I guess if I were the parent in question, I would be a bit nervous about my child’s extremely upper reach-heavy list if their gpa (UGA-translated, or otherwise) wasn’t enough to get in during the (UGA) EA round - and like you, would start to question the hired admissions counselor’s guidance on targets (although there were genuine targets on the list, UGA shouldn’t have been considered one).
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For 99.5% of all public universities, the topic doesn’t matter. Almost all public universitities accept more than 4/5s of all applicants.
The only public universities that this might pertain to are those ranked in the top 100 of USNWR because those are the only ones attracting a lot of OOS applicants.
For instance, while UNC is almost impossible for OOS applicants, UNC Charlotte (a very good university) is a relatively easy in for high stats kids. But because UNC-Charlotte ranks far behind even NCSU, it’s nowhere close to the state limit of OOS students, which means it’s an easier admit.
So, using NC is a metric, out of 16 public universities only 1 is a very difficult admit for OOS high-stats applicants, and 1 other is a somewhat difficult admit for OOS high-stats applicants. I’m sure those stats hold for most states, except states where no public university is a difficult admit for OOS high-stats students.
I may sound like a broken record, but EA/RD is not a problem for the overwhelming majority of universities, the overwhelming majority of all applicants, or even the vast majority of high-stats applicants. It simply is not.
EDIT: looks like while trying to respond to a different post, I ended up editing this one and can’t get it back.
Uhhhh … oops?
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The same thing happens in California, where the recalculation of HS GPA for UC and CSU results in a different (usually lower) number than what high schools show.
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UC Berkeley can ask for LOR’s from about 15% of applicants. They are not required to be submitted but every applicant that applies to UCB should be prepared in advance to submit. Also specialized programs such as Architecture, Nursing, Theater/Arts may have supplemental documents including LOR’s or portfolios to be submitted as part of the UC/CSU application process.
This may not be true, however, for certain majors at these public universities. For applicants interested in these majors, the same universities can be highly selective, especially for OOS applicants.
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Still, the load on the high school is much less if a small percentage of UCB (not other UCs or CSUs) applicants are asked for optional recommendations later than if every applicant to UMD requires a counselor recommendation, teacher recommendation, and transcript done by November 1 (which is the effective deadline since those who wait until RD to apply are very unlikely to get admitted because they fill almost all of the seats in EA).
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I think each counselor at our HS has 400 students, so about a 100 juniors, I think about 95% go on to higher education. All juniors get a 20 minute meeting with the counselor regarding college applications. I can’t imagine getting it all done by November (school year starts after Labor Day in September).
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Agree with you. We have a similar dynamic in WA state with University of WA being closer to UNC (maybe slightly easier admit but not a given for high stat students).
WA St and Western Washington are safeties for higher stat students along with the other public universities such as Central and Eastern Washington (which don’t really attract out of state students).
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Just an FYI, but Michigan states that RD applicants are given equal consideration with deferred EA applicants.
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100% true. However, the vast majority of parents taking an active interest in admissions here and on other similar sites have more than likely high stat kids that are gunning for those 0.5% schools and many are also applying for impacted majors.
From what I am gathering here in NC, even at a school like UNCC, getting in through EA for CS, cybersecurity, ME is not that easy for many students with moderately good stats. Why? Because the same kids that are applying to NCSU are applying to UNCC as well as a safety. A knockdown effect. I do not think that is fair. Hence my argument for a hard early deadline for EA so that kids can free up seats versus wait for May 1.
I’d like to see this info as well. My son was deferred too.
Please remember – EA simply means you get your RD decision early. That’s it! If you get in EA, it’s just like RD, just earlier.
If you are deferred to RD, it simply means that they need to see you in the context of the RD pool. The only disadvantage is not having gotten the earlier decision you had hoped for. But you aren’t out of the game.
Being high stats is not a disadvantage in the EA round or RD round.
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I don’t disagree that it may be somewhat more difficult to be admitted into a rare few majors at UNC-Charlotte (though afaik the school has never said anything about impacted majors) but we are now talking about a very small % of students. And at such a small percentage, it makes even less sense to make sweeping changes to the admissions process that would affect all students, just to alleviate some possible stress of a small % who don’t understand the process.
The numbers from a couple of years ago:
UNC-Charlotte has approximately 24,200 underclassmen.
Approximately 540 graduated with a CompEng degree.
It’s not an exact calculation (because I’m too lazy to parse out the exact figures, and because I’m quartering the enrollment to guesstimate Freshman enrollment) but if there are 540 CE majors out of 6,050 freshmen, that works out to 9%.
