I agree it is nuts… I have one S at Northwestern already…and his younger brother also applied RD. However, as NU gives zero merit scholarships, and we don’t qualify for need based aid, (which does not, by the way mean that money is no object and that the kids have unlimited funds to spend) we encouraged our S to apply to some other schools where he was likely to get sizable scholarships. He did this (and did receive at least one half-tuition scholarship from an excellent and comparable school) and as a result, was unable to apply ED to NU. Any student that is looking to not pay full boat and who may not receive need based aid cannot apply ED to any school. In addition, I know a number of families that are not from the U.S. and don’t fully understand the system who are now panicked as their kids applied ED to schools, did not get the amount of financial aid needed, and are trying to figure out what to do. At what point is it a “financial burden”. And why President Shapiro gives a lot of lip service to kids not coming out with debt, there is a whole segment of kids that may not qualify for aid but still need to borrow money from their parents as I know of very few people who will tell their kids “Gee, I can write you a check for 300k from our savings and don’t worry about paying us back.” Most of us are not willing to work until we are 100 to let our kids go to their “dream school”. So NU will lose the ability to recruit some stellar students because of the whole ED thing. I don’t know why they don’t go EA like so many other schools where kids can show their interest by getting their apps in early but can still manage their finances.
@Twinmom1007, note that not getting enough fin aid is a valid reason for backing out of an ED commitment. Please tell those families.
Spot on. ED at an ivy or similar school like NU is mainly used by two kinds of kids:
- The kid for whom this school is the absolute first choice above all else.
- The kid who looks at elite admissions a bit more strategically and says: “sure I would prefer to go to my HYPSM choices but they are crapshoots. NU is still one of the my top 5 or so choices and provides a significant boost if i apply ED, but it becomes a crapshoot during RD. I would much rather go there than risk being shut out of all ivies and elites, so I will do NU ED instead of EA at HYPSM.” There is a big number of ED applicants that fall in the second category in all non-HYP ivies and comparable elites like Chicago, Duke, NU etc.
In both cases, most of the people are either low income or affluent, i.e. people for whom there is no major value in comparing different FA offers.
Agreed @Penn95 NU is in my kid’s top five, behind HYPS, so strategically NU ED is perfect for my kid, with RDs at the other 4 schools. Frankly, the only ED/EA’s I know being used by kids at HYPS are related to athletic recruitment and legacy applicants, and especially athletic recruitment where the team needs to balance its required Academic Index with a non-key varsity player bringing excellent grades. Duke, Chicago, NU, Penn, Dartmouth, WUSL are getting a lot of non-first choice but strategic EDs.
@MtnTrailX Yup. Columbia, Brown, Cornell do as well. all the non-HYP ivies and comparable elites have a good number of non-first choice strategic ED applicants. It is usually the kids for whom that school is the next best choice after some or all of HYPSM. I had two friends at Penn whose top choices were HS and HYP respectively. Penn was their 3rd and 4th choice respectively. They both decided to do Penn ED because they thought the other route was too risky for them and were happy committing to Penn.
ED to schools outside of HYPSM is a pretty sound strategy to maximize chances of getting into one of the top 12-15 schools. If you come from one of the over-represented groups (Asian males, maybe :-)), both EA to HYPSM and RD to non-HYP Ivies and similar schools are really unpredictable (i.e., very very strong candidates can get rejected).
I just heard a rumor that they’ve been trying to reduce their student bodies since last year
Actually, outside of Tech/Engineering/Quant majors, unhooked white/Asian females have it the toughest now. Granted, unhooked white/Asian males have it toughest in Tech/Engineering/Quant majors.
Appeals to authority are generally bad arguments. Not to mention, Morty Schapiro is hardly a credible source:
[quote]
Schapiro said although the percentage of classes NU fills with early decision applicants has risen from 25 percent for the class of 2010 to 40 percent for the class of 2016, he does not want to further increase admittance levels.
“I wouldn’t push it much more than that,” he said. “There are schools that have been over 50 percent early. I think that’s not early any more; that’s regular and the rest is late. That’s semantics if you think about it. I don’t want to be one of those schools.
[quote]
It’s starting to change though, probably because of the lawsuits targeting HYP admissions. Their percentage of Asian admits has risen significantly in the last 2 years.
Being an Asian girl and an international student who came to the states for high school, I am still dreaming about getting into Northwestern because of diversity lol. I got deferred in ed, I know that I’m probably not a really competitive applicant, so ed really gave me the hope
@Ineedoffers There are about 10% international students in my DD’s school, most of them from china paying 55k+/year. None of them got in their EA/ED round, even with good scores to 3-tier colleges. These kids came to US for the “dream” of much hyped “open education” but they got backfired by this “holistic” college admission because they don’t have much ECs nor leadership experience due to language obstacle, and I doubt they are getting enthusiastic LoR because of lack of communication with teachers.
