maybe almost all of them (after adjusting for athletes and other unique candidates).</p>
<p>Most people, I included, believe that there IS some margin of ED applicants on which the college takes a risk based on their commitment to enroll if accepted. How big is that margin at a school like Dartmouth? 40? 50? 100? I think much closer to the first two figures than the last. Are they disproportionately legacies? I would imagine so – if you are going to take a risk, why not cement a relationship, too? They’re not all legacies, of course. And some of them are likely to have been admitted RD, too.</p>
<p>My point is this: Yes, there is an advantage to applying ED. But that advantage is captured entirely by maybe 30-40 students, students who would not have been admitted if they applied RD. That’s less than 5% of the ED applicant pool. The rest of the ED acceptees would have been accepted anyway, because they were hooked, or because they were among the strongest candidates. ED in the Ivy League is not the Big Rock Candy Mountain, it’s a yield management device for the college.</p>
<p>(Note that the ED advantage is likely far greater if you move down the selectivity ladder. A college that accepts 40% of applicants overall and 70% of ED applicants may well be accepting 100% of qualified ED applicants.)</p>
<p>Completely agree with oldfort and have seen that situation many times.</p>
<p>If we are talking about top colleges, I am one of the few here who believe more in strategy and less in dream schools. The average kid can be happy at many schools.</p>
<p>First, I’d do a complete and honest analysis of the student’s chances at the two schools. Then I’d take a hard look at whether ED is as big of an advantage as you think at the specific school. Because a school takes 25% ED and 12% RD does not mean an unhooked candidate has a better chance. And it most certainly doesn’t mean a kid with below median stats has a chance.</p>
<p>So really, IMO, the question can only be answered on an individual basis if this is a highly competitive school. In the ED round these colleges need to have a reason to accept the unhooked–that they may lose them to a more selective school RD, that the student has a talent they want, something that sets them apart.</p>
<p>However, if it was a less selective school that is need aware, this is a great year for a slightly below average full pay student.</p>
<p>“The few specific statistics I’ve seen on ED admitted students say that they are a typical cross section of the overall class.”</p>
<p>I suspect this is true … all the more reason to favor an ED application. At one school I’m familiar with (that THIS time will remain completely nameless), ED accounted for 7% of the applications and 29% of the freshman class. Obviously ED is a HUGE boost at this school.</p>
<p>It would be nice if ED was where head and heart came together as one. This is not one of those cases, as Dream School #1 does not have ED. Since both Dream School #1 and Dream School #2 are reaches, cold cruel logic dictates that the student apply ED to #2.</p>
<p>My D applied ED to #2 Dream School (it was actually almost a tie with #1) and was deferred.</p>
<p>She was subsequently accepted.</p>
<p>Since was geographically undesirable to the school (too many young women from this area.)</p>
<p>However, she kept plugging away, and was accepted RD. I think the ED application was invaluable. She had more chances to submit new things on top of her “package”, she made close relationships with adcom folks and gave them a strong idea she’d come (because of ED application) which would help their yield figures. </p>
<p>She was accepted to good alternatives in the RD round, but I don’t think that would have compensated for the loss of the ED school should that have occurred.</p>
<p>She also felt that an ED application got her guidance counselor at her best and got her focused and finished early.</p>
<p>S went the door #1 route. Applied to super reach dream school. Like D was deferred (the fate of our family.) Also established good rapport with adcom folks. They indicated that he really had a shot and conversed with them often. In the process he decided that he liked #2 school better. When RD round came he was rejected at ED school, but accepted to now favorite school.</p>
<p>A confused moral, but here is the one he drew: he would have been devastated to have been rejected from #2 school in RD round after rejection by SRDS. So he would definitely say to apply to #2 school with legacy status and boost his chances at one favorite school.</p>
<p>Is there a list somewhere on CC that indicates what colleges give significant legacy-preference in ED versus what colleges don’t give significant legacy-preference in ED?</p>
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<p>This is because the majority are athletes which comprise 17% of Dartmouth’s class and almost all come in ED. Legacy is minor compared to the hook of being an athlete or a URM. We can only guess as to how many URMs and development candidates came in ED, but we know it’s almost all of the athletes and a considerable number of legacies.</p>
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<p>True. But they are still average for Dartmouth, (top 10% of their high school class and 2137 SAT). My main beef with the ED argument is that a lot of posters seem to believe that these “specials” are somehow vastly less qualified, that they are in fact taking spots from more qualified candidates, the Dartmouth numbers just don’t support that. Are some less qualified (ex. 1500/2400 SAT)? Probably. But for the numbers to work there will have to be at least 2.5 2400/2400 EDs to offset him, and there’s a limited pool of 2400/2400s.</p>
