18 – the app to USC was RD because USC only has RD. You’ll hear back from USC in February – which (under all these goofy rules) isn’t considered “early”, although it is sooner than 3/31. RD “priority” I guess is what it is called.
Miami’s “early action” date is late January, as compared to most EA dates which are in December. So Miami’s “early action” may not be deemed “early action” for purposes of all these rules. Stanford SCEA clearly allows the scholarship exception; HYP are not so clear.
Once you get past all the rolling/EA/REA/SCEA/ED mumbo jumbo, the key take-away is that the hunt for a safety school is greatly simplified by using whatever early options that are available to your kid’s situation. Since your reach/match school can turn into your safety school by 12/15.
If you don’t use your early options well, then you have to spend a lot more time/effort on overly conservative safeties just so you are assured of getting in somewhere once 3/31 rolls around.
Sometimes a safety college will have some form of secret EA. For example my older son got an invitation for a “Priority Application” at RPI. I imagine being a NMS and a New Yorker played into it. The deal was that they would let him know within three weeks of getting first quarter grades if he was accepted. There were also fewer essays. He knew by Thanksgiving that he was in and would be getting merit money, though the exact amount of money wasn’t divulged until the official acceptance came in March. That was nice for him since the two reachy EA schools he applied to deferred him to the regular round.
@mathmom: Smart strategy by RPI as that gives them a headstart on recruiting the kids they want. We may see more of that from schools at that level going forward (Case? Rochester? WPI?). In fact, regular college applications may start to become more like football recruiting (for better or worse).
“Sometimes a safety college will have some form of secret EA.”
Yes, schools at every level goose their rules in order to fit their market.
For example, USC does not have EA or ED. But it does have a separate scholarship “priority” timeline in RD that fits into an exception to Stanford’s SCEA policy. How lucky is that for USC?
@18yrcollegemin Unfortunately your kid’s GC got it wrong. If you apply SCEA to Yale you cannot apply EA to Miami (or BC) in order to meet a scholarship deadline. It is okay to apply RD and apply early to USC and Richmond, for example, but what you did with Miami EA was a violation of Yale’s SCEA rules.
The college counselors at my daughter’s school are in constant contact with the admissions officers at the Ivies. They stated this policy over and over at info sessions and individual meetings. My daughter even had them get specific confirmation that it was OK to apply to Yale SCEA and to Miami EA. Not a violation. SCEA makes exceptions for publics, international and scholarship deadlines.
A lot of schools aren’t making admissions decisions based on stats – and also are worried about yield protection. Plenty of sad stories on CC come April of students getting waitlist notices from what they thought was a safety. (And my 27 ACT daughter was admitted to reach schools over many much higher stat kids who were rejected. I know why, but a person who is simply looking at stats wouldn’t have a clue.)
There could be other factors that make a school with a 40-50% admission rate a safety for some students, but it isn’t generally going to be stats alone.
“SCEA makes exceptions for publics, international and scholarship deadlines.”
Let’s be careful making blanket statements.
HYPS all say publics and foreigns are OK under SCEA. But only Stanford says something like this on their website:
“The student may apply to any college/university with early deadlines for scholarships or special academic programs as long as the decision is non-binding.”
Apparently the Stanford policy is the result of a years long spat with USC. Stanford used to take the position that the USC December 1 RD “scholarship” deadline was a violation of Stanford SCEA. After several iterations where each school was trying to game its rule in order to mess with the other school, eventually Stanford relented and loosened up its policy.
I’d note that the Stamps scholarship is available through a whole bunch of private schools. My kid just applied to Tulane EA which, like Miami, requires an early application to be considered for Stamps. Seems like that one schollie program alone would be a pretty big loophole in the HYP SCEA rules.
Maybe that’s exactly why Miami, Tulane (and others?) requires an early application to be considered?
According to these criteria my kid’s only safety school would have been going part time to the local CC.
