What is the rush? Is the yield that much important making you load up like there is no tomorrow? Who is missing out in the long term?
Here here. Someone has to stop the race.
Filling the class with kids who have NU as their first choice is also a big consideration.
NU president has said he wanted to fill the class with more kids who are super excited about going to NU. OP, you don’t have to believe it. But if you don’t have any proof, please don’t come to NU board to say this is all about yield; it’s not what NU board or CC is for.
Very well yield may not be the reason. In all seriousness though, it would be silly to assume all or even most of the ED applicants are truly having NU as their absolute first choice. For one reason or another, from both sides, the college game is rigged. If not the case, I have to believe that NU admission officers hate their job so much so that they simply want to get it over with at whoever’s cost, at least for now.
I think it takes away from choices the kids might have. It takes away from letting them see the big picture. The whole ED choice causes a bunch of 17 years olds to pick a favorite just to game the system when they have no idea. The whole thing is absurd. And, this is coming from a parent that pushed my kids to apply ED for 2 reasons. One was because we are told that it gives an advantage and the other was the off chance that we could be done with the whole crappy process and then relax. But, now I’ve been on both ends. My first got into his first choice ED, my second deferred. So, I have now experienced the joy and the anguish. And, I am not convinced the ED is the best offering to these young students. With the first kid, I actually regretted that we didn’t see all the options. With my DD that got deferred, I wish we had just waited to see all the acceptances and rejections all at once because the ED rejection or deferral is pretty painful. And asking “why this school” and “Why this major” is really comical. These kids are 17 years old. Seriously? They have no idea and making them write essays about how they fit into a school in which they saw briefly on a college tour and purusing a website is insane. The whole thing is rather ridiculous.
The problem of yield management isn’t going to go away no matter what you do. Look at the threads on the pages for universities that are selective with non-binding EA (e.g. Tulane, Michigan, Case Western). All sorts of questions about demonstrated interest, etc. And somehow summarily getting rid of all EA/ED and having one RD deadline would just have kids applying to a bazillion places, and universities going nuts trying to figure out what their enrolled class would really look like.
I started out a few years ago not liking ED, but I’ve come around to the view that it may be the best of imperfect options.
Well, one advantage of having ED, EA, is that it takes a whole lot of applications out of the RD cycle. If kids can’t commit early, the RD cycle becomes even more competitive.
I think ED is the right thing for the kids that have done their Junior year research and have a clear favorite school. My sons best friend only wanted Northwestern, and ED worked out for him. My son had no ‘favorites’ so he went RD on 4 elites and then applied (and was accepted to) 4 very good regional schools. Maybe he doesn’t get into any of the elites because of RD, we will know soon. But I agree with his friend getting in over him, as he was ‘all in’ from the start. If you can fill your school with a high number of freshman that really want to be there, it should work out for the better.
Yes, it’s the best unless they don’t get in. Just because you don’t apply ED doesn’t mean you don’t want to be there. It’s kind of a scam. We’re all playing some sort of awful game. The whole process really hurts those great kids that have high test scores, perfect grades, strong extracurriculars, and strong essays, but haven’t saved a village. I was all for it until my second child didn’t’t get in and I experienced the pain and doubt. Now, I’m not so sure.
My kids didn’t apply ED but both applied to rolling admissions schools so only submitted one app and were done in October. No fuss, no stress.
Maybe the schools with big ED classes are tired of the application game too. They aren’t happy that students are sending out 20 applications and never really have an intention of going to NU but just want the FA offer to negotiate with another school, or just want to see if Duke likes them.
@alizarin I’m not sure I understand how the ED process hurts strong applicants looking for FA. There are tools to give the applicant a good idea how much aid they will get. If they aren’t happy with the NPC estimate, they can apply elsewhere to places with merit aid. The Northwestern or other similar university FA amount isn’t going to change, i.e. it isn’t like you can say lower ranked school X gave me this merit money, match it NU (or any other similar school). Well, you can say it, but it doesn’t seem to usually work.
Put differently you can complain about being in the “donut” for aid - I do! - but ED doesn’t really change that one way or the other.
I figure schools do ED and EDII because it benefits them. I don’t think they are doing it for the benefit of applicants (even if it happens to benefit some applicants).
I do think it can “hurt” strong applicants looking for FA, assuming that ED actually confers an admissions advantage on strong applicants (I know that is up for debate). If Northwestern is the applicant’s first choice school, but financial considerations are such that her family needs to see about merit at other schools before committing, the applicant cannot avail herself of the ED admission advantage (again, I am assuming there is one and know that is contested) despite the fact her love of Northwestern is just as strong as ED applicants for whom merit aid is not a factor.
It’s not that she will only attend Northwestern if Northwestern matches whatever merit aid she gets elsewhere. It’s that her family might decide to pay the price for Northwestern - especially considering it is her top choice - if merit offers from other schools cause her family to conclude that Northwestern, while more expensive, is still an acceptable value compared to the others. On the other hand, if merit yields a better value elsewhere, Northwestern, her first admissions choice all along, might become the second choice once merit aid/value has been considered.
