“ Most of the supported athletes and special programs (QB) are in ED1, so the pool is more likely to be similar to RD. At some schools, it will include many kids who were not successful at their SCEA schools, and to the extent they had been viable candidates for Stanford or Harvard, they can make the pool very competitive. I’m going to guess this is less the case for BU than a school like Williams, for example.”
I agree with you, however, Williams and Amherst don’t offer ED2. Since Williams ED1 acceptances include a significant number of athletes, QB, legacy, FGLI and geographically diverse applicants, I suspect that this is why their AOs have said that ED doesn’t confer an advantage, with the unstated message that unhooked applicants particularly from over represented groups don’t get an edge in ED. They know they’ll get many strong applicants RD so it makes sense for them to wait.
Sorry, picked a bad example! Should have remembered that about Williams. So Tufts!
I note the colleges that offer ED II include colleges as well-regarded as Chicago, Hopkins, WUSTL, Vanderbilt, Emory, CMU, NYU, Rochester, Wake, Swarthmore, Haverford, Pomona, Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Vassar, Holy Cross, Wesleyan, Middlebury, Hamilton, Colgate, Colby, Bowdoin, Bates, Wellesley, Smith, Bryn Mawr, Mt Holyoke, Carleton, Grinnell, Macalester, Kenyon, Oberlin, Davidson, Washington and Lee, Richmond . . . .
In other words, you really got unlucky with Williams! Among the most selective LACs, it is mostly just them and Amherst, plus Barnard (which I think may be because of Columbia). The big categories of exceptions among very selective private colleges are the Ivies and the REA schools, and then just a very few others that only have ED I (like Northwestern and Rice).
And yes, I think it is because the vast majority of private colleges in the US are happy to enroll students they like who just miss out on HYPSM, or for that matter Amherst or Williams.
Yup. An awful lot of kids apply REA/SCEA to HYPS and get deferred. Some of them “panic” (using the term somewhat loosely here, but only somewhat!) and pivot to ED2 to schools that they’d still feel are great gets. You listed several of them! That may indeed make the ED2 applicant pools at these schools stronger than the ED1 and RD pools.
EDII does offer an advantage, especially at Chicago. This was discussed on the Chicago forums a few years back. But I remember that the advantage is about the same as EDI bump. No official numbers were ever released, but there were scattered reports of admission rates mentioned by officials during Accepted Student events.
As usual, I think it is important to understand that a higher acceptance rate for the overall pool does not necessarily show each applicant gets a boost or bump.
That said, Chicago is plausibly a college that would yield protect, since last I saw reliable studies on this, it had a serious revealed preference problem such that it might often be buried pretty deep on the preference chart for its RD admits.
So if in an ED round Chicago is actually your (remaining) affordable first choice, or more or less tied among a top few, you might well want to ED Chicago in order to avoid them assuming you are likely to have them lower than that.
Yes you’re absolutely right. Chicago is extremely aware of yield. And they tend to target students from top schools with high scores, but middle of the road GPA. Also full pay helps a lot. There are a variety of factors that we will never see. But in the end, I think the advantage of applying EDII is better than RD.
Yes, it would take an awful lot for me to believe you would actually be better off in RD assuming the same application. Like, even at the University of Denver, which I noted had a higher acceptance rate in RD than ED in their last CDS, that is almost surely not because of any “RD boost”, it is very likely because they only get so many ED applications they actually like enough.
To the extent I have concerns about strategic ED choices, it is really only when there is some other issue at stake. Like, if it could be to your advantage to be able to pursue and compare different aid awards. Or if the kid really isn’t sure yet where they want to go, but feels pressured to ED somewhere. Or, sometimes, when there is a good chance your RD application might be better.
But if you have an affordable first choice (or remaining first choice as of ED II), and feel like you are ready to submit your best application, why not?
And in fact I think this happens all over the map, so to speak. In terms of revealed preferences, it is somewhat obvious at least many applicants have some pretty common patterns of preference lists. And I would assume colleges not typically at the top of those lists are fine with getting enrollees who missed out on schools they preferred, since realistically such people could end up some of their best enrollees.
OK, so I hate excessively naming names when talking like this, but loosely speaking a “second-tier” school might be fine getting EDII applications from people who submitted an REA/EDI application to a preferred “first-tier” school. And then a “third-tier” school might be fine getting EDII applications from people who submitted REA/EA/EDII application to a preferred “second-tier” school. Or for that matter, a second-tier or third-tier or so on school might be fine being a second-choice among their peers, if for some reason the fit was better. And so on.
So yeah, lots of reasons and opportunities for colleges to benefit from EDII. And since it is so one-sided, why not?
Chicago is notorious for pushing EA applicants towards ED2. Those who won’t commit are often rejected or WL.
Many schools do this.
Who wouldn’t want an “easy” sale vs. a more difficult one later?
I don’t disagree, but felt it was worth mentioning. Often students are surprised by this.
For colleges that have an ED admission advantage, my impression is that the admit rate for a typical applicant will not be materially different for the ED1 and ED2 rounds. The ED1 round normally has a higher overall admit rate because the ED1 round includes the hooked applicants (ex. recruited athletes, children of huge donors, etc.).
And sometimes those who do switch to ED2 are still rejected. Ugh.
absolutely, no assurances. Too many think ED is a failure if you fail - but not true.
The “switch” from RD to ED2 is marketing…pure and simple. But the admissions committee is a different animal.
The highest boost will be with ED1, but ED2 will still give you an advantage at most schools so I would recommend an ED2 if the school she wants offers it.
Important for your student to figure out what they want to do in case of ED1 deferral. If they loved the ED1 school, they might not want to move on since some percent of deferred applicants do get accepted in RD.
For a statistical perspective on this, WalletHub ranked Vassar 47th by selectivity nationally and Boston University 48th.
People can take or leave this advice, but for Vassar in particular, I would bump that up for women, down for men, meaning I am personally convinced Vassar is a materially harder admit for women.
I think the common data set said there were 2 people who got in off the waitlist this year!