^^its NOT just that!
Do you want me to put you in touch with someone who has gone to ALL the official UC admissions meetings with college counselors over 20+ years and heard what %'s of first generation students the various UCs are NOW aiming for??
Their goals ranged from 40%-25%, and those “reserved spots” essentially reduce the number of equally qualified non first generation applicants from Calif who can get in…
I’m not a huge fan of ED, given the pressure to choose one college so early in senior year, and the potential for heartbreak should it be a rejection. But if there is one clear favorite and the school’s FA history indicates that there is a decent chance that it works, then go for it. As has been said, you can “eat crow” and back out if the package isn’t where you need it, although that’s not the recommended path.
For a “school within a school” with both biology and art offerings, definitely look at the College of Creative Studies at UCSB. Great program for the right students.
HOLY GUACAMOLE, MENLO PARK!!! So… let me get this straight - a kid like mine, whose 99 year old mother has an advanced “post bacc” degree thanks to her restaurant owner immigrant father and mother and has passed down that heritage of education over all, only has “access” to 60 - 75 % of the spots? I can see the benefits of helping 1st gen kids out, but to put out a quota like that???
Menloparkmom, still thinking about this… how do they choose which schools have the higher criteria? Do “preferred” schools like Berkley and UCLA have a requirement for a higher quota or a lower quota?
@menloparkmom, your logic is flawed. UC does enroll a large number of first-generation students – see http://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2015/chapters/chapter-1.html & https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/fall-enrollment-glance (roughly 42%) – but that still leaves the majority of spots going to students who don’t fit that demographic.
And those numbers apply statewide to all campuses – there is no reason to assume that it impacts admission to the more selective UC’s. In fact, UCSD enrollment of first-generation students is significantly less – 29%: http://studentresearch.ucsd.edu/_files/stats-data/admissions/freshmen/ffgen.pdf
It might be an admissions boost to a student whose stats are weaker if they are first-generation; but it is no way a detriment for a high-stat white student to have college educated parents.
If the OP’s daughter needs a another safety, it would of course be in her interest to add another UC to her list… but the argument that she in an unfavorable position because she shares characteristics with the vast majority of students admitted to UCSD makes no sense at all. Even UCSD casts the figures in a favorable light to the offspring of the college-educated: “Just under three-fourths (71%) of new freshmen have at least one parent” with a 2 or 4 year college degree.
In answer to the title question, our son had a very clear first choice, although it was a reach, and we figured the finances would work out, somehow. He did not apply to any other colleges, waiting to hear the results of his ED application.
In the mean time, though, he did continue to investigate other schools and make visits.
He was deferred from his ED college, so he put in applications to a couple other colleges: a safety, a match/safety, and two other reaches.
In the end he was ultimately offered admission to his ED college in the RD round, and that is where he is now (and loving it).
I think that ED is a pox on the overall college application system and wish it would be eliminated. It mostly benefits the schools not the kids. But having said that, it seems like ED to CC makes sense for your kid.
ED makes sense if (i) full pay is aok and (ii) the kid is really really really set on the ED school. If those are true, go for it and take the deal (which is the break provided on admissions).
Two caveats though. First, make sure your kid keeps shopping and considering schools. The most dreamy school today may not still be the dreamiest 9 months from now. Some kids lock on early and stay locked on, but many do not.
Second, make sure that you REALLY are getting the deal from CC before going ED. It is a little more complicated than just looking at the differential acceptance rates. Some schools (like Duke) are VERY open and transparent about the fact that ED gives you a big boost on admissions. And that stats support that – 27% ED admit rate vs. 12% overall admit rate and 47% of seats filled through ED.
But at Brown, in contrast, we concluded that ED really did not provide enough boost to justify truncating other options. 20% ED admit rate vs. 9% and 38% of seats filled via ED. But Brown’s ED round includes most of the recruited athletes and most of the legacies. Once you back those out, the boost for an unhooked applicant did not seem very big.
CC’s numbers are 30% ED admit rate vs. 17% with 45% seats filled via ED. But check how much of that is due to athletes and legacies. My guess is that CC’s boost is strong, but maybe not as strong as you’d think at first blush. And then also consider whether your kid really needs the boost. CC’s ACT range is 27-32. Your kid is already at the 75th percentile. If the ACT score goes up to 33 or 34, your admit chances without ED may be good enough.
So going ED might not really help your kid get in – your kid likely gets in anyway. So using ED would mostly simplify the process, since a 33-34 ACT plus ED might make CC basically a safety school. One and done on applications. Which is great so long as you like and can pay for what you end up with.
