If you intended to do Princeton SCEA, what should you do now that that Princeton disallowed that option for the Class of 2025?
Well, you should consider what other colleges and students do as well. Assuming that Harvard, Yale, and Stanford keep SCEA, the top students will switch to EA at one of those schools or MIT, driving down EA rates at all of those.
But my suspicion is that a plurality and perhaps a majority of intended Princeton SCEA grads will switch to Harvard SCEA. What that means is that Harvard SCEA could be particularly difficult this year. From purely an admissions perspective, students that wanted to do Princeton SCEA might be better off doing Yale SCEA or Stanford REA rather than Harvard SCEA. This of course assumes that you find these other colleges to be a good fit for you.
^But there’s no downside to applying SCEA somewhere else if you have no other early schools on your list.
For the student whose first choice is Princeton, I think the silver lining is the chance to apply (non-restrictive) EA to any privates that might be matches or safeties. Reduce the app burden going into RD by hopefully getting one or more affordable acceptances upfront.
The strategic bummer for the student whose first choice is Princeton is that they can’t apply ED2 to their second choice following a rejection from SCEA.
However, the prevalence of “which college should I ED or SCEA to?” posts here indicates that, for many applicants, the goal is not to target their clear first choice (that they may not have), but to try to get admitted to a more prestigious and selective college than they believe they would get admitted to RD (i.e. their notion of “fit” is mostly about prestige and exclusivity).
For a student that is strong enough to apply SCEA by November 1st, doing so can only bring a benefit. And if that student who had Princeton as a first choice gets in to one of the HYSM colleges, he or she can apply just to Princeton at RD rather than having to apply many places.
I actually think Harvard and a few others in that tier will follow Princeton’s lead by not offering EA this year. Even a few ED schools may follow. Nothing can be taken for granted this year.
As a practical matter, the Common App opens in five and a half weeks. Any school contemplating deadline changes will hopefully do so very soon, as students are formulating their application plans.
Princeton just did a unilateral disarmament, and in terms of competition, the other colleges are best served with the status quo.
If that happens, Harvard benefits a great deal in terms of getting a really strong EA application pool. Yale, Stanford, and MIT see a smaller increase in EA applications relative to Harvard’s increase. Columbia might see a small ED uptick as well, and those acceptances are binding.
So even before Princeton gets its RD apps, many of its strongest potential applicants might have already mentally committed elsewhere. Every one of its competitors benefits at Princeton’s expense.
One has to ask the question why Princeton did away with SCEA this year. It isn’t based on game theory. Princeton has no intention of putting itself at a disadvantage. It anticipates that its best applicants won’t be able to put their best foot forward by Nov. 1 , due to a myriad of issues caused by the coronavirus this year. It also knows that its admission staff won’t be able to properly process all the early applications by the mid-December deadline, especially in the absence of test scores, spring term grades, timely teacher recommendations, meaningful junior ECs, etc.
These aren’t unique issues faced by Princeton, either. I expect colleges (such as Stanford, MIT and Caltech) that traditionally don’t unduly favor early applicants to follow suit. Harvard, which does favor early applicants, will then be under pressure to do the same. ED schools are harder to predict. Many of them do need the commitments from their ED applicants for both financial and non-financial reasons, but I still expect a few of them to do likewise.
My prediction is that HYS will skim the cream of the crop and defer the rest (meaning a higher percentage of deferrals as schools wait for first term grades.) MIT won’t change as the slight uptick in applicants won’t really impact their strategy.
Princeton tried once before in 2008. We know Harvard ended up ranking higher than Princeton by usnews in 2009 and 2011. So it would be obvious the slight uptick would be to Harvard
Although Princeton eventually gave up in 2008 and reinstated SCEA in 2011 because no other colleges followed suit, it is very reasonable to predict that other schools will follow Princeton this year.
If all HYPS schools eliminate their SCEA and even other Ivys/top tiers with ED programs, then I am not sure how they would fill up the freshmen class.
ED is of course a binding agreement, and HYPS with SCEA I suspect must have very high yield rates, that would have filled a large portion of the incoming class.
I expect to see a long process of waitlisting and students endlessly jumping from school to school until Fall!
I assumed Princeton realized that they would basically fill their early admit quota with kids deferring this year, including potentially recruited athletes. Particularly bc my sense is that deferrals skew toward the classic SCEA admit (legacies, athletes, development cases). They can basically commit to the new crop of athletes without SCEA and redshirt them so that’s not a big issue. They can they admit the rest of the class from the RA pool, though it will be a lower acceptance rate.
I think Princeton will have a smaller class this year, but next year will be the usual size plus the deferrals. That way the over all number of students stays the same.
The threat of two-year deferrals indicates to me they recognize an emerging serious problem. They will keep the faith with the private feeders, but other than that I feel like this year will be very tough. Hope I am wrong.
Yeah that’s definitely a problem. I think Princeton can slide teachers around and change the usual class progression to make it work. When the bulging class get into their major is when it will get interesting.
A full campus is a vibrant campus though, so Princeton makes it work.
btw, not promising the deferred students dorm space is a sign they plan for a larger than normal freshman class next year.