Re: #99
Probably less workable at “normal” high schools where most students need financial aid and need to wait until they see financial aid and scholarship offers before deciding, and most students are not applying to super-selective schools. Also, some students may apply to schools that are safety or match for them with EA or rolling with the view of getting a safety early if they get admitted early.
@lifebreath thank you for your post. You capture the essence of what is going on perfectly.
I am sorry for the tough time your son faced. And to be sure, I think this is what happens - often by luck of the draw, someone has to get bounced out of a lot of colleges that they could have gotten into. If we have a bunch of people flip a coin 5 times (analogous to getting admitted to “match” schools), then on average every 32nd student or so missed on all 5 coin flips.
I think you are right the liberal arts colleges and other colleges will also become better known and recognized for their ability to prepare the students. And I hate to say it, but I think that the “signaling” advantage that a most prestigious degree used to convey may fade as colleges become increasingly quixotic in their student selection.
@DeepBlue86 that is an interesting thought. Thank you for mentioning. My own preference is more economics-based incentives to reduce over-applying, but perhaps something harsher may be what’s needed, if the financial aid questions can be worked out.
Any solution someone proposes will have issues, but it is probably valuable not to be too picky in the brainstorming stage.
@ucbalumnus there is (and should be) an explicit “get out of jail free card” if a student gets into a school early and isn’t offered adequate financial aid by the deadline to submit regular applications elsewhere. There also is (and should be) an exception for schools with rolling admissions - you can apply early to any number of those in addition to your binding early application. I think this is fair and preserves a lot of options for applicants.
I don’t have a lot of sympathy, though, for a student who wants to lock down a safety early and then collect acceptances from a lot of other schools. Applying early provides a clear statistical advantage - why waste that on a school you’re likely to get into anyway (particularly since you can also apply somewhere with rolling admissions that’s in your safety zone, if you really, really need to know as early as possible that, yes, you’re going to be able to go to college)?
At high schools where the policy I’ve described is in force, students generally apply early to a first-choice reach school, hope that doing so puts them over the top and, if it does, are thankful and enjoy the rest of their senior year, having concluded their application process (again, subject to financial aid being adequate). If they aren’t comfortable making a first-choice decision at the early application stage, well, they don’t apply early. If they’ve assessed their chances accurately and applied to the right mix of schools, they might collect a lot of trophies even without using that one early bullet. Most of them conclude, though, that they’re going to have to make a first-choice decision in three months anyway, so they might as well maximize their chances at one of their reach schools by applying early.
@lifebreath - Interesting post. The one thing about your NU example that struck me is the higher yield rate in 2015. This means the increased number of applications works for Northwestern. Not because of rankings or prestige but because they are somehow identifying the students who are more likely to attend if accepted from this larger pool.
I so disagree with “you can only apply RD if you got rejected EA or never applied EA”. That’s totally absurd. Getting a safety acceptance early on the process ensures the child can take chances in RD and just apply to reaches our high reaches. But, I have a feeling that prep schools are far different than public high schools, even the competitive elite public high schools.
I see this craziness, the hyper focus on the elites, and hope the top students never shift their attention downward (sorry) because then it would become harder for the B/B+ students. Right now the college application process is pretty low key and far less stressful for the less than stellar student. I want to keep it that way. For these students, the view is “which schools will take me as I am?” rather than looking for admissions into a specific list of schools (top 10 schools, Ivies, top LAC’s, etc).
It really is a matter of too many applications from each applicant. I don’t have a solution because from the case above, more applications may help the school pick a class and increase the yield rate.
@SlackerMomMD I would attribute the increased yield to the larger percentage of the class filled via ED, 1012 in 2015 vs. 524 in 2005, or roughly double at approximately 50% vs. 25% of the enrolling class. Since ED is close to 100% yield, without running the numbers exactly, it would have the effect of increasing overall yield, e.g., if the university attempted to fill 100% of its class via ED, it would have nearly a 100% yield and would need to only give a few admittances in RD. Total yield in this extreme example would be just shy of 100%.
@SlackerMomMD : everyone thinks the system I described is high-handed and outrageous (and, yes, “totally absurd”) when they first hear about it - I did too. They hate the prep school forcing them to decide if they prefer Harvard to Stanford, or Yale to Princeton, when the colleges themselves aren’t making an applicant commit if they receive an early offer. I believe, though, that the hassle of having to apply to a safety or two if an applicant gets deferred or denied early, or doesn’t apply early at all, is far outweighed by the benefit to their classmates of them being unable to trophy-hunt if they get into one of their reaches early. Whether the elite colleges admit it or not, they’re only going to take so many kids from one school.
If an applicant has done their homework and knows which schools are truly safeties for them, they’re highly likely to get into at least one if they apply to two or three in the RD round. I don’t think that’s a huge burden, particularly if they’ve already de-risked the process by being admitted to their state school or somewhere else with rolling admissions. Also, I’ve seen how happy these kids get when they’re admitted early to one of their reaches and there’s no pressure from parents or peers to change their mind or see where else they can get in.
I stand by my view that when everyone abides by this policy, collective happiness is increased. I think, though, that it would be best implemented by the colleges themselves abolishing early action. I agree, as well, that it’s most relevant to the elite colleges, and that the prep school environment probably differs in important ways from public high schools.
^^ @lifebreath ,Ah - did not see that part. Yes, then much of the increased yield would be attributable to ED; not all but most.
@DeepBlue86, what may work for prep school students (who are not scholarship students) will be very different than for public high school students. While I agree with you that schools and parents can do a much better job of forcing the child to decide their true preferences (rather than ego), I just don’t agree on the method. I just don’t see why a child, prep school or public school, should have to limit themselves to Harvard if they happened to get accepted early (okay, that sounded a bit weird but you get the point).