So, I don’t think ED works well for strong applicants looking for merit aid who have a no-merit top choice and might still attend that school without merit depending on what the value propositions look like after she has information rom all schools.
I do think it works well for applicants who have a clear, no merit top choice for whom merit aid is not a consideration.
Does that make sense? It kind of feels where my family may be at towards the end of this process - comparing merit offers against a no merit school that my D might have a strong preference for if we were willing to pay the freight.
@wings17
OP, if everyone applies to their absolute first choice then one would think that Stanford and Harvard would have atleast 10% of all college applications.
All of you are absolutely right in that choosing ED restricts a student’s options/opportunities, BUT I think you should re-contextualize how you view that fact. Currently there are more qualified applicants than the total number of spots available in elite universities, meaning that they need some other method of differing students from one another in a reason manner. Thus they look at subjectives such as extracurriculars, essays, and level of interest. This last factor is also considered to be an important predictor for student future performance at that particular instiution. Students may demonstrate interest by interviews and visits, but students can visit as many colleges or do as many interviews as possible, with the only real restrictions being time and money. Thus these are ineffective ways to distinguish levels of interests. On the other hand, each student may only apply to one ED, which makes it a much more effective hurdle for differing students who are deeply interested in the instution and those who are applying just because it’s in the top 20. The loss of options and other sacrifices that the student make add to the degree of dedication that is embedded in an ED contract. These factors add up to form a system of hurdles that separate students by interest, a system that maximizes total utility by allowing students a higher acceptance rate to the institution where they would most likely thrive.
NU or any college does not lose by having Early Decision or Early Action. As you’ve stated: it increases yield, which decreases the number of acceptances required to fill a class and thus increase selectivity. Why does it do this? Because higher acceptance rates means higher rankings, which means applications from more elite students, which means higher average stats and even higher rankings. If ED or EA hurts a college it wouldn’t have it.
Like it or not, rankings are a major factor in how high school applicants, their peers, and family members perceive a college. Read this interview with USNWR ranker for more info https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-us-news-college-rankings-guru/2014/09/09/318e3370-3856-11e4-8601-97ba88884ffd_story.html?utm_term=.ab8e2c1284c3.
Here’s a quote from there to demonstrate the breadth of its effects ““What’s that number in the upper right hand corner?” asks Morse, meaning the ticking figure on the projection screen that at the moment says 372,213. It’s the number of viewers currently on the site, he’s told.”.
I see the inability to compare aid offers differently. It is ED, so you need to see THEIR offer only. If it is enough, you go there. If not, you go shopping.
But you should not get to pick the best financial choice while applying ED anymore than a kid who would like to see if they get into Harvard, but want to do NU ED.
If aid is an issue, it is still fair. But you do need to decide on the net price given without shopping it around. I did not really think it is unfair.
Unless we switch to a system of listing priority and need and all schools agree to follow like a giant questbridge for all, (fat chance), we are stuck with imperfect choices.
I agree the universities do what they do because they see it in their interest. At the same time, it is the applicants choice to not like the NPC result and go shopping around. Its a choice to shop, with various consequences. The “donut” hole is an unpleasant place to be, but the alternative “let me hold that offer from super selective U while I try to save some money or find an even more super duper selective U” is clearly not a way forward for a university.
No worries, my thoughts were not directed at drawing conclusions about “fairness” and really were not meant to be a complaint about the predicament of “donut hole” families. I was just trying to express thoughts on whether strong applicants who want to shop for merit aid are “disadvantaged” by ED. If by “disadvantaged,” one means those kids lose the admissions advantage conferred (again, assuming there is one) by communicating to Northwestern by applying ED that Northwestern is the kid’s top choice, then I think in some instances yes, they are disadvantaged. Kids of equal (or even lesser) admissions strength are getting an advantage through ED that the stronger merit aid shopping kid is not, even if they are love Northwestern equally.
Really not complaining, it is what it is and colleges are self-interested institutions that don’t always have applicants’ best interests at heart. No surprise there. And no system is going to equally advantage and disadvantage all applicants (making generalized “fairness” claims nigh impossible). Was just replying to notion that strong applicants interested in merit aid are not disadvantaged. I think they might well depending on whether ED confers an admissions benefit relative to RD.
So I think most of these schools are more the same than different once you decide the big things: city or suburbs, size, public or private, etc. I don’t think its terrible forcing a decision - you really don’t know any more in April than in December. But I do think these schools are taking more ED to protect yield and there is a very high penalty for not picking the right school ED. The students who need to compare offers (and can’t do ED) are the obviously the most disadvantaged, and its really unfair. There should be a better system.
That said, my kids all did ED, got into their ED choice, and it was fantastic. It allowed them to enjoy the second half of senior year so much more. I think my son is now engaged in his classes in a different way than before - he is not worried about his grades and learning much more.
He is exactly the type of candidate that ED is about - high stats and full pay. If they use ED to fill their athletes, legacy and high stat full pay spots, then they can use RD to go after minorities/1st generation, concert level musicians, knowing that they have enough full pay kids with perfect scores to balance it out.
I
Turtle17, I never mentioned FA.