<p>I see it as “yes, I love you over someone else who also admitted me” is more meaningful of a measure of desirability than “yes, I love you so much that I don’t even wish to apply elsewhere, granted that you will be **more likely to accept me **and tell me earlier.” Let me rephrase my question, if every school eliminated ED and some schools instituted a **binding RD program that had no admissions boost to it **along with a normal RD, would anyone apply binding RD? Obviously not. My point is that the advantages in applying ED make it impossible to say that one likes one school more than another. Instead it’s rather that one’s desire can be written as: School A+Advantage>School B. So you can’t make the conclusion that I desire School A more than School B.</p>
<p>No, no one would apply binding RD in your circumstance because nothing’s a sure bet for anyone – but many, many kids know that they have one “love” that will trump any other school they get into, even if they have to do all those schools RD. </p>
<p>But you keep thinking that the reason that people apply ED is solely or mostly the admissions boost. Why can’t people ED for the “early closure” part of it – the efficiency play, the ability to settle the whole thing by Christmastime, the kick-back-and-enjoy-senior-year part of it – with the admissions boost from the ED being the lucky strike extra, not the reason for EDing? </p>
<p>See, you’re making the assumption that School A= School B, or School A < School B, but once you add the ED boost in, well, School A + Boost from ED > School B. Why can’t it simply be that School A = School B or School A > School B independent of the ED boost? </p>
<p>Have you seen the list posted on another thread by xiggi? The ED boosts are sometimes extremely minor (just 3 - 4 percentage points).</p>
Well the binding RD would allow you to apply normal RD to other schools as well, but at least you agree with me that no one would bind themselves to the school without at least some sort of incentive.</p>
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<p>That’s true, and that’s a point I can agree with. However I’m not making the assumption that it can’t be School A> School B. What I am saying is if someone chooses School A over School B in the RD round we know it’s School A>School B. In the latter case we don’t. So yes, I will agree with you that even comparing RD yields wouldn’t be fair for this reason if the schools aren’t set up the same way. However, overall as a whole, ED isn’t as much a sign of desirability as choosing a school over another RD because it could have been School B>School A in the former case but definitely not in the latter one.</p>
<p>I see your point; however, for any given college (just looking at RD yield and excluding ED for the sake of argument), you actually aren’t comparing any given set of colleges – you’re just comparing, in aggregate, what % of students admitted to College A under RD went there over any other college they might have been accepted to, and then the same for College B. </p>
<p>So given the Dartmouth 52% yield / Duke 42% yield example (generally comparable student bodies), that doesn’t mean that Dartmouth is more desirable than Duke overall. It says that of Dartmouth applicants, 52% of them chose Dartmouth over whatever other schools they got into (which could be Harvard or Directional State U or anywhere in between) … and that of Duke applicants, 42% of them chose Duke over whatever other schools they got into, which again could be Harvard or Directional State U – but that overall list is going to be different because these are two different groups of students, perhaps with different geographic skews impacting the desirability of their state u’s, etc.?</p>
<p>To try to argue that Dartmouth is more desirable than Duke, I’d think the real measures would either be a) # of applicants per each incoming freshman spot, and / or b) % of people admitted to both who chose each (and you’d have to have a third, "chose yet another school). And anyway, it still becomes less than useful because that’s only what other people find desirable, and I don’t know about you, but if I were deciding between Dartmouth and Duke, it’d be <em>my</em> personal preferences that would come into play, not what the masses might do.</p>
Well crap, there goes the whole rationale behind CC forums!</p>
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Isn’t it usually more sinisterly “interesting” when people DON’T advocate something in their self-interest or in logical continuation with their decisions up to this point? It’s like saying “Interestingly, the people who defend eating meat regularly eat(ate) meat themselves!”</p>
<p>If you had a choice now, which would you have chosen?</p>
<p>I am too lazy to find out the RD yield as what Morsmordre said. Maybe when I have time. Does anyone know Columbia’s ED number for this year? That is something I need to compare all of them.</p>
<p>^ Dartmouth defeats Duke in head-to-head battles. In fact, all the Ivies do!
