<p>My oldest did SCEA because he thought that was the school he would want the most, and though he got in, he chose a different school.</p>
<p>My rising senior is totally unsure about what major or what schools he's interested in. So many of them are starting to sound interesting to him (we don't have the budget to visit any but those within driving distance in So Cal), I am not sure how to guide him.</p>
<p>Does applying SCEA, EA, or REA give one any advantage, or is that usually reserved for "special cases" such as athletes, URMs, or legacy? (None of which is my son, and he's certainly not a tippy top candidate, either)</p>
<p>OTOH, it seems an ok thing to do, to apply to one school early, just to get the ball rolling even if one isn't sure about which schools seem the best fit, if that EA/SCEA school has what a student is looking for. </p>
<p>I would assume ED is out for my son since we do need aid and he doesn't have a preference (though he might after visiting some schools this month and next month). OTOH, if a "top choice" school would materialize, and based on the Net Price Calculator, we can afford it, would ED make sense?</p>
<p>At any rate, I would love to hear how your student went about their decision to apply early or not, and if you/they felt it worked out.</p>
<p>DD applied EA which is not binding…to two schools. Her third application went to a rolling admissions school. She was accepted to all three before Christmas.</p>
<p>I would strongly suggest apply EA when it is possible. My kids both had all of their applications (RD and EA) done before October 15. It made their senior years so much more relaxing. Both commented on how nice it was…while watching friends scurrying to get things done around the holidays.</p>
<p>Re: ED…your son doesn’t have a clear number one choice. I would say no to ED. Remember, the NPC ar estimates only.</p>
<p>It really depends on the circumstance. My S had a number of schools he was interested in so he chose to avoid applying anywhere ED or SCEA and applied non-binding EA to three schools. My D had one school that was her definite top choice and applied and was accepted ED. </p>
<p>My younger son was 100% sure he wanted to attend Cal Poly SLO and applied ED. FA was not a consideration. He was not accepted ED, deferred to RD and then rejected. If your son finds that “top choice” school and you are able to afford it, I would think there would be no reason for him not to apply ED. Kids do change their minds, so make sure he understands what ED entails before he makes the commitment</p>
<p>I guess I need to look at the current list of possible schools (a long list!) and see if there are enough schools that have EA that it might be possible to apply to several of them. I am just starting to help him go through which have EA, ED, SCEA, etc.</p>
<p>Good point about ED, Gumbymom.</p>
<p>Thumper and happy, it seems that many EA schools are STEM schools, which isn’t where my son is applying, but I need to look deeper.</p>
<p>My son was a music major. He had two early priority applications. My daughter applied as an undeclared arts and sciences major…not STEM.</p>
<p>Free advice. If your son decides to apply EA to any schools…see if you can get him to complete his RD applications at the same time…and just get it done!</p>
<p>thumper, as of now, there is one EA school in the list, two SCEA schools, a bunch of ED/RD schools, some Cal State, one UC, and possibly several rolling. The EA has an admit rate of about 50% and of course the SCEA have very low admit rates. Does it make more sense to do the EA school rather than an SCEA school? Or Vice versa?</p>
<p>Yes, I think he will do everything at once, if possible. He’s possibly looking at music, but not for sure. He doesn’t want to close that door, so he does want schools that offer music as a major if at all possible. All but two have that.</p>
<p>Ah, this is a lot harder than the first time around for so many reasons.</p>
<p>There is no downside to applying EA – and one advantage is that it gets the kid moving on doing their essays, apps, and lining up LOR’s earlier, and potentially can turn a match or ever reach school into a safety, which might save some money and effort down the line on RD apps. That is, no matter how much of a reach a school might appear to be on paper, it’s a “safety” once the student has a notification of admission in hand-- and if it is perceived as preferable to other safeties, the college app list can be trimmed. A downside, however, is that financial aid awards generally don’t come until later, so if finances are part of the equation, the EA admit won’t fill the role of being a financial safety.</p>
<p>My d. intended to apply EA to both Northeastern & Chicago, but she didn’t get the NEU app done in time - I think in hindsight that was a mistake because it was a safety for her, and it might have been less stress overall if she had that acceptance in hand early on. She did submit to Chicago early and I think it really helped her come into her own on college apps to prepare and submit that – it was a fun app for her to do and for me to read. (Her essays were quite humorous; really projected her personality). She was deferred- - however, she submitted supplemental material after all of her other college apps were done, including a copy of her final, most polished version of her common app essay and a writing sample – so I think that the EA deferral essentially gave her feedback plus an opportunity to strengthen her app. She was admitted in the spring. </p>
<p>To me, SCEA would make sense if the student either had no clear preferences, or was sure that the SCEA school is preferable to other EA options – I’m not sure it’s worth foregoing other EA opportunities though. I think a rational approach would be to draw up a college list, then from that list note which schools have EA and which have SCEA – and basically make the choice based on what options are under consideration.</p>