I’d rather he take a gap year and reapply.
I think it is possible to be too conservative in this matter. Ultimately what really shapes the bottom line is affordability. For someone who needs really substantial FA, the true “meets needs” schools may be the only affordable options, safety or not. (I would include in this schools with full ride automatic merit. Not full tuition merit. Tuition AND room and board.) Of course, the kid must have the stats and profile to get in.
There are of course schools where a very few kids get some kind of special scholar designation that comes with a full ride plus other perks, but they are even less safe.
The addition of the NPC to all college websites is a huge boon to parents.
@londondad by the way, what are the consequences of violating the SCEA rules (of either Yale or Stanford). I’m by no means advocating it, but just curious what happens if my kid applies SCEA to Yale, then applies to Miami EA (in violation of Yale’s rule), get accepted to Miami and decides to go there (perhaps for financial reasons). Does it matter to Yale? Or say he gets accepted to both Yale and Miami, and chooses Yale. Does Yale refuse admittance because he also applied to Miami? How would they even know? Is this basically an “honor system” or are there real consequences involved?
All I know for sure is that my D’s school is a private school with a large college counseling department with tons of access to the selective schools. They bring in panels of AOs several times a year and have very open relationships. College counseling is probably the most important aspect of the school.
They have maintained since the beginning of my D’s application process (mid-junior year) that schools with a deadline for scholarships requiring EA applications were exceptions to SCEA restrictions. That was not limited to Stanford. My D got specific confirmation that applying EA to Miami was permitted with SCEA to Yale. If there was a mistake here, I guarantee that many of her classmates made the same error as Miami is just down the road and her school has at least 10 or so students out of a class of under 200 already accepted SCEA at HYPS. That doesn’t include any deferrals or rejections. They are really strict at adhering to admission rules and don’t let the students violate them. The relationships with the universities are too important. They are very careful about only letting students apply ED when they are sure the parents are onboard and know it’s binding. I seriously doubt they would reiterate the SCEA exceptions over and over without being aware of them.
During one of the presentations to parents, they even presented slides showing the differences between ED, EA, SCEA and RD. The scholarship exception was prominently highlighted. They say the purpose of the SCEA is to prevent the student from applying early to each of the HYPS schools, not to prevent them from the possibility of receiving a scholarship. But, I guess anything is possible.
HYP SCEA means you can’t apply EA to any private school. But if there’s a schollie exception at HYP (like there is at Stanford) then you can also apply:
EA to Miami (Stamps).
And Tulane (PTA, DHS, Stamps).
And BC (Gabelli).
And USC RD (which is kind of early for scholarships).
There are 4 year colleges which take all comers, or close to that. So the getting in part shouldn’t be a problem.
The money part is another issue, depending on where you live – that’s why many students DO start at the local CC - it is what they can afford.
But the OP said her daughter attends a rigorous private school (implying that the family has some funds available to put toward education) - so don’t think she needs her daughter to get a full ride scholarship in order for a school to be affordable.
@norwesty and @18yrcollegemin I spent a lot of time over the past 2 years looking into this issue and you are wrong.
I researched this issue thoroughly when my son applied last year. I was told by both his high school careers department and his private college counsellor that a SCEA app to Yale means that you CANNOT apply EA to BC (despite the scholarship requirement). My son applied RD to BC and was waitlisted.
Again this year I explored the issue with my daughter’s careers dept (my kids go to different high schools) to see whether there was a loophole on this and there is not. Her school has a US careers counsellor on retainer. I also checked with my daughter’s private college counselor (who is based in the US). All of them said that she could not apply SCEA to HYP and EA to BC. Because this is somewhat of a grey area (in principal but not on the school’s websites!), the US counsellor ran the issue (Yale SCEA + BC EA) past her network (and spoke directly with a Yale adcom) and they all agreed with her that Yale SCEA + BC EA is not allowed by Yale.
