We have the blessing of an excellent list of alternatives for applications for next year.
Brown - no merit
Tufts - no merit
Colorado College - small amount of merit
Marist - significant merit
Westmont - significant merit
Loyola Marymount - significant merit
UCSD - no merit, but lower priced as we are CA residents
There is one clear favorite at the moment, but that school has a dramatic difference in admission rate between EA and ED (17% vs 30%). We will not qualify for need-based aid, and CC gives very minimal merit aide. She has a strong package of testing/academics and interesting ECs, but so does everyone else who applies.
Several of the others are in her top choices, some of which she might be eligible for a substantial merit based package.
We are struggling with deciding whether it is worth it to go ED and maximize the chances of her getting accepted to CC, since it is such a clear favorite, and doing EA so we can compare financial packages. We are blessed with a savings account from many, many years ago that we “hand over” to our children to spend on education. If she pays full price, she won’t have money for graduate school, which is a distinct possibility.
Any insight from those who have been there? We have months to decide, but we are beginning to weigh the pros and cons.
What kind of graduate school is she considering? PhD programs worth attending should be funded, but professional programs like MD, JD, MBA are expensive.
Basically, it comes down to this question: if she is admitted to Colorado College at list price or minimal merit, would she feel comfortable committing there without seeing any other admission and scholarship decisions? I.e. would she choose Colorado College at list price over any of the others at whatever discounts they could realistically offer her?
If she is applying to UCSD, then I hope she will also apply to other UC 's as well.
UCSD is as a much a reach for students as Brown, unless she is a non white, first generation to go to college applicant.
Regarding ED vrs EA, it has long been the concurrence on CC that students should NOT apply ED IF families need to compare FA offers. It does her NO good to get into a college where, long term, you cant afford to send her.
We were in a very similar position; would not get FA, and list price at D’s first choice would mean nothing left at the end (might even be a little short). It was also “her” money, provided by grandparents, so we weighted her preference heavier than if it was “our” money.
We had:
Choice 1 - $65k, clear first choice, D’s stats a little on the low side for University but she was applying to less competitive major so we thought she’d get in but it wasn’t guaranteed.
Choice 2 - out of state, $52K, match school
Choice 3 - out of state, $38K, match school but far away and we never visited
Safety, $20k with published merit schedule, out of state school not flagship.
We decided to do ED to #1, but since that school was so late in notifying, we had all of the other results earlier
She got $25k/yr merit at the ED school, so net cost is $45k
School 2 - $15k/year merit, net cost $37k
School 3 - $5k/yr merit, net cost $33k
We’re happy with the outcome and that we went ED. It was her clear first choice. I’m not sure we would have been as excited without the merit, though, and that was a complete surprise.
She now has enough to finish with a little cushion towards grad school or study abroad.
Race/ethnicity does not matter at UCs, and it is not like UCSD has any shortage of non-white undergraduate students anyway (only about 25% white). However, UCs do like to see high achievement from lower SES and first generation applicants.
UCSD is not as selective as Brown generally, but UCs tend to heavily weight GPA, so test-score-heavy applicants are more likely to get surprised by rejection from UCs while being admitted to other schools that are comparably or more selective generally but weight GPA less and test scores more.
“However, UCs do like to see high achievement from lower SES and first generation applicants.”
According to my source, who is a VERY experienced, long time private college counselor here in Calif, the top UC’s admissions offices have “quotas” for first generation students -and it is a high % of the total of openings that they are saving for non first generation applicants.
Most of the time, that means white kids here in Calif, whose parents have gone to college, have a much harder time landing an acceptances at UC, UCLA, UCSD.
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/ca-hs-pipeline indicates that white applicants do not have a harder time than overall in admission rate to UC overall or the specific campuses you named. And if your theory is correct, shouldn’t Asian applicants do worse, since many have highly educated (i.e. not first generation that you say has a “quota”) immigrant parents due to the immigration system preference for such (skilled worker and graduate student visas)?
My opinion is if you don’t need or want to consider the potential for merit money and the student has a clear favorite as in “I really, really want to go to THIS college” then apply ED. Colleges love ED and interested students and students who don’t require scholarship. But if there is some waffling going on either over the finances or over “which college do I want to attend” I would forgo ED. And remember with ED there is generally an “out” if the financial aid doesn’t line up with the parents’ ability to pay, but you or your D will have to do some eating crow if she receives ED, you don’t need financial help and you decide the cost at the UCs is more attractive. Early action is zero risk. Absolutely take advantage of early action with any college she’s interested in that offers early action.