From what I can tell (not much) many private schools already limit the number of applications their students can send out. If there is a limit on the number of applications the school allows, then the counselor and parents can work with the student to make the hard choices of which schools to apply. One has to consider the role of the parent in the college application process. Many parents want their child to apply to these schools and may drive up the anxiety level by focusing only on top schools rather than a range. (of course, my previous post said I didn’t really want top kids to look further down…)
@SlackerMomMD : I guess I think that once the student accepts an offer of admission from Harvard and thereby commits to attend, they’ve concluded that it’s their first choice and have “limited themselves to Harvard”. I’m just suggesting they go through the ranking process earlier, when they apply. Are they really expecting to get any new information between late fall / early winter and early spring of their senior year that could influence their decision process? If not (leaving financial aid issues aside), I don’t see a clear reason why they can’t decide a little earlier which school is #1 for them, if it’s in the collective interest and everyone has to do it. It’s human nature to want to preserve options for as long as possible, but this creates a negative externality, as the economists say.
Anecdotally, I agree that the prep schools generally limit the number of applicants students may submit, but I don’t think that those limits - generally 10 - 15, from what I can see - help much (I don’t think many students are going to submit more than 15 applications anyway). That said, the prep school guidance counselors tend to be highly engaged in the process and ensure that the students apply to a good number of targets and safeties, because it’s a disaster for them (I think more so than for many public school college counselors) if a kid gets in nowhere. I’ve heard a lot of stories about the parents and kids being shocked in the first meeting when the counselor shows them the Naviance data and tells them that they need to apply to a number of schools that they would otherwise never have considered.
In a generalized sense, I think having the students that are headed to HYPSMC etc locking down their choice early really really helps. Because they can and often do get into so many other schools, which exacerbates the problem we are discussing and trickles down to less competitive colleges. The exact best mechanism to promote this is an open question, of course.
One thing I noticed that does NOT help students give up their spots is that when they decline a school, it looks like they also are supposed to say where they are going. That encourages kids to hold onto the spot longer than they really need… Most kids with multiple acceptances probably figure things out in waves (semifinalists, etc). Of course, we would need more rolling acceptance admission policies to take advantage of kids giving up their spots earlier.
@DeepBlue86 @SlackerMomMD one thing that strikes me interesting about the private school limitation being discussed is that the target schools themselves probably also know about the policy, which might very well increase the admission rate for these students. (Either from the standpoint of increasing yield, or knowing that the students have thought very very careful which school is their top choice.)
That’s exactly right, @inn0v8r - it’s really helpful for the guidance counselors to be able to say to a college that the kid is committing to go if they take him/her early, because then the college takes little or no yield risk even though the offer isn’t officially binding.
Although when you turn down an acceptance, you’re generally asked where you’re going, you don’t have to answer. Similarly, you can always state where you expect to be going based on what you have in hand - if that changes later, it makes no practical difference to you.
For many students needing financial aid, they need to compare offers, since they could make “barely affordable” work but would strongly prefer “easily affordable”, so that any sort of binding ED, or high school policy that forces them to treat EA as binding ED, would prevent them from applying early.
There are also non-super-selective schools which offer EA that is not rolling.
Would you object if a student used a school like UMass - Amherst as a probable safety and applied EA there, while also applying to other schools higher on his/her desirability list even if s/he got admitted to UMass - Amherst during the EA round? Would you force such a student to treat UMass - Amherst as ED in this case?
^^^
That’s a fair point, no practical difference in saying where you are going on those things. So really a minor issue. I do think most kids are probably going to wait until the very last day though…
Given the seriousness of the problem as I see it, I am really grasping for anything to reverse the cycle.
Responding to the points of @ucbalumnus in order:
Among the less selective schools (and even some highly selective schools like Duke), there is potential for merit scholarships not listed in the net price calculator to be what could bring the net price down to below what a student’s EA school(s) may offer.
Also, EA schools may not necessarily produce the actual financial aid offers as early as the admission notices, so that any “EA = ED” policy that you advocate cannot invoke the restriction until after the financial aid offer is produced.
Why make the distinction between public and private schools for this purpose? If your concern is “trophy hunting” among the most selective schools, then why not limit your “EA = ED” policy only to a designated list of the most selective schools, while allowing students to apply EA with no obligation to other less selective schools, regardless of whether they are public or private?
Remember also, what may work in the prep school bubble may not be suitable for high schools in general.
@ucbalumnus : on the first point, if your scenario is that someone got in somewhere early (and has been offered a package) but thinks that they might get in somewhere else later that would offer them more because it might include merit money, I think they and their guidance counselor would have to agree that the amount of merit money they were likely to get from that school was enough to make it competitive before they could apply there. I don’t know how easy it would be to make that assessment, but it seems possible. I agree that if the EA financial aid offer isn’t available before the deadline for applying RD, you’d have to use a net price calculator to assess what it was likely to be (adjusted for any likely merit money).
On the second point, I do think the big problem is trophy hunting among the most selective schools, so your suggestion of a “Premier League” where EA = ED is appealing. I’m not sure what the cut-off for inclusion should be, though (I’d probably choose the 15 - 20 schools with the lowest ratios of acceptances to applications that don’t already have ED programs, or something like that), or how frequently the list would get recalibrated (every year?).
I’m putting out the bat signal to @baltimoreguy , who, if he isn’t ready for a break from CC by now, will undoubtedly have some interesting perspectives for this thread.