This is from the Yale website:
QUOTE
Applying to Other Colleges and Universities
If you are a Single-Choice Early Action applicant to Yale, you may apply to another institution’s early admission program as follows:
You may apply to any college’s non-binding rolling admission program.
You may apply to any public institution at any time provided that admission is non-binding.
You may apply to another college’s Early Decision II program, but only if the notification of admission occurs after January 1. If you are admitted through another college’s Early Decision II binding program, you must withdraw your application from Yale.
You may apply to another college’s Early Action II program.
You may apply to any institution outside of the United States at any time.
UNQUOTE
There are no grey area in the above. Yale does not allow an EA application to BC despite the scholarship deadline. These are the only exceptions allowed and these exemptions do not cover the specifics of the BC and UM programmes. Other schools that have early RD scholarship deadlines (USC. Richmond, Duke/UNC Robertson) do not conflict with the Yale SCEA deadlines.
Therefore, what @18yrcollegemin dd did was wrong and she was poorly advised by her GC. You may want to revisit this with dd’s GCs. I will leave it to you and your conscience on whether or not you want to change dd’s UM application to RD. However, this point is probably moot as it is highly unlikely that anyone would pick UM over Yale.
@insanedreamer You are right. It basically is an honor system and the Unis are unlikely to find out if someone violates their ED or SCEA rules.
Well, one way the universities find out if someone violated their SCEA rules is when people brag about it on College Confidential. (Which, but the way, happens with some regularity.) Don’t you think that @18yrcollegemin has provided more than enough information to identify her children’s school to any Ivy admissions officer?
The enforcement of the SCEA rules is really primarily through the high schools’ college counselors. They know that they will lose credibility with universities if their students are found to have cheated, and that future applicants from the school may suffer. They know what applications students are submitting. So they enforce the rules.
I agree completely with @londondad 's reading of the Yale rules. That’s what I understood them to be, too. And I have never thought that HYPS had identical SCEA restrictions. (Also, there are periodic changes at all of them in how they word the restrictions.) Nevertheless, I also believe @18yrcollegemin 's claim that her school’s GCs cleared their interpretation with Yale and others – it was absolutely in their interest to do that. The fact of the matter is that parents and students on CC spend a lot more time parsing the language of SCEA policies and gaming out their possible interpretations than any of the people responsible for putting those policies on a website. From the standpoint of Yale or Harvard, the real question is, “Are we going to lose anyone we care about because Miami or Tulane accepted that person EA?” And the answer is pretty clearly, “No. Who cares?”
No, adcoms are not combing CC for information about individual applicants. But I believe they pay attention when there is a discussion of how to play games with things like SCEA and ED requirements. Not that they necessarily hunt out specific applicants – although when there is a discussion here, the appropriate adcom may not need to do a lot of hunting to know who is involved – but they often do something about the problem prospectively.
Although this is an anonymous board, plenty of people reveal enough details about themselves to make them easy to find. I know that people have found me, which is a little discomfiting. But sometimes, it’s not even a question of finding, or looking. For example, a few years ago a new poster appeared in the Parents Forum asking what I’m sure she thought was a fairly generic, esoteric question about a student changing her mind after turning down one college and accepting another. The few details she provided told me instantly that I knew her and her child – and what’s more, there were probably scores of other people, some of whom were doubtless on CC, who knew them well enough to have the same reaction if they saw that post. And to the admissions officers at either college who had primary responsibility for the file, the post would have been completely transparent. The parent completely miscalculated how not-quite-generic her child’s situation was.