We did whatever one was non-binding for Chapman. Son is a music major and it gave him early feedback (as he finished the audition the director shook our hands and recommended him for admission.) The financial merit aid was okay but probably not enough to make it a wise choice. Waiting on USC, UCLA, and a few other schools that release in late March. Admitted to Cal Poly Pomona, Chapman, UC Irvine, CSU Fullerton. Doing early action was like a test case to see how competitive an applicant he was and it gave him a good indication of where else he might be accepted. It also meant that he had to finish his Common Application and get his recs done early! No missing deadlines for the other Common Application schools.
If you want to attend a UC then you can’t really do binding early action anywhere.
My son envies his classmates who applied to less competitive schools - it does make the senior year less stressful to know where you are going early in the year.
To answer your question, her safeties are Marist, Westmont, and (low match) LMU.
Tufts, Brown, and CC are reaches for everyone in my opinion. She is only a junior, so we may go see University of Santa Clara and Pepperdine, which will fall in the middle. She loves all of them - for different reasons! None of the other UCs have intrigued her to date, but if she ends up filling out the application, she will probably check a few more. UCLA does not allow non-art majors to take art, so that’s out. UCSB did not interest her. We would need to research the others. UCSD has six colleges within the college, which is a model that she embraced. She is a white student who will graduate with a 4.6 and and IB diploma if she plays her cards right. She just took her first ACT and got a 32 with very scattered scores. Our guess is that she will improve in her second administration, and all of her schools superscore except LMU. She is also an excellent artist, and is applying for a double major in art and biology. We are in the exact same situation as AMGK above - she could afford any of them, but we don’t know what the future holds. It’s tempting to go EA everywhere (as our older daughter did) and see how the finances fall out, but with the dramatic difference in admission rate it’s a much tougher choice for her. And yes, we are weighing her decision higher because most of her money is her money - not ours.
@mackinaw early ACTION is not a binding decision. Other applications do not need to be withdrawn. Matriculation decision is made by May 1. You don’t need a clear number one strong preference to apply EA…it’s just nice to,get some of those early applications done!!
For early DECISION…unless you are prepared to pay whatever the school says you should pay, and the school is top preference…don’t apply ED either.
If finances are a consideration (this doesn’t sound the case here) and you need to or what to compare net costs…then don’t apply ED.
Son17 did not go ED to his top choice and went EA. He got deferred and I doubt he’ll get in RD. I’m not sure he would’ve gotten in ED, he had the stats and all that, but maybe they were looking for something different.
We decided not to apply ED because the school wasn’t an overwhelming #1 favorite. It was #1 on his list, but he was fine with others on his list.
He applied to 5 schools EA and got deferred by 2, and accepted by 3.
He then also had some time over the winter to look at some other schools, applied to one of them and recently visited and it is a top contender.
So maybe not applying ED ended up working out OK for him. But he was depressed to get deferred EA.
He ended up getting a very nice merit package from one school that we were not expecting. That was another benefit to applying to some schools RD. He was able to get more offers to consider.
DD1: Had a variety of schools…some were reaches, some were matches. No clear favorite. Did EA and RD.
DD2: I found an affordable in-state school that met all her criteria…she kept comparing all the other schools to that school…I said why not just apply ED? You have a terrible time making decisions, so why put of the decisions until after you get admitted? Why not do it now? Also the ED acceptance rate is a little higher but she was at the 75% for SAT scores. We could afford it at full price because it was a smaller state college and was half the price of private colleges.
She applied and got in and never looked back.
“shouldn’t Asian applicants do worse, since many have highly educated (i.e. not first generation that you say has a “quota”) immigrant parents due to the immigration system preference for such (skilled worker and graduate student visas)?”
asian applicants whose parents went to college also have a harder time getting into the top UC’s than they used to ,at the UC’s that are focusing on increasing the # of first generation students.
All applicants (regardless of race/ethnicity, first generation, SES, etc.) have a harder time getting into the most desired UCs, since the number of applicants keeps rising.