More than I would have guessed, but not nearly enough to justify changing the entire application process. Especially considering that major is available at several other NC campuses that are even less difficult to get into.
I’m somewhat sympathetic to the discomfort some families may feel about the process, but I really don’t think it’s all that much discomfort. Maybe I’m just being harsh?
IMO it has very little to do with high-stats versus low-stats that creates the stress. It’s realistic expectations versus unrealistic expectations. It’s recognizing how the process works and preparing for the best case scenario while fully understanding the most likely scenario.
All students (from 2.5GPA to 4.9GPA) can end up overestimating their chances during application season. Fortunately, all the families that find CC should have their eyes opened up to their errant assumptions and the decision results should not be a hugely depressive event.
Best of luck to your student.
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“It’s realistic expectations versus unrealistic expectations. It’s recognizing how the process works and preparing for the best case scenario while fully understanding the most likely scenario.”
It’s 100% this - @econpop is right -, but to be fair to everyone who’s stressing - because I was one of them when I first came here years ago - the landscape is evolving very quickly. You think you know how it works, but you learn that the common app increased the # of schools most kids applied to, many schools became TO , schools became more serious about diversity of all sorts, and the soaring cost has pushed a lot of high-achieving kids to schools who are willing to subsidize them with merit and/or FA. And while data is available, it often doesn’t clearly break down along in-state/OOS, majors, athletic recruits, etc.
At the same time, students have access to info and resources to prep for standardized tests, so high scores are no longer an exception, snd 4.0 averages and above are pretty much as common as cake at a birthday party.
So it’s easy to see how families have no idea that their high stats kid who is a wonderful person and hard-working isn’t exceptional while also not realizing that all the shifts have really changed the landscape so that the college down the highway you thought of as a safety has a single digit acceptance rate. It is hard when you are feeling blind-sided to not feel like you’re being played. Which you aren’t - you are just playing the wrong game!
Just wanted to say this because the OP DID come back, quite graciously, after asking yhe question to say “I see!”
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But at the end of the day… each kid can only attend one college. And the contraction in seats that’s going on (mostly at small colleges with tiny endowments) hasn’t really impacted the availability of a college education- small college closes or gets absorbed by a bigger one- it’s a rounding error.
So while I agree with your points, it only reflects a part of the story. The bigger piece in my mind is the enormous concentration of desirable majors (basically nursing, CS, engineering) without an expansion of capacity on the part of universities. The universities are capacity constrained- nursing is an expensive type of education with an entire generation of nursing professors retiring and not being replaced because nurses can make more money nursing than teaching (which was not the dynamic a generation ago). Kids who might have gone on to a PhD in CS were getting such enormous job offers right out of undergrad- who wants to invest 7+ years for a doctorate? And engineering has always had this ying/yang with industry…
But your kid wants to study anthropology? European History? Not capacity constrained, and so the “bunching” you see (half the HS class applying to the same 15 colleges to study the same three majors) doesn’t happen.
How many posters do we have here who basically state “I will not pay for a “studies” degree.” Which of course is their right- it’s their money. But then they complain that there are only four flagship U’s in the country “worth” their kid attending, and that CS or EE is “impacted” and why, and it’s so unfair. And in many cases it’s not clear that the kid has ANY aptitude in CS, let alone interest. We read from the kids- they are getting a B in Trig and can’t tell their parents because it’s “engineering or bust”. BTW, I’m sure there are many talented engineers who got a B in trig. But if it pushes you out of the top of your HS class, bye bye UIUC, Michigan, Berkeley…
So it’s complicated. But if people would open their eyes to dozens of fine careers besides the ones listed, it gets less complicated really really quickly!
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One of the issues is schools don’t rank anymore but colleges will calculate roughly where your kid is in the class. There are schools where a 4.0 with 8 aps places a student in the top 5 percent of their class and others where 25 percent to 30 percent of the class has those statistics. Some schools literally gave everyone As during Covid remote learning and were remote for a full year. Anyway, parents know their kids stellar grades but sometimes don’t know where they fall within their class.
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I don’t mean to pick on your comment specifically, but as I was reading this entire thread, what was glaring to me was that parents aren’t taking any responsibility for their role in making this process untenable for a lot of kids.