@JHS I think that is exactly the truth. HYPS do not care if they lose a student or two to a scholarship from UMiami or any other lower tier school. That is not their true competition. The greater injustice is prohibiting any student from applying for a scholarship when the vast majority of applicants are not accepted, even with “increased odds” from SCEA. Many higher profile schools, such as Vanderbilt, WashU, etc. have specific scholarship application deadlines after the decisions from SCEA are announced and HYP does not prevent their admitted students from applying there. In addition, other schools have scholarship deadlines prior to the SCEA announcement date, such as the Robertson at Duke, which requires scholarship materials to be submitted early but the student can still apply RD. HYP are not concerned with losing an occasional student to a scholarship offer, otherwise they would not allow these scenarios. They did switch from ED which does prohibit applying to other schools after being accepted. It makes no sense that they would purposely prohibit their applicants from applying for scholarships from these particular lower tier schools just because the deadlines require filing EA.
I have no reason to believe that the information given by the college counseling department was incorrect. I’ve been through this process with my older children. When the last one went through, this exception was not announced. He did not apply to any SCEA schools specifically because he wanted to apply to USC and figured he had a better chance there and knew a scholarship was guaranteed there if he were accepted. This time, the exception was announced, and questioned, and reiterated, and confirmed. While parents on CC may spend more time parsing information provided on schools’ websites, the counselors spend much more time in personal contact with the admissions offices. It is impossible and illogical to question and contradict every piece of information they provide.
The SCEA option was a good one for us because it still allows exploring other financial possibilities while being able to receive the boost from “ED” that is normally afforded to very high income or very low income students pretty much assured of getting adequate financial aid.
I understand @londondad that you feel very strongly that something was done wrong here, but I do not. You are also overseas checking with a US counselor “on retainer,” a private counselor and websites. I have quoted sections of webpages on CC and seen others quote webpages, only to have someone else come back and say, “Well, the webpage may say that, but actually it’s really done like…”. All the college counselors at my D’s school are US counselors which have long-standing relationships with selective US schools, not just one person on retainer. They have direct access to the Admissions Directors with no need to run things through a network of other counselors for a word of mouth interpretation. They simply ask the source directly. They do not advocate breaking or even bending the rules. These relationships are just too important. I trust them to provide accurate information. Nothing was done wrong here. Could they have made a mistake? Anything is possible, but I doubt it. Absolutely everything has been checked and double checked. I’m sorry that your son did not apply for the BC scholarship, but I believe you received bad advice.
18YR – interesting discussion. Could be that this wrinkle is down at the level of anectdote and oral history, so what one GC says/believes/has experience with may be different from another. Unless someone heard it directly from the horse’s mouth at HYP, we can’t know for sure. And even then, you might get different answers from different adcoms at HYP.
Conflicts between SCEA and EA rules are probably not monitored systematically. The Common App and the rest of the system are hard wired to prevent kids from applying ED at more than one school. But the EA distinctions seem to be more on the honor system. For example, I’ve bumped into a situation where someone applied ED to an Ivy and then also applied REA to ND. While that’s a clear violation of ND’s REA policy, it likely goes undetected. In that case, the person thought they were good because they asked the Ivy school if it was OK and got a yes answer; but never asked the question from the ND side.
Last, it seems to me like the SC restriction of SCEA is bogus. The numerous subtle exceptions to the SCEA policies show how dumb they are (state schools, foreign schools, rolling schools, private schools with early schollie deadlines, service academies, applications not submitted during R months…). As does the gaming war between USC and Stanford over whether USC’s “RD priority scholarship” timetable is/is not the functional equivalent of early action (answer: it is). If the point is to limit kids to EA to just one of HYPS, the policy should just say that. Why restrict kids from applying non-binding EA to Gtown, ND, BC, Miami, Tulane, USC, etc.? Or allow them to send in their applications in October so long as they check the RD box rather than EA?
The scholarship exception is dumb too. Miami and Tulane probably award just a handful of Stamps schollies a year. Miami requires no separate application for a Stamps – every kid who applies early to Miami is automatically considered. So it’s just a loophole that allows the cognoscenti (like 18YR’s kid) to apply EA to a bunch of private schools that other kids think are off limits. This stuff shouldn’t resemble the IRS tax code!