One last thing on ACT super-scoring – be skeptical. There’s no relative advantage to your kid with that. While your kid would benefit from a super-score, so would everyone else’s kid, right? Super-scoring is just a scam that helps the schools present inflated test score data for ranking purposes.
@shoot4moon MyD17 will be going to Colorado College next year; I mention this because it’s one of those on your list, and I don’t see its name bandied about much on this site (maybe the college needs to hire a marketing director, haha). She applied AD because she liked it much more than her second and third choices, because finances are luckily not an issue for us…yet… and because the acceptance rate is so low that she needed to show her sincere desire to actually attend of accepted, for that extra “push.” Even schools that don’t do a tom of marketing a la Mortheastern want to protect their yield, after all! 
Good luck!
@shoot4moon - as you can see from my post #24, there is no evidence that your 4.6 GPA/ 32 ACT would be disadvantaged in any way, at any UC. My guess is that she would easily be admitted to any UC that she applies to, with the possible exception of UCLA or UC Berkeley – though I would acknowledge that UCSD would be a match rather than safety.
I have found over the years that there is a lot of nonsense spread around by people about college admissions, including those who claim to be experts. My daughter is a Barnard graduate. Her SAT score was bad enough (1200) that she chose to submit an only slightly better ACT (27) instead. A professional in the college admissions business told me that DD didn’t have a chance at Barnard unless her SAT was at least 1400, and not to bother to apply. She cited to something she had supposedly been told by an admissions counselor about some other student she was advocating for. I looked at the common data set and easily could refute that figure. My daughter still had lousy scores, but the college admissions “expert” had failed to answer the question I had asked (whether another factor in my daughter’s profile would confer an admissions advantage) – and so I relied on what my common sense and my research told me. (And my hunch turned out to be right).
Your daughter’s stats are strong enough so that your daughter has a chance just about anywhere.
As to your original question – if money is not a barrier, I think you should let your daughter make whatever choice she wants, but things change in the course of senior year; Colorado College’s unique block structure could lose its appeal when it comes to actually committing; and the publishes admission stats tell you very little about an individual’s actual chances for admission. So if I were in your position, I’d encourage you daughter to go with the wait-and-see approach. It’s not just about the money, it’s also about all the other things the student learns about their colleges over the course of the school year, as well as the ways that young people grow and change in those months. I think it would be really a shame for a high stat student with varied interests like your daughter to lock herself in early in the process.
I’m very glad that my daughter had such an incredible array of colleges to choose from in the end – it just felt good to be sitting on a stack of such attractive and prestigious choice. Finances were much more significant for us, so actually meant all of the admissions offer weren’t feasible— but there’s an ego boost for the student that comes with the fact of admission, or being offered some amount of merit money even if not enough to meet the family’s need.
Based on the current list under consideration, there is a significant opportunity cost if our daughter commits early to CC – it means that she would be essentially dropping schools like Brown and Tufts from consideration.
As long as you are still looking - I’ll also make my mom-of-Barnard-grad pitch. Don’t discount the women’s colleges!
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/half-new-uc-students-are-first-generation-college-students Interesting article - especially how it is slanted toward serving all Californians. In my mind, if the preference goes (1) serving first gen (2) getting more $$$ from out of staters (3) Taking 2nd or 3rd gen students I don’t see that as equal treatment for the taxes that I pay.
You have a good list of schools. Depending your your student’s ACT scores, you may want to consider adding schools that give automatic full tuition scholarships to students with good scores. You can find a list of such schools elsewhere on CC but I believe they include Univ. of Oklahoma, University of Arkansas, and University of Alabama. Vanderbilt and WashU also have good merit scholarships, up to full ride, but there is nothing automatic about those two schools. Good luck!
Edit: and to get back to your OP. Consider skipping the ED round. My kid ended up with a full ride offer from an unexpected school. Had my kid applied ED elsewhere, we would not have had the option to accept the merit scholarship.
@shoot4moon – Smart people read beyond headlines. It isn’t half - the article you linked to says “nearly half” and by “nearly” they mean 42% – which is clearly set out at the link already provided to raw data at https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/infocenter/fall-enrollment-glance
And the “preference” at UC is for students with high GPA’s and test scores like your daughter.
The UC’s exist to serve California residents, and 60% of the adult population of California do not have college degrees – see https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/new-state-state-college-attainment-numbers-show-progress-toward-2020-goal - so a 42% admit rate of first-generation college students is simply a matter of giving the children of those 60% non-college-educated parent and equal opportunity. Seems to me that’s the whole point of having a public education system,and exactly where my tax dollars ought to be going. If California’s goal is to raise the number of college graduates to 56%-60% of the population by 2020 (as suggested by that chart) – that’s a net benefit to the state, but also a formidable goal that will be only achieved by bringing more of the non-college degreed populace into the fold.