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<p>Yes. I, personally, would choose Dartmouth over Duke if given the chance. However, how does that piece of information help a given student who was admitted to both and is now choosing? The rationale seems to be “other people prefer X over Y, so therefore I should prefer X over Y, myself.” Isn’t that kind of a … dumb way of thinking?</p>
<p>Water under the bridge, as this was 20+ years ago. But no, no regrets at all. I am quite fond of Penn and I’m sure I would have liked it there, but in hindsight I’m glad I chose an econ major at NU over being in Wharton.</p>
<p>Sigh. If 70% of people prefer colleges in big cities and 30% prefer colleges in small towns, and I happen to be someone who prefers a small town, why would it matter to my decision-making that 70% of people prefer big cities?</p>
<p>Why would you substitute other people’s judgment for your own?</p>
<p>I don’t think yield is the best indication of the desirability of a school. Among LACs, the schools with the highest yields have SAT optional policies. I think those colleges have high yields, in part, because some of their applicants have low test scores and are not able to get into other top schools.</p>
<p>45 percenter and others - If Penn wants to use ED for it’s own self-interest, that’s fine. If posters like ilovebagels are willing to “burn baby seals” if it increases UPenn’s prestige against more wealthy peers such as Harvard, it’s a sad state of affairs, but whatever. I realize that, in the elite college world, prestige is the coin of the realm, and status matters more than anything else.</p>
<p>What I’m most concerned about, however, is the rhetoric - and, frankly, the lies - that top colleges spout off when they discuss their admission strategies. Just like any other rational firm acting in a competitive marketplace, I wish students would realize this earlier: colleges, just like politicians and law firms and corporations, LIE. 45 percenter, what frustrates me about Penn is, just like all the other shrewd and self-interested actors out there, Penn talks BIG about how it stands for diversity, how it wants more socioeconomic heterogeneity in its classes, how it wants to open a Penn education for all. </p>
<p>That rhetoric is what frustrates me. If Penn went about its business quietly, and looked to increase its status through careful admissions policies without all the double talk about altruistic admissions policies, then I’d have no problem with the school. After spending a few years on campus as a grad student though, and reading more of the scholarship on how self-serving top-colleges actually act, the constant speeches and self-flattery got old. </p>
<p>Basic point is, the more a school uses ED, the more the school works to advantage the advantaged. While all this goes on, top schools go on and on and on about how they want to open up opportunity for more promising kids. Promising applicants deserve to know more about how these institutions actually operate.</p>
<p>With that, I’m assuming that you think that what Penn (or any other school in the same class) ought to be focusing in is, indeed, socioeconomic heterogenity – not just the same ol’ private prep school / elite suburban public school kids. Am I correct?</p>
<p>But earlier upthread you said:
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<p>I’m curious why you think the east coast “produces” smarter kids at a higher rate. I would think there is an equal amount of smart kids everywhere … the difference is that in other parts of the country, the smartest kids are “siphoned away” by state schools … Certainly in California, and in the midwest with Big 10 schools. </p>
<p>I’m trying to put my finger on it, but on one hand you’re saying that a good thing for a college to do <em>is</em> work towards heterogeneity and socioeconomic diversity, yet on the other hand you’re defining the “best” kids for ivies as being the usual suspects. Can you help me understand, or perhaps I’ve missed something?</p>
<p>Pizzagirl - I’m saying Penn shouldn’t talk about creating more socioeconomic diversity, creating more opportunities, etc. when in reality it’s trying to do something else entirely with its admissions strategy. It’s a private actor, so it’s not obligated to act in any specific way. Still, if it’s focused on increasing opportunities for the already-advantaged, with its admissions strategy seems to be, then it should NOT engage in all this double talk about increasing diversity in a variety of ways.</p>
<p>I have no problem with institutions being self-serving and self-interested actors, but I would think they would simply keep silent on the matter of creating diversity, because an institution’s goals oftentimes do not align at all with greater societal concerns. </p>
<p>In terms of producing the “smartest” kids, I apologize if I was misleading in my previous posts - I meant that the east coast does the best job of producing the type of TALENT (not necessarily smarts) that ivies and their brethren now covet. Read Karabel’s “The Chosen” for more info on this, but basically, smarts isn’t the be all-end all for what colleges want. US colleges look for a specific type of talent, with smarts being part of the equation.</p>
<p>I am sure that they really want to do this, but not for the reasons they gave to you. Along with HYPS, they want to get the kids – not necessary the smartest ones – who would eventually benefit the school the most, economically or politically.</p>
<p>“The Chosen” is a relatively old book. It is a fun to read but the truth may never come out of the pages. Besides, with the changing face of global economic and political powers, each school will definitely adjust itself to maintain its goal: to make more money.</p>
<p>Sure to a certain degree, Karabel stopped his research for the Chosen in 2004, but I think the basic premise probably still holds, since schools admissions strategies in 2004 seem pretty similar to their strategies now.</p>
<p>There is a lot of ink spilled in trying to prove that ED admits are the equivalent (in terms of grades and SAT’s) of RD admits. Has there ever been anything done to confirm or deny that ED admits are substantially more privileged socioeconomically than the general pool of RD admits? (Honestly asking, I don’t know. It makes intuitive sense that they are richer, and there is an alumni-legacy issue which confounds it, but I haven’t seen anything which confirms that.)</p>
<p>If you were to find that Penn’s ED-ers are comparable socioeconomically with Penn’s RD-ers, would you feel differently?</p>