Boston College announced a 50% increase in ED1 (in an email to counselors)
It will be interesting to see how this strategy pays off for BC with so many schools seeing a big upswing in ED and EA applications. Unless schools believe that this yearâs class of high school graduates is just that much more talented than previous classes, it would appear that most of the increase in ED and EA applications is simply kids moving their college application process earlier.
This could also mean that the RD candidate pool could turn out to be quite a bit weaker than it has been in the past, with so many kids already having acceptances and not bothering to fill out additional applications.
With kids applying to so many schools now, the colleges must have to work hard to manage yield. There are a lot of moving parts, and getting it wrong in either direction would be a big problem for schools.
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Thanks for all of the thoughtful posts and information. Feeling really good for my kid who has 2 acceptances currently that she likes and are viable. I wonât take this for granted as her other 7 schools release decisions over the next months!
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Congratulations. Great perspective and position to be in!
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This is a very interesting theory. If well qualified students are just following the trend of applying early, then schools greatly benefit. They accept more students without sacrificing any standards and also increase their yields which seems like a win-win situation for them.
Then they can use RD to âroundâ out the class.
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Well said. I feel like that the trends will go differently for top 20, since the apps of Yale dropped by 8%, which I donât believe will happen in most of its counterparts.
I believe that Yale REA applications dropped this year because Princeton did not offer any early admission programs last year. So last year Yaleâs early admissions rates were artificially high because Princeton was not an option if you wanted to apply early. The drop this year does not reflect a ârealâ drop vs. a normal year, but rather a drop versus a âweirdâ year last year.
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That totally makes sense! Will see other schoolsâ data come out.
Hello,
My DD was (unfortunately) deferred from Williams, and we received this info from Williams via the schoolâs college advisor. I thought you might want to add it to the âtrendsâ and general numbers. We were hoping for a slight decrease in apps but with no test requirement and the removal of the supplemental essay, that was not the case. Looks to be another brutal year across the board.
Info from Williams email below:
Iâm sharing a few highlights about this yearâs ED pool at Williams:
* We received 815 ED applications, an increase over previous years, and a little more than 40% of the Class of 2026 will enroll through ED.
* Sixty percent of applicants and admitted students chose not to submit an SAT or ACT score.
* Twenty percent of ED applicants were deferred to the Regular Decision round where weâre anticipating more than 12,000 applications. Typically, 20-30 students deferred from ED are admitted during the RD process.
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Quick math says Williams accepted around 25%. But how many of those were recruited athletes and other preferred groups?
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Rose-Hulman Early Action apps were up 17%. Student there who works in admissions posted the update on a reddit thread.
At least one Wesleyan applicantâs parent has been told by Admissions that ED1 applications were up 20% this year.
Barnard EDâs were up by 17%, to 1,501 for a class size of 700.
Last year, 24% of ED were admitted, this year 29%!
From the ED pool, they now already filled 62% of the class!
If total applications will be in the same vicinity as last yearâs, then the RD pool will have a 3% admit chance - making an RD admit 10 times less likely than an ED admit.
Test-optional applicants were 57%, test-optional admits 49% - so about 34 fewer candidates admitted test-optional than what had applied.
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Sounds like it will be a brutal in the RD round.
I just posted this in the Princeton forum, but thought it might be of interest here as well:
Although Princeton announced its SCEA decisions last night, it did not release any statistics. Instead, it released this interesting statement.
Key message:
"We have in recent years stopped reporting the annual admission rate, as well as the admission rate by SAT score range and average GPA. We have now made the decision not to release admission data during the early action, regular decision and transfer admission cycles. Instead, we will publish an announcement later in 2022 that focuses on the enrolled students who will join Princeton as the Class of 2026.
We believe this decision will help us keep students central to our work and tamp down the anxiety of applicants."
Although I applaud the universityâs goal of reducing applicant anxiety, I doubt that withholdings stats is going to help much. And does this mean that they will no longer include admission stats in the Common Data Set?
Perhaps it will tamp down the anxiety of applicants. I donât see how it will âkeep students central to our work.â They have definitely calculated those numbers.
It also prevents applicants from making informed, rational decisions about whether it is worth it to spend the time and money on applying RD. There would be a big difference between accepting 30% of the class in the ED round and 62% of the class in the ED round.
Are there schools accepting a higher percentage of their first-year class through ED than Barnard?
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I was just reading an article in the Wall St Journal about Princetonâs decision, and I found this interesting:
âEarly-round applications tend to come from the wealthiest students, as those candidates may attend high schools with more robust college counseling services and might not need to compare financial aid offers. About 60% of students who submitted the Common Application through Nov. 16 lived in the most affluent 20% of ZIP Codes nationwide, the group reported. Applicants from the bottom quintile made up 5% of the applicant pool through mid-November.â
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This is what Stanford starting doing a couple of years ago. They will share aggregate acceptance data in the common data set, but neither show REA/SCEA vs RD data in the CDS.
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It says in the release:
By focusing on the admit rate, talented students who would thrive at Stanford may opt not to apply because they think Stanford seems out of reach. And that would be a shame.
In other words, Stanford is trying to drive its admissions rate even lower. Seriously, why donât these uber selective schools let kids know they have no shot before kids waste time and money on an application that is a completely lost cause before it is even started?
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Stanford published the following for the class of 2025 which indicates a 3.95% acceptance rate.
I have provided the link as it offers prior year stats. If they are âhidingâ the exclusivity of the school they are doing it very poorly.
Hopefully this helps any prospective Stanford applicant in understanding, Stanford is very very hard to got accepted intođ