Is ED2 or Possibly Common App/Coalition App Overuse Causing a Wave of RD Rejections?

@PurpleTitan

I hope she didn’t, but I can’t help to think that the yields are getting more difficult to estimate. In 2016, my son applied to 12 schools, which was average for his graduating class based on all the parents I spoke with. My daughter, who is 2019 grad, it is not unusual to hear of kids applying to 20 + schools.

If applying to engineering you need 20 I think. My son applied to 12 and only 1 accepted him! Crazy! All these IB classes, dual enrollment and hard work… he keeps telling me his major and college are ranked high so he has no complaints

WE ARE…

Now that I think we are done, and DS applied to 21 schools, was accepted to 7 of them, waitlisted at 2 and rejected from the rest although one gave him a sophomore transfer. Of those 5 were state schools, 2 were private that I hope will meet full need. My one real regret is not letting him apply to University of Michigan. