<p>Heard a presentation by DD's school's head GC yesterday on where kids were applying early. From our school, University of Chicago EAs and Northwestern EDs are way down from prior years. The reason? The new SCEAs at the so-called "top" Ivies and Stanford. Seems that (at least at our school) the local schools are second choices for a lot of kids.</p>
<p>Anyone else have similar tales to tell?</p>
<p>From what I know, Penn’s EDs are down 1%, not really significant considering their Eds went up 25% or so last year. Maybe some universities were affected, but overall I don’t think the SCEAs made a huge impact.</p>
<p>[The</a> Early Line on Early Applications for the Class of 2016 - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/early-admission-2011-2/]The”>The Early Line on Early Applications for the Class of 2016 - The New York Times)</p>
<p>UChicago early apps are actually up 25%</p>
<p>“the local schools are second choices for a lot of kids.”
sounds like many at your D’s school have caught a bad case of “the grass is always greener on the other side” syndrome this year
Come spring, I predict most will discover “there’s no place like home”</p>
<p>fyi, Stanford has been SCEA for at least 7+ years now.</p>
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<p>Okay, that makes sense, given UChicago’s scandalous application whoring. I’m going to guess that a lot of that increase is kids who have no real chance and wouldn’t consider applying to any of the SCEA schools. DD’s school has always had a lot of UChicago apps, so the barrage of junk mail has had little effect.</p>
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<p>Not just this year; we have a lot of parents (predominantly of one ethnic group, you can probably guess which one) for whom an Ivy admission is an endorsement of their entire reason for being.</p>
<p>Lookiing at the trend so far, the biggest drop has been for Yale at 900 (17%?) and 300 for MIT (4.7%). Since Chicago and MIT are both open EAs, it can only mean that MIT drops went to Harvard or Princeton. </p>
<p>Northwestern added 15% and Chicago added 25% which means your school went against the norm for those two schools.</p>
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<p>Hey, watch what you say about my beloved alma mater.</p>
<p>So I don’t get how it is that you live in a poor rural community and yet have a school nearby where all these kids are applying to top schools and have a GC that actually talks about that. Do you live in a poor enclave within a wealthy suburb?</p>
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<p>No, my daughter goes to a residential magnet school 45 miles away that admits students from all over the state, the largest proportion from suburban communities.</p>
<p>Although may not be a consideration in your 'hood, those SCEA schools have much better need-based financial aid than NU and particularly Chicago.</p>
<h1>6. What an uncalled for post.</h1>
<p>"(predominantly of one ethnic group, you can probably guess which one)" #6</p>
<p>I agree #11 and so did my husband. We wondered about which group he was referencing, but then had better things to do :).</p>
<p>Glad I’m not the only one who could NOT guess the group referenced.</p>
<p>^^ my guess was people like me (Asian). However, even if it is, am not offended; have a pretty thick skin and also because there’s probably some truth in the general theme of preferring selective schools, at least for the recent immigrants, maybe not much as the reason for existence etc. In our case (DW & I), we’re taken to task not so much for preferring elite schools, but the actual disciplines we like our kids to pursue.</p>
<p>PS- we actually have a daughter in NU, and have been quite underwhelmed, but that’s another story.</p>
<p>And Harvard has been SCEA for at least a couple of years now, after not having any sort of EA for only a few years. (My older son was asked by Harvard why he didn’t apply SCEA by his interviewer in 2007 - well because it wasn’t his first choice - duh! They didn’t hold it against him BTW.)</p>
<p>I hate SCEA and was really disappointed that Harvard chose to go back to it.</p>
<p>^^ Harvard went back to SCEA for the first time this year after a 7 yr hiatus</p>
<p>^Not 7 years, more like 3 or 4, they had SCEA in 2007, I know because that’s the year my son applied to Harvard.</p>
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<p>They had no other choice, really. If they had not gone back to EA, they would’ve continued to lose students to Yale, Stanford, MIT, and colleges offering big merit money. (The latter still occurs, but with an early acceptance to H, the merit college then has to compete for sweatshirt-wearing for 3+ months.</p>
<p>But more important than top students, was losing out on development cases. The scion of xx world leader or yy Fortune 100 would have all this time to become friendly with Y or S, starting in Dec…so when H comes calling in April, it has dropped to a distant second place.</p>
<p>One reason for the increase in Chicago’s EA numbers is that it is the most selective school without SCEA. Students very competitive for HYP SCEA may choose to apply to Chicago and a few other non-restricted EA schools maximizing the likelihood of a December acceptance.</p>
<p>Mathmom is correct on the Harvard SCEA dates BTW. The last SCEA notification date for them was December 2006 as the four classes 2012-2015 were all admitted by RD.</p>