Does Grinnell have an application fee to waive?
This is not the same as law school.
Well if OP wants to apply ED expect to be full pay & apply to Amherst since the community is more liberal than Williams as your daughter seems to be liberal, and because she has not visited Williams College.
I know it isn’t law school, although I don’t think that makes much difference.
You are missing the point. Thousands of students every year go to a campus they have never set foot on. Most because they can’t afford the travel. I know I couldn’t at that point. I assume that isn’t an issue for OP because she said they are full pay, but time constraints put them in the same position.
I think the importance of spending time on a campus is overstated here. Yes, it is ideal. But honestly no 17 year old is going to understand what attending college at a particular school will be like in a 24 hour visit. We all try to make as informed a decision as possible. But in the end the kid has to make a leap of faith and hope for the best. Whether that is in October or in April after a visit.
I would still love any insight to the ED advantage. Although I am guessing no one is providing input because the truth is that no one really knows.
@dadof4kids: She has visited schools which remain at the top of her list & which offer ED. Applying ED to a school that she has not visited is foolish–especially as a full pay applicant with no chance to back out due to inadequate financial aid.
Many students visit Williams College & get turned off by the isolation. She likes Amherst & the community & the thought of the consortium opportunities. Seems clear cut to me that if she wants to apply ED, then Amherst should be the target school.
Also, law school makes a significant difference as the curriculum is very similar among law schools.
“I would still love any insight to the ED advantage. Although I am guessing no one is providing input because the truth is that no one really knows.”
@dadof4kids , I am recycling an old post I have used for this discussion. Preempting criticism: the book is a a few years old.
I often recommend a book called “The Early Admissions Game” for this question. Written by two Harvard profs and a Wesleyan AD, it is a detailed, statistical analysis of ED, it’s advantages and disadvantages. A summary from an article by Louis Menand in The New Yorker says:
The chief finding reached by the authors of “The Early Admissions Game” is that applying early significantly increases the chances of acceptance. Their conclusions are based on data from the admissions offices at fourteen élite colleges and on a survey of three thousand high-school seniors.The average student in their sample who applied Early Action increased his or her chances of admission by 18.9 percentage points; an Early Decision application increased the chances of the average applicant in the sample by 34.8 points. The authors calculate that the advantage is the equivalent of a hundred additional points on the combined S.A.T. scores. An Early Decision application doubled the average applicant’s chances at Brown and nearly tripled them at Princeton.
They do cover athletes and legacies in the book and still show a clear statistical advantage for the unhooked, although not equal to the overall difference between ED and RD. (Note the use of the term “average applicant”.)
This is a serious decision. ED can be a huge advantage, but it the decision needs to be a sure one. Your D is considering are too many contenders. She needs material to help her learn about herself to figure out which is the best fit.
For our D2 who did ED, we had her pick her top two choices based on spring visits and writeups in the Fiske guide and the glossies she was sent.
Then she did a thorough fall overnight visit at each of the two schools including attending similar classes at each school to determine which one to apply ED. She got a feel for the culture of the campuses, for the academics, for the social life. There was a clear choice and she decided, applied, was accepted, matriculated, graduated, and is on to better things.
I think visiting with the idea of it being a final decision puts a lot more pressure on the student to really see what’s the best fit. It’s a very different kind of visit than deciding to apply which is often less focused.
Well Midd has the highest ED admit rate, so maybe that is the answer.
Vassar sounds like a good fit for the OPs D , based on how she describes her.
I’m wondering why you didn’t visit. If you can afford to be full pay, you can afford to visit. It is demoralizing, socially difficult, and can delay graduation and cost you more if your kid isn’t happy and has to transfer. Would you spend $250K on anything else that you had never laid eyes upon? Most people wouldn’t. You could take her out of school for a few days and make an East Coast swing to her top choices she has not seen yet. I would.
Respectfully, your daughter has done the heavy lifting. She has stellar grades and a realistic shot at some top colleges. You are able to send her full pay, good for you, but you cannot really afford to make a decision of this magnitude without visiting any college she is seriously considering attending. This is not just about $280,000+ it is also four years of your daughter’s life.
Maybe things will be clearer in her mind after the Haverford trip.
I don’t think they give preference to athletes in ED, at least officially, maybe someone else can confirm?