There is no reason to be “gunning” for certain schools. As parents, we need to structure our attitudes such that our kids don’t see their safety schools as consolation prizes. Create a balanced list and learn to love your likely school. Don’t have your kid put Alabama or Kentucky or Slippery Rock or some other school with a high acceptance rate on their list so you can say you have a safety. Be really thoughtful and choose likely schools that make sense for your child. Dig into that school to identify all the reasons it is a great choice. Visit! I know kids last year who chose Alabama over Penn and University of South Carolina over Williams…and they are thriving and thrilled with their decisions. Spend as much time or more researching and visiting the likely schools and our kids won’t be caught up in a parental- and societal-emphasis on certain schools.
As another poster mentioned, so many parents aren’t realistic and don’t truly understand this process. They see that their kid has a 3.85 UW, a 1450 SAT, plays a sport or two, and founded a club and they call them a “high stat kid” who somehow deserves certain admissions. They fail to realize how many kids are exactly like theirs, and how many more have succeeded at higher levels already.
Most kids get into a school at the tier someone who understands the process would predict for their application. The problem is that most parents overestimate their own child or underestimate the rest of the applicant pool, or they are miffed when the kid doesn’t get into every school they expected.
This process is stressful, but that stress isn’t all because of the colleges. Parents also need to recognize their role.
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It’s just surprising that a kid with a 4.3, 33 ACT, liberal arts major and leadership/sports etc can’t gain EA admission to CLEMSON. That’s what I was originally talking about. I’m not delusional thinking my kid is getting into Michigan or Florida…but I (wrongly) assumed she would have a decent shot at Clemson. It’s causing undue stress and i wish she wouldn’t have applied there EA bc it clearly did not help her chances at admission. I know my D will get in to other schools, and already has two acceptances. And she will probably, hopefully, get into Clemson RD. And according to alotnof you I shouldn’t be surprised. I guess I will be better prepared in two years when my S is applying to college.
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And she likely does have a decent shot. If she got in, you never would have written the post. Many like her got in. Maybe even some with lesser stats. Maybe some like her won’t get in.
There can be myriad reasons she was deferred. From staffing to only certain GPAs were looked at to who knows why ?
In my opinion you likely haven’t wrongly assumed anything.
You just expected a yes / no and it could be as simple as they weren’t staffed or ready.
Applying EA was right. It didn’t work out as you assumed and hoped. We all hope but to say you shouldn’t have done EA is wrong. What if they admitted so many EA who then committed early and had to reduce rates for RD ?? Maybe it won’t happen but it could have.
That’s like saying you applied to name that school and got rejected and you shouldn’t have applied.
In fairness to your student, nothing is worse than uncertainty. Bad news is better than no news. I get that.
But this will be one of many times this happens in life. Will I be a part of the reorg ? I just went through four months of being unsure of if I have to move for my job. Will I be part of the layoff that’s coming ??
It stinks that the college process is so highly pressured but it’ll be over soon enough.
But take the positive - throw in a few apps to high merit schools that respond quickly. Go visit. She might even do a 180.
Sometimes things happen for a reason.
Btw just to make sure we are talking about the same school 
Clemson’s admit rate is 43% and your students weighted GPA, if using +.5 for Honors and 1 for AP is solid but not spectacular.
Their rate 3 years ago over 50%. So the school has changed. It is no longer an ‘easy’ in. With even more apps this year the acceptance will likely go lower.
Your student is fine and applying EA WAS the proper thing to do.
Clemson more likely a target than safety today but I like her odds.
But she’ll learn to handle adversity - no need to second guess.
Keep the Head up but don’t forget the two rules of college applications:
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Don’t fall in love
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Love those who love you back
Clemson stumbled in their appreciation. Don’t cower. Go find some immediate love from others. And when Clemson comes back, maybe it won’t be so certain from your end !!
Keep the faith. Best of luck.
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A lot of times the hangup is the GPA. What is the unweighted GPA? How many honors classes? How many AP classes or IB classes? Any dual enrollment classes? A 4.3 can be valedictorian level or middle of the class (or lower) depending on how grades are calculated at your school. Even in schools that do not rank, admissions offices will know where the GPA falls in the class due to the school profile that is sent with the transcript. As far as Clemson goes, not all majors are created equal and some have very small admission caps.
This is the first time Clemson has ever done EA and my guess is they were conservative with admissions. It’s also possible your child applied for a more competitive major, or there were a lot of students who applied from their high school so they were evaluated based on the other applicants. Who knows?
They sound like a strong student and my guess is they will probably get in to Clemson in the spring. Please don’t let this derail you or your child. If their list is well balanced, they will likely have several great choices.
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