We knew we wouldn’t qualify for ANY need-based aid but our cash flow was such that merit aid would be very welcome, so S did NOT apply EA or ED to any U. He did apply to all the Us he was interested and received several very generous merit packages, one of which he accepted. When D applied to transfer, again we wouldn’t qualify for need aid and her stats weren’t high enough to make her competitive for merit aid either. She applied via regular transfer admission and got into the one U she applied to.
I would discourage my kids from applying ED anywhere, as that commits them to attending if they are accepted, even if other places offer MUCH more attractive merit and FAid packages. Kids can change a lot in the months between application and when they have to commit to their U in the spring. I am glad my kids hadn’t applied ED anywhere.
“your logic is flawed”
I was not using logic , I was referring to the actual %'s of first generation students that the most competitive UC’s have decided to accept. I am aware that the intent is good, but it DOES favor certain students over others, regardless of their qualifications, due to circumstances entirely beyond their control- namely, did their parents go to college.
“there is no reason to assume that it impacts admission to the more selective UC’s.”
the numbers I saw showed the largest % of slots saved for first generation students at UCB- , followed by UCLA-, and then UCSD.
I dont see how that does NOT impact admissions at those most selective UC’s,.
them’s the fact folks. And yes, it DOES piss off college educated Calif residents, like shoot4moon and the parents of students who have lived here and paid taxes for decades to find out that a large % of slots at the top UC’s are NOW reserved for others who may have arrived recently in Calif, and they cant do anything about it.
There was SUCH blowback from Calif residents last year regarding both this program and the large % of slots given to OOS residents that the UC’s were forced, by the legislature, to drop FA for OOS students, as well as reduce the # of spots given to OOS students.
Calmom, your DD graduated from Barnard nearly a decade ago, correct? Like my DS at USC?
Things have changed a lot re UC acceptances in the past 10 years. I’m not pretending to be an expert, but I did see, with my own eyes, the report that my friend the college counselor was given after attending an information session with UC admissions offices last year. She showed it to me cause we have worked together for 20+ years and nearly ALL of her students apply to the UC’s.
She nearly had a heart attack because of the effect the new allocation goals for first generation students would probably have on her students- making it much harder for her top students- all the children of college graduates- to have a reasonable chance of getting into one of the better UC’s. And that is what indeed happened…
“but it is no way a detriment for a high-stat white student to have college educated parents.”
IF 40% of spots at UCB are reserved for first generation students, which we know are mostly non white, and 70-80% of the applicants are children of college educated parents, how is it that a hi stat student - white or not- with equal grades and scores, is NOT disadvantaged???
What is your source for your claim that 70-80% of UC applicants are children of college educated parents?
I did link to my source as to UCSD enrollment figures – 29% first generation. In a state where census data shows that more than 60% of adults don’t have college degrees.
Guys. This thread is about ED. Not a debate about the uc system.
^^this
My first collegekid had her ED pick nailed at this point in Grade 11 (and a carefully chosen list of 6 other colleges if the ED didn’t work out). In the autumn she applied to 7 colleges- only one of which was on her list in the spring, and it was not the ED fave. It is pretty common for favorites to shift over then next 6 months- there is a lot of maturing that happens during this process.
Also, I know several current and recent CC students, most of whom are very happy there- they love the relatively laid back atmosphere, the active outdoor life, and the like-minded student body. For at least 2 of them the block system has been a gift- it works with the way they work better than any other schooling they have ever had. But for one, CC has not been a great fit- she has liked enough parts of the school that she stayed, but she has not found the level of academic rigor or academic fellow travelers she was expecting (before anybody beats me up, that is no judgement on the academics at CC!). You might be sure that your daughter has sat in on a class or two before she commits.
@collegemom3717 do you happen to know the major that was less rigorous in her opinion?
It ended up being a double major- environmental science and something else- I’ll have to check.
It’s so important to be careful with a single anecdotal experience; I mentioned it only b/c your daughter is an IB student, which implies a degree of rigor and intensity.
This student nearly transferred 2nd year, complaining that her college counselor should have advised her to go for a more academic college, (she is forgetting that she was the one who found & pushed CC…). I don’t think that it was that the standard wasn’t good, but that she wanted more, and especially wanted more students as academically oriented as she was. She didn’t transfer, partly b/c by then she had become very involved in a student group, and partly b/c she arranged 2 study abroad field projects so that she would only be on campus for 1/2 year both 3rd & 4th year.