Good luck to you all.
While visits would be ideal, there are real world constraints and the whole question of the ED boost for the schools in question. If OP’s daughter were mulling LAC over Big U, rural vs urban, east coast vs west coast vs midwest, north vs south, STEM focused vs liberal artsie, a 1 day or overnight visit may provide true distinguishing insights. Here, while I am sure there are some distinguishing characters between the 4 schools, they are still basically 4 bucolic New England LAC’s. All of them are diverse enough in student makeup and course offerings that a kid can find his/her tribe. Let’s not underestimate the ability of young adults to adapt to their settings.
On the ED issue, I really do think the athletic recruits, legacy and other special cases really distort the admissions rate because the entering class size is so small. I would say though there is an advantage to being in the first pool to be considered. You are being evaluated in a smaller pool when all slots of the “ideal” class are open. Going into RD, a high percentage of the slots are already filled and a larger pool is being considered.
I basically agree with everything @BKSquared said in #30. I do think applying ED is advantageous in a situation like the OP’s precisely because your application is considered in a smaller pool, before all the high stats kids who apply early to HYPS and are deferred show up in the RD pool. Since you’ve visited Amherst and not Williams, it makes more sense to apply to Amherst ED if you ED anywhere.
@dia26: I hope that your daughter plans to apply to more than just these four outstanding schools.
With a 35 ACT score & a 3.8 uwGPA , she should do well, but there are no guarantees.
All four of the LAC’s being discussed, Amherst, Williams, Bowdoin and Middlebury, claim to be need blind for domestic students. So being full pay shouldn’t matter. Although I know there’s a school of thought that says that the claim of being need blind is a lie.
As a parent of a (female, which is relevant for these LACs) collegekid with v similar stats (& arguably stronger ECs, but no diversity bump), who was recently deferred ED to one of the schools on this list (that her GC had deemed a match, not a reach), I just want to put it out that there that you really can’t take anything for granted.
Agree entirely that applying ED to a school that you haven’t visited is not a good plan, but the OP & her daughter have visited enough of them to know how very different they can feel on the ground.
FYI, Williams, Middlebury and Amherst do not give merit aid; Bowdoin only gives a few thousand to NMF (if they put Bowdoin first),
ps, happily, it worked out in the RD round.
Interesting perspective collegemom3717. Maybe OP is overthinking this ED thing. Also, I doubt being half Japanese gives OP’s daughter a diversity bump. Judging by what’s happening at Harvard, it may even be a negative. However, being from Washington State (geographic diversity) could help.
I agree with @collegemom3717 that you can’t take anything for granted. Also all 4 of the LAC’s being discussed have such low acceptance rates that it’s hard to see how any GC could call someone a “match” for them unless maybe they were an URM high stats recruited athlete or something. Also based on the OP’s posting history, I assume that there are other LAC’s under consideration that aren’t quite as highly selective. And it sounds like they have toured enough of these LAC’s to have a good feel even if they haven’t specifically been to Williams. So I don’t really see any downside to applying ED and potential upside, assuming OP is okay with giving up the chance at any significant merit aid.
I agree, @Corinthian- the GC used the ‘match’ designation based on the historical experience of students from that particular HS. There were quite a few unexpectedly unhappy outcomes for that class that year, and the GC has since significantly shortened the historical window she uses when developing lists for the students.
dla26 if your daughter likes one of these schools she should definitely apply ED. The truth is that getting into W or A is much much harder than it would seem based on the admission data. There are many reasons and this has been discussed many many times. The single best book is The Price of Admission. The primary reason why it’s so difficult is becasue these schools are quite small and field a full complement of sports teams. The NESCAC is the most competitive D3 conference and all the schools take recruiting very seriously. At these schools something like half the class plays a varsity sport and virtually all received some level of admission support from the coach. Getting into W or A unhooked is just as difficult as many Ivies because there are very few seats left for unhooked applicants. Your daughter has good stats but those are dime a dozen among the unhooked applicants. Her best chance of admission is to pick the school she prefers and apply ED.
If at all possible, I’d tack on visits to the others after/before Haverford since she’ll be in the general area (relative to your home).
If she really can’t, she’s visited Amherst and liked it. I’d apply ED there, unless Haverford wows her on that diversity weekend.