<p>I guess I just don’t see an issue with accepting an ED applicant who is top 10% of her class, has a 2100 SAT and whose ECs show that she possesses the skills necessary to play Div 1 or 1-AA college athletics.</p>
<p>I would choose option #1. What would your S rather face: not knowing if he could’ve gotten into one, or not knowing if he could’ve gotten into either? Jeopardizing college chances seems unfair.</p>
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<p>It shows they maintain their standards even for hooked applicants which goes a long way towards dispelling the myth that it’s easier to get into ivies ED. Even the hooked in this round need average stats.</p>
<p>My DS applied to Dartmouth ED and was accepted. Very good counselors suggested this strategy over trying for Princeton. He was top of class with SAT scores well over the 75th percentile and strong ECs. Just another Princeton contender but a candidate Dartmouth knew they may well not have gotten ED.</p>
<p>OP: Consider the college’s record on ED. Does it prefer to give final decisions during that round or will it defer most applicants rather than outright reject. While ED has a higher acceptance rate at all colleges, the pool is self-selected so it really does not translate as easier. Another “culture of the college” issue is whether it considers legacies at all and if it does, whether they are only considered during the early round. Finally, there is a back door out of an ED acceptance based on financial inability to attend.</p>
<p>I’m not sure all these generalizations are terribly useful, because colleges use ED very differently.</p>
<p>Take Brown, for example. It may be that the stats of ED admits are overall pretty similar to those of RD admits, and that many of the athletes, legacies, URMs, and other favored categories are going to be in the ED pool. On the other hand, keep in mind that Brown fills almost 36% of its entering class with ED admits, who in the 2008 entering class were admitted at a rate of 22.6%. That means Brown’s RD admit rate was considerably lower than its overall admit rate of 13.7%, because the latter is a “blended” rate combining both ED and RD figures. The RD-only figure is closer to 12%, or just above half the ED rate. Both the ED and RD admit rates are low, and bottom line, unless you have a hook I don’t think ED will help you much at Brown if your stats are middling to weak as measured against the overall profile of those who are accepted there. But on the other hand, if your stats are strong relative to the overall Brown applicant pool, ED could help you a good deal, because they’re going to need a certain number of students like you, it’s in their interest to admit some early with a virtual 100% yield, and frankly they’re going to end up rejecting a lot of students like you in the RD round. Just look at their stats: they rejected 75% of applicants scoring a perfect 800 on SAT CR; 80% of applicants scoring 800 on SAT M; 70% of applicants scoring a perfect 36 on the ACT; and 75% of HS valedictorians. Just because you’re statistically a strong applicant doesn’t mean you’ll be admitted at the RD round. Nor does it mean you’ll necessarily be admitted in the ED round, but given how much of their class they fill up early, I think your chances are a little better at Brown going ED–IF your stats are competitive at the high end. If not, then you’ll probably be rejected both ED and RD.</p>
<p>These effects are even more exaggerated at some other schools. Bowdoin fills 42% of its entering class with ED applicants, and its admit rate drops from 30% ED to 17.1% RD.
Other schools fill a quarter of their class or less at the ED round, so the effect is not quite as dramatic. I think you need to investigate each school and carefully go over the figures in its Common Data Set, then judge for yourself. Don’t rely on blanket generalizations or individual anecdotes, because schools are different and they don’t all approach ED the same way.</p>
<p>Dartmouth isn’t “always” taking the top 10% or in the percentile of SAT’s etc. Yes, a good student, but I know three for sure who were accepted ED (2 athletes and URM) that couldn’t hold a candle to my S’s stats alone. And two of them hadn’t taken an AP class or honors all four years and their GPA still wasn’t S’s GPA. Great kids, all of them, and certainly can do the work. But to say that recruited athletes need to have the same stats is bunk, but these athletes I am taking about are truly great athletes. The URM? Father is probably #1 ortho surgeon in the state.</p>
<p>Here’s the thing–the hooked at these colleges represent more than 40% of every class. So the average unhooked student has way above the school’s average stats. I haven’t seen any unhooked kids at my children’s 3 high schools getting into Dartmouth with a 2137 or even close.</p>
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<p>It’s OK, I am sure Mrs. JHS had a dream husband list where JHS was not necessarily #1.</p>
<p>I knew a girl at high school who cried for days when Mark Spitz got married, I am sure she eventually got a safety husband and hopefully is happy.</p>
<p>My first H looked exactly like George Harrison. My friends from Junior High knew he had been my favorite Beatle and mentioned it at our wedding.</p>
<p>There are many ways to get an um dream school.</p>