Hamilton College Class of '22 ED1 Jan Admit

@Chembiodad I never said they live together, in fact an upside is said to be that they seldom live in the less than wonderful freshman dorm building. They have an orientation week together in Feb before starting classes and they graduate in a separate ceremony together. They take special Feb intro seminar classes together once they enter Midd further establishing their community and allowing them to have the same academic sequence as fall entries. There are 400 of them in the school that follow an academic Feb path throughout their 4 years, so its a significant cohort.

Just looked into Colbys program: it is opt in (you indicate that you would like to be considered for it) and your FA carries to the program. That is a much better system to me. The places they go to also seems much more interesting than London to me, but I guess thats a personal opinion.

@4junior, the Hamilton program has the same Orientation before the Spring semester starts - that’s in addition to attending the Fall Orientation. Would seem impossible to have the same academic sequence as Fall entries, the FAQ speaks to that issue as well as many, many others - its not for everyone, but like our DD’s HS classmate it got her accepted so she embraced it.

@Chembiodad To clarify: 99.999% of my beef with the program as an ED applicant is that it is sprung on you vs your choice.

I believe that ED represents a significant commitment on the part of the student to the school. If an ED student is interested in the program, or if they feel they would like to boost their chances by being open to taking those spaces - then great they can opt in! But to ask someone to use their ED ‘chip’ and then do that to them… sorry I just don’t feel it is fair.

It also strongly implies that Jan kids are borderline admits who need to take up the offer to go to Hamilton. Who wants to go through 4 years of college being marked in that way, and it also seems antithetical to the community spirit and kindness that we felt at Hamilton.

Having an opt in program - or even being able to appeal the decision - seems the ethical path to me. It solves the metrics problem of housing for Hamilton without the drama. I honestly cannot see why they would not use that system, as they would surely fill the spots with people who embraced that path from the outset and are therefore happier to participate in the program. I understand giving Jan admits to RD applicants who have not indicated that preference, it’s ED ones I take issue with.

RE the FAQ section, do you mean Hamiltons? Because that has almost no info vs Midds. I am sure that there a 4 sections of Feb seminars offered to Febs when they arrive on campus at Midd. Since there are 100 Febs per year there are enough to offer classes to them on a different cadence, and the site specifically states when his is not possible such as for certain languages. I think we have really gotten off on a tangent comparing the two programs in such depth…

@4junior, no its not sprung on anyone; its listed along the border with the other admissions information just like Middlebury - the admission pages are identical in that respect.

You are overestimating the value of the ED chip unless one is a hooked applicant; with a 29% ED I acceptance rate and understanding that hooked applicants made at least 50% of the applicant pool, the ED chip is very small - yes it may make a 15% acceptance rate for an ORM a 20% acceptance so its 33% higher, but the absolute acceptance rate is still small.

There is a ton of information on the Jan program on both school’s websites.

I guess the alternative is that a school could over-yield in RD as Colby, and many other schools, have done recently and students can triple up in doubles and overflow classes to resolve the issue.

They are all great schools and most applicants will be Denied and won’t ever have the chance to debate the Jan Admittance idea. Gotta run.

I think this figure may have referred to Vassar’s admissions differential (when considered by gender). According to their CDS, Vassar most recently accepted 19% of their female applicants and 35% of their male applicants (currently a 16 point separation).

@BelknapPoint
I think a more sincere way to express well wishes, would be to say something like Good luck to your D next year- wishing her lots of success.
By saying unfortunately it will be even a higher bar next year…
Well to me, it comes across as negative and the trailing off of the sentence to me means he is leaving something unsaid.

@Chembiodad
My apologies, sprung was a poor choice of words.

And perhaps I am indeed overstating the ED advantage. But then again you have stated on earlier post(s) that you feel your D might have been admitted to Midd had she applied ED vs RD.

Either way, we’ll just never know how these decisions are made no matter how many numbers we crunch.

@merc81 Sorry i think i remembered that figure from an earlier post but I am sure you are correct. I did not mean to mislead but rather to convey the general concept that the percentages for females are lower.

@wisteria100, I have always wished everyone the best; it’s unfortunate that you didn’t feel that way - next time I will try to ensure that my comment isn’t misunderstood.

Many feel that every CC thread is a place to banter around as alums of competing schools would do in a bar. I don’t see a College specific thread as a place for that - there are other spots on CC for that.

@4junior, yes that’s true as Midd still has one of the highest ED I admit rates - did we know for sure - nope, but with a 35 ACT she probably had a 30-40% chance which was a whole lot better than a 10-15% chance at Brown.

At the end of the day, all of these highly selective schools pick the students and not the other way around. And, unfortunately it appears that they are able to be pickier every year.

I’ll let everyone know what my son decides. He’s reached out to a current Hamilton student who was a Jan and has asked some questions. Thanks for the input here.

@123France Best of luck to you and your son! It really is a great school and London might be a great experience for him. With the huge jump in ED1 applications this year an admittance to Hamilton at any point in the year is certainly an accomplishment!

My dd is an RD applicant (it’s a reach for her) who would kill for a Jan admit!

Echoing the two sentiments above! It’s a great accomplishment to get into Hamilton in ANY round and many people envy his opportunity to be a Jan! Best of luck!

For the record, based on the figures in The Spectator, Hamilton’s ED1 applications this year increased by 63%, not the 71% figure reported up-thread (reply #35).

I’m going to correct my own math. It appears that the increase in ED1 applications can only be estimated at this time. The Spectator article indicates that QuestBridge and Posse applicants are not officially ED1 applicants, therefore their contribution to the total “early” figure (647) must be considered in order to arrive at an ED1 application total estimate. If it were assumed that these two groups of applicants are accepted at the same rate as conventional ED1 applicants (a somewhat simplified assumption though), then, based on other information in the article, the actual ED1 total for this year can be estimated at 545. This compares to 396 in the prior year, and would represent an increase of 38%.

@merc81, sounds like we need to wait until the PR as the contributor quoted 647 ED I applicants with an admission rate in 29.5% - “These 191 students were accepted from a total pool of 647 applicants for an acceptance rate of around 29.5 percent”.
https://spec.hamilton.edu/admission-office-sees-record-number-of-applications-from-students-for-class-of-2022-9119ebb16111

My interpretation relied partly on this statement from the same article:

This suggests a distinction between applications that will be officially classified as ED1 and other early applications (QuestBridge and Posse). I also tried to be conservative. I’m open to other understandings, though, @Chembiodad.

Well, if you exclude the 30 assumed Questbridge and Posse acceptances, then you also have to exclude the same 30 from the applicant pool - right? So, 647-30=617 and 161/617=26% which doesn’t tie to the 29.5% Acceptance Rate noted.

As typical, I think Questbridge and Posse applicants are always included in the ED total as they aren’t guaranteed admission either.

I guess we’ll need to wait until all ED/RD Applicant and Acceptance data is released, but we do know that the 647 ED I Applicants is equal to or greater than any other yearly total, including ED II which hasn’t been released yet.

If equivalent proportions are adhered to, then 102 applicants would be excluded from the QuestBridge and Posse cohorts. Mathematically consistent results would then follow.