If you have top GPA/SAT scores (above 75 percentile) and some good ECs, your chance in RD round is actually higher than EA/ED, you will be competing with very different pool of applicants and, your full-paying status will help you quite a bit.
@hooverhoo Thank you for telling me that. I actually only have a middle range act score and relatively rigorous class schedule, my school doesn’t rank but I think I’m in the top 5%. I do have some ECs and leadership experience, I talk to my teachers a lot so hopefully they have written me good LoR. I also hope my full-paying status will help. I know comparing to other students applying Northwestern, no matter Americans or international students, I still don’t have a super outstanding and competitive resume, that’s why I applied ED. I’m just hoping that if less international students are applying to Northwestern, I may have a bigger chance bc they need to maintain a certain percent of international students. I’m probably wrong tho, Northwestern is getting popular among international applicants.
“If you have top GPA/SAT scores (above 75 percentile) and some good ECs, your chance in RD round is actually higher than EA/ED, you will be competing with very different pool of applicants and, your full-paying status will help you quite a bit.”
Being full-pay won’t help at NU and (Ivy/equivalent) peers in its tier. They can fill their entire admitted class with full-pays if they wanted to without a drop in stats.
Also, just because you saw Internationals all get shut out in ED/EA doesn’t mean that it’s actually easier for them in RD.
I’d wager it’s even harder.
What’s an example of what you consider a third-tier school? Are you talking about schools like NIU? Wichita St.? PM if you want to.
Based on NU’s 2017/18 common data set, NU has a total of 754 non-resident alien undergraduate students. Of these, 105 (14%) receive financial assistance. Compare this to the entire undergraduate student population, where approximately 44% were awarded needs based financial aid. The statistics are even more extreme in prior years,
The reality is that as between full-paying internationals and needs-based internationals, NU has a definite preference for full paying internationals. So in RD, full paying status will help international students when they compete against other international students who are needs based. Your point about NU being able to fill their entire admitted with full-pays may be valid but it only suggests that number of qualified applicants exceeds the number admitted so the chances are still low but they are better than if NU was needs blind in its admission of its international students.
@lime20002001, yes, full-pay Internationals have a better chance than Internationals who need fin aid, but that just means that Internationals who need fin aid need to be amazingly exceptional/unique or else they stand no chance.
It certainly doesn’t mean that full-pay Internationals stand a better chance in RD than in ED and the implication that bring full-pay “will help quite a bit” may be misleading if it really just means full-pay Internationals have it as tough as full-pay Americans (which, in RD, is very tough) rather than the miniscule chances of Internationals who need fin aid.
At least full paying won’t hurt me in admission anyhow. I doubt that it will help me a lot tho. I’m from China, and I don’t think many(if any) applicant from China applied for financial aid, bc if you’re able to apply to Northwestern, your parents must have the money to support you for all those ECs and expensive tutoring classes for SAT.
@Purple Titan, I didn’t comment on whether full-pay internationals stand a better chance in RD than ED. There isn’t any published data that I am aware of to support that conclusion.
I don’t know if being a full-pay international student helps quite a bit at NU but I will say that full-pay Internationals do not have it as tough as full-pay Amercians because they are not effectively competing for the same places. NU targets 10% of their freshman intake for international students and international admission is needs aware whereas the other 90% of NU’s intake targets American students and admission is needs blind.
Per EFI table, for cost at ivy-tier private schools, the AGI is 250k/single_child for FA cutoff. I will push it down to 200k, just an estimate, I don’t know what asset/debt index, percentage of family have multiple/no kids at college. There were some CC threads on this topic.
Each year about 2200k freshmen enter college (https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2017/69-point-7-percent-of-2016-high-school-graduates-enrolled-in-college-in-october-2016.htm), this is in consistency with number of age 40ish households (https://www.statista.com/statistics/242065/number-of-households-in-the-us-by-age-of-householder/). About 4% or 90k households exceed/meet this AGI (https://www.frugalfringe.com/calculators/compare-your-adjusted-gross-income-to-others-by-age-and-filing-status-using-2014-irs-data/)
In 2016, HYPSM and other ivies and NU (add other schools in this tier as you wish), the admitted/enrolled number is about 30k/20k, If these were taken from full-paying pool, the admitted/enrolled rate will by 33%/22%, compared with the actual single digit acceptance ratio, would they need to lower their admission standard? I think so, big time, based on the college placement data from the few private HS my kids attended/considered. I think in the holistic admission, everything helps, especially once your gpa/sat exceed, saying 75 percentile, the other factors become more important.
As to which school belongs to which tier school, articles like this may help (http://www.gearup.org/collegeranking.htm).
"NU president has said he wanted to fill the class with more kids who are super excited about going to NU. "
I think it was HL Mencken who once said something like, When people say it is not about the money, it is usually about the money