<p>ED was never an option for us because we needed financial aid, and had no barometer in advance to estimate or figure out what we could reasonably expect in financial aid. I’m a single parent, self-employed – my kids’ father is also self-employed – and I’m sitting on a lot of home equity in a house that is quite modest, but located in a high cost area-- so a whole slew of unknowns when it comes to calculating aid. My son’s first choice college promised to meet full need of ED apps but not RD – in the end he was accepted RD but not given any aid beyond loans - they offered to put him on a waiting list for financial aid, but we deferred and he matriculated at his 2nd choice college which was very generous with aid. In hindsight that college choice was a mistake, so I think he and I have sometimes wondered “what if?” – because my son’s life could have taken a different path if he could have attended his first choice school. . Maybe it was a mistake not to deposit and see whether the aid came through – the non-aid granting college offered to allow him to double deposit. But the whole thing seemed rather dubious at the time, and we had no way of knowing what sort of grant he would have gotten if aid had come through – so that just remains one of those road-not-taken life choices in the past. But for me, it also represents the huge downside of ED – bottom line, it’s a way that colleges pressure students and parents to make choices early on that many are not ready to make. It’s also just one additional way that private colleges separate the haves from the have-nots, given the role that financial aid plays. </p>
The colleges are going to accept from the top of their ED pool, not the bottom or the middle. That is, if a particular college accepts 1/3 of ED applicants, then it is going to choose the one-third that they want the most – that might include recruited athletes with less than stellar academics, or legacies from wealthy families who represent future donor dollars – but it isn’t going to give a boost to the ordinary applicant who falls in the lower 2/3 of the applicant pool stat wise. </p>
<p>On the other hand, for a student who is on the upper end of the applicant pool but not particularly special, it probably does improve chances somewhat. The most selective colleges will end up rejecting many very well qualified students RD simply because they don’t have space for everyone, and they might turn down some simply on the mistaken belief that the students are not particularly likely to attend even if admitted. So if finances aren’t a significant factor and the student is very sure that he wants to attend the ED college… it probably can work to the student’s advantage in some cases. </p>
<p>From a purely statistical standpoint at this very moment, my son is literally at the mid 50 of the mid 50% of students for one SCEA school. So, definitely he’s just one of many. He’s a white male, does have an interesting story in some ways as it relates to his health history, does have some very long standing interests (mostly music and creative stuff), but no huge national awards beyond NM commended, a full scholarship to a program, semi-finalist for another scholarship, and being selected as a part of a specific online community. His robotics team was first in our city. But I think, it may come down to his audition tape and animation arts supplement.</p>
<p>Hm, hm, hm, so hard to know.</p>
<p>If it helps, the EA school is SMU. </p>
<p>We’ll be visiting two ED schools and one SCEA/REA school. I really like one of these schools for him-small, has three possible majors-but of course with an admit rate a little over 10%, and further requirements for homeschoolers, well, all of these schools are likely out of reach, but still worth applying to because they are interesting to him.</p>
<p>calmom, these highly selective schools give such great aid, it’s really hard to resist. And they have such a variety of interesting majors, clubs, etc. For this son, if he even got into one of these schools, that would be an accomplishment, but we have a school with a 93% admit rate as well as the community college on the list, and we are prepared for him to get in nowhere selective!</p>
<p>My impression is that a big chunk of the ED acceptances are the athletes, development admits, URM’s and qualified legacies. Sure there are some pure academic admits during the early rounds but not all that many. But I do think that for a high stat student who does not need financial aid, it shows the school that they are your top choice. Most schools are concerned with yield, so in those circumstances it would make sense. If you need to compare financial aid packages, it makes little sense at all.</p>
<p>I would do at least one almost sure thing as early as possible. It’s nice to have one acceptance in the bag early in the game. If he does SCEA, he can’t apply EA to any other schools (except maybe public universities…depends on the SCEA agreement). </p>
<p>What good does an admission advantage do if the student really isn’t absolutely positive they want to attend the ED school?</p>
<p>Do you think the U Chicago deferral (and later admit) happened because they needed to see more? I am now thinking that most schools would really want to see my son’s first semester grades since his transcripts up to this point are interesting (and a good gpa, with only one B), but not earth shatteringly hard. He’ll be attending the local CC full time (plus a class at the local homeschool co-op), so they might want to wait to see how he does with the harder classes.</p>
<p>So that’s a dilemma: EA does show interest to a school, but a weaker or less complete applicant will likely be, at the least, deferred from top schools. Would you say that’s a reasonable assumption?</p>
<p>Still, as you say, calmom, it served a good purpose.</p>
<p>My son saw the U Chicago essay prompts and loved them, too, but I don’t think he’ll be applying-not quite the right school for him as far as majors go.</p>
<p>Edited:</p>
<p>Right, thumper. I do understand that my son can’t do both SCEA and EA.</p>
<p>He will definitely be applying to several OOS state schools as soon as the applications open on Sept. 1.</p>
<p>D applied ED to her top choice (as did another classmate from her HS). Both were accepted, and neither was an athlete, development admit, URM or legacy. Of course, it may have been more of a geographic thing since the school was in California.</p>
<p>When S applied to colleges, he also applied to one with rolling admission, so he knew that he had been accepted into a school in the fall of her senior year. Definitely took the pressure off!</p>
<p>@sbjdorlo – I honestly have no clue as to what happened with my d’s Chicago application. It was a quirky application – she did not write on any of the suggested prompts, but instead went with “topic of her choice” and wrote a very entertaining, humorous essay that pretty much broke every rule of essay-writing. To start with it said absolutely nothing about herself! Instead, she poked fun at the Chicago “where fun goes to die” reputation. Her short answers were also funny and almost flippant. I thought that here essays were sure to attract the attention of an admissions reader, who would either love it or hate it. Chicago was also a reach for my daughter – her ACT score was on the bottom end of their range, and she had a quirky high school record to go along with that quirky essay.</p>
<p>But Chicago kind of likes quirky, right? My daughter was absolutely elated when she got the deferral letter, especially since the one kid from her school who was also applying and was better ranked with higher test scores than hers also got deferred. </p>
<p>Both kids were accepted in the spring. When it came to supplementing her app, I suggested to my d. that she submit something that would show her more studious, academic side … just in case whether that was the reason for the deferral. But I honestly don’t know whether Chicago liked her from the start but wanted to see spring grades, or whether they were iffy and those extra submissions eased their concerns about whether d. could cope with their academic expectations. </p>
<p>On the other hand, we targeted Chicago because my d. was a lopsided candidate and we felt that Chicago was a school that might appreciate her lopsidedness. My daughter had Russian extensively in high school and also spent a semester as living in Russia as an exchange student, so we were targeting colleges with strong but under-enrolled slavic language departments. It could be that no matter what went into an essay or later submission, the Russian angle was the tip factor that got her in. </p>
<p>In any case, she had a very nice letter of acceptance and she turned them down. A college which was higher on her preference list accepted her and offered better financial aid.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that colleges are serving their own agenda when they admit students, not trying to give out prizes or awards. They will accept the students that come with the qualities they want, and pass over many excellent students who don’t happen to be offering what they need at the time. A kid who has the qualities to get accepted at an elite college which offers generous aid might also qualify for a generous, leveraged aid award at somewhat less selective college. By “leveraged” I mean having the benefit of preferential aid packaging along with possible merit money. When you see that a school typically meets 75% of need, for example – that doesn’t mean that if your kid applies, he will have 75% of need met. It means that some kids get generous aid and some get weak aid and it all averages out to 75%. Since those colleges have more flexibility with their aid budgets, they may end up offering aid packages that far exceed what you would get from a college that purports to meet full need. </p>
<p>I applied EA to every college on my list that I could (so six of them), because I didn’t really have a reason to wait and I wanted to know where I was going sooner rather than later. I submitted all of my applications around November 1, including the non-EA (rolling, RD, priority, etc.) ones. I didn’t apply ED anywhere mostly because my top choices didn’t offer it, but I wouldn’t have wanted to commit so early even if they did. </p>
<p>ED basically means the student promises to enroll if accepted. I use the word “basically” not absolutely. As demonstrated in past threads, some will jump at the chance to renege on an acceptance, some will twist words and meanings[like: “define what ‘is’ means”] in hopes of finding what they consider loopholes to excuse their reneging. I recommend for legal and moral guidelines not to choose ED unless the student truly considers that far-and-away the first choice, and full pay is no object.</p>
<p>But I sure see no problem with choosing the non-binding EA!</p>
<p>Non-binding EA is generally advantageous – if admission with enough financial aid or scholarships comes early, then that school becomes a safety, which can allow eliminating applications to other schools that would not be chosen over that school.</p>
<p>SCEA/REA means that the applicant agrees to not apply EA to many or all other schools (depending on the SCEA/REA school’s rules) and not apply ED anywhere. At least one school that considers “level of applicant’s interest” considers it an expression of interest to apply SCEA instead of EA (it offers both options). Whether to apply SCEA/REA depends on whether the student would otherwise apply EA or ED to other schools that s/he would not be able to apply EA or ED to if s/he applied SCEA/REA.</p>
<p>ED means that you agree to attend if admitted with enough financial aid. Use ED only for the clear first choice when there is no need to compare financial aid with that of other schools. ED signals a high “level of applicant’s interest”.</p>
A college which was higher on her preference list accepted her and offered better financial aid.</p>