Help with son's college list - NE, Mid-Atlantic, CS Major

Your S is pretty similar to my S21. I have posted his full results in CC, though some are in the West since we are from California.

If you are full pay I’d encourage ED if you can narrow it down early and definitely EA. I’d say computer science admissions even with these stats is very competitive.

Tufts is an excellent school and I wish my S would have done ED I or II. Also you might want to look for schools that took a higher proportion of test submitters last year vs TO. My S went to Colgate and was rewarded RD for his test score. They are expanding their CS program after getting a big donation and got some impressive freshman. He has room in his schedule to explore before committing to the major.

In the East, he was also admitted WPI and U Mass (with very good merit), waitlisted Boston College, denied Dartmouth. WPI was really intriguing. For whatever reason S did not apply RPI but they heavily solicited him. U Mass is pretty impressive with their investment in CS and course selection but my S really wanted a smaller school.

Best of luck to your S. Being from Nebraska should be an extra advantage so definitely include a few reaches.

Definitely consider RIT. DS’20 is there and loves it. In their computer security program. Had a similar superscore (1520) and he got $19k per year in merit through their Presidential Scholarship. Good for all four years. Might be a little bigger than mid-sized, but not overwhelming. And not an urban feel being in the Rochester suburbs. WPI/RPI had that “gritty” feel to me. Troy looked like it hadn’t changed from when I visited a friend in grad school there 35 years ago.

We are contemplating doing ED1 at Brown (Brown ED acceptance seems to be a BIG jump vs RD (6% to 34%). ED2 may be at BC or Wesleyan. So many things still seem to be up in the air. RIT, UMass Amherst still in the mix. Maybe Stevens too if he wants to go more of the tech route vs LAC.

We appreciate all the feedback thus far.

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Former Brown interviewer here- of many, many years. The ED acceptance rate cannot be compared to the RD acceptance rate since the applicant pools are SO different.

Alumni children, athletes, staff/faculty children, high achieving kids from low income schools in Rhode Island, mega donor children- these are in the ED pool. The “hail mary” applications (kids with sub-par stats but who want a “bo-ho” type environment and their uninformed guidance counselor claims that since Brown has an open curriculum and no required core courses they will thrive there) are all in the RD pool.

For many years, the Adcom’s have claimed that if you were going to get admitted ED you’d still get admitted RD, and I think the stats I’ve seen support that. Conversely, if you aren’t getting admitted RD, applying ED won’t help your case. And in ED you are competing against some truly outstanding students plus the special cases I’ve listed above.

I wouldn’t strategize on this too much. ED should be for a college that your son loves loves loves and would attend regardless of any other options. If that college doesn’t exist (yet) then hold off.

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I truly appreciate this feedback but I would like to follow up on this with a question - if you really believe that the acceptance rate for ED and RD are the same (ex the hooks) then why give a college the power over your choice by using ED at all? Just so you can have a faster answer and end the whole process before January?

Again, thanks for your response.

Generally, colleges with ED want you to believe that ED will increase the likelihood of admission, but will not actually say that directly, or say how much it helps if it does help. They will, of course, publish admission rates showing a higher ED admission rate, but without indicating how much of that is due to the characteristics of the applicant pool (e.g. athlete-loaded). For the college, getting more students through ED raises both yield and yield predictability, and may reduce the need to offer merit scholarships.

ED presumably does help if the college considers “level of applicant’s interest”[1], or if the college admits a very large portion of its class through ED, leaving few spots for non-ED applicants[1]. But it is harder to know otherwise, so the main advantage to the applicant would be finding out earlier. But the applicant gives up a lot (ability to compare other admissions and financial packages, less consideration for merit scholarships[1]) for that.

[1]Note: Brown does not consider “level of applicant’s interest” or offer merit scholarships. Brown in a recent year admitted a number of ED applicants equivalent to about 46% of its matriculating class.

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