If we are completely redesigning at the college admission system here, what about this idea?
Two admissions seasons, fall and spring. For all schools, fall season applications due by October 1, accept or reject every applicant and inform of financial aid package by December 1. Commit by January 1, or turn it down.
Then, the same thing for a spring season. Apply by February 1, hear by April 1, commit by May 1.
If you didn’t like your outcomes in the fall season, don’t commit anywhere and try your chances with the spring season. You could even still do “early decision“ although you might call it something different because the timing would be the same for everybody. But you could do a commitment where you only apply to one school in a season, to give them your blood oath that you are fully committed. Although, I really hate ED (as perhaps you can tell) so I’d be happy to see it go away.
Schools could choose whether they wanted to set aside a certain percentage of the class for fall and spring season’s admissions, or if they wanted to just fill until they had the people they wanted. A dedicated spring season might make people who are a little slower to mature or decide what they want for the future feel less like the ship has sailed without them.
High school counselors and teachers can’t meet this deadline. It’s very difficult for them to meet Oct 15 deadlines, and that’s for typically a relatively small proportion of students.
This timing could also hurt students who need to get good grades first semester senior year, especially if schools fill up the majority of the class in the ‘early’ round (which they would do).
Separately, as someone noted upthread, this hyper stressed, prestige focus only applies to a certain proportion of students and relatively few schools.
Most colleges still accept most applicants…it seems people forget that. And that group of schools includes many very good schools.
Sadly a “rolling admissions” school does not necessarily mean you will hear back asap. Nursing applicants can apply in September but oftentimes they wait even thought ROLLING until December. Nursing has become its own little admission pocket where literally NO rules apply!
This cannot be repeated enough. If this problem actually exists, it exists for less than 1% of students and less than 1% of all universities. Meaning, it’s not really a problem that deserves harming the other 99% of applicants to address.
The early season would be mostly well resourced students at well resourced schools where counselors and teachers can write recommendations and send transcripts by 10/1.
A college with limited FA/scholarship budget may choose to admit most of the class in the early season in order to reduce the class’ overall FA need, while still being able to claim need-blindness.
I was just daydreaming. Schools absolutely would be resistant to change.
That said, I think the idea could apply to more students than you think. Our HS sends a lot of kids to Penn State. For some it’s their first choice by far. They would ED in a heartbeat. Notified early and no wasted apps for other schools.
If denied they apply RD to their list. PSU doesn’t require letters of rec. Apps could be in shortly after August 1. A lot of them would’ve already been notified either way by Pitt.
In general it’s highly selective colleges for which a large portion of students see test scores as a barrier that have the large increases in applicants upon going test optional, not as much colleges that admitted ~half of applicants prior to COVID, like Clemson.
However, Clemson is an exception to this generalization. It’s 64% increase in applications in 2021, was far larger than any Ivy, Stanford, Duke, etc. The increase in applications was more than double the increase that occurred at many more selective colleges for which scores are more likely to be seen as a barrier, and many times larger increase in application than a good portion of peers. This makes me expect that there are additional key factors beyond just going test optional that led to the large increase in applications. A key additional factor is likely joining the common application in the year that the number of applications shot up. Regardless of the causes, if there are a large increase in number of high quality applicants, it usually makes admission more competitive. This likely happened at Clemson.
There is a huge variation in how different college use EA, so it’s best to review the specific colleges that interest you, rather than make assumptions. For example, in one year previous year, Princeton only rejected 1% of applicants in the early round – less than 50 kids in total. I see little point to deferring nearly everyone in the EA round, but some colleges seem to like this. It may be seen as polite rejection, meaning you are at least somewhat remotely qualified. In contrast other similar selective colleges like Stanford, seem to only defer kids who are truly on the borderline and have a decent shot of being accepted in the RD round.
Similarly different colleges accept a different portion of the class in the EA round. For example, MIT’s most recent admission stats show a 5.8% admit rate for EA (including deferred) vs 2.4% for RD (not including deferred). While the EA and RD classes have different rate of hooks and rates of quality applicants, there is nothing to suggest applying EA puts the applicant at a disadvantage.
If a college offers both EA and ED, then applying EA can send a negative signal that the college is not a student’s top choice, which could be seen as worse than RD. However, even then there is a lot of variation between different colleges, making it difficult to generalize.
You are most likely right about all of this but you’re missing a huge factor about Clemson – applications go up 30-40% the years they go to the National Championship.
Mass deferrals are a major issue this year. We have seen kids with 3.1/3.2 and no academic rigor deferred at Clemson yesterday. It is a false sense of possibility for these kids. When does mental health come into play. Does that make sense?
Schools can’t take everyone. Applications increase and acceptances decrease usually. I still think it’s an advantage to apply EA for most schools /students. Some schools half of their freshman class are picked at EA. If lucky enough then you have a longer time to think about if the school is a good fit or not.
Michigan rejects applicants in EA. A couple years ago, I was told by an admissions insider that roughly 10-20% are rejected in EA. But few, if any, actually post their rejections here on CC.
True, but you’re taking that too literally. They’ve been ACC divisional champs for years, semifinals in 2020. Applications have risen in this Dabo era with Top 10 rankings and lots of national visibility.
I was curious and just perused the Clemson 2027 thread here on CC.
I found one person accepted with a GPA of 3.3 for Clemson’s “Summer Start” program. The poster’s name was “Addison44.” I didn’t see any applicants posting GPA’s lower than that GPA. Although, it’s entirely possible that I could have missed someone or maybe you were talking about posts elsewhere on the Internet?
Also, one thing I should mention is that, at least with Michigan, I know zippo about Clemson, they will accept or defer “disadvantaged” applicants with lower GPA’s, for example, some students who are called “Yoopers,” applicants from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
So without knowing the backgrounds of applicants, tough to judge those lower GPA’s from an online forum.
All I can do is take what someone says literally online.
Having said that, applications have risen for many universities, not just Clemson’s, with successful sports programs, say like a Villanova.
Michigan went to the CFP semifinals last year and Michigan had their highest # of applications ever, at 84,000. But who really knows if it’s because Michigan has been successful in sports or applications are just rising because more students are applying to more colleges, especially with TO policies.
OP worried their kid would be deferred but this is not rejected.
Many get in EA.
If they didn’t have EA and they applied RD, it just means their decision would come after one review instead of two.
And EA apps might help schools in that - if kids ED elsewhere and get in, they can remove them from the pool.
I don’t think anyone is “penalized” by going EA - other than the natural penalty of not being ED.
I think the stress or strain can be a factor because of the wait - but I don’t think someone has their chances hurt by going EA (instead of RD, etc.).
Also - overall college enrollment is declining and rapidly, not growing.
And if you think about it, why would a school try to cut apps.
They want to be seen as desired and - if you truly believe in your product, you don’t believe there is anyone that you can’t “win over” - so you’d want to take as many cracks at the apple as you can.
They also played in the CFP Championship in Jan 2020 , but lost to LSU. The application increases are summarized below and only show a loose correlation with football championship games. I think joining common app is the bigger factor in the fall 2021 increase.
Most of the people thinking that college admissions is unfair/stressful must have never been to kids competitive club sports tryouts. They have teams scheduling tryouts at the same time so that you can’t attend both, immediate response required with payment in full due at offer time and unknown number of spots already taken before tryouts. The college admissions process is way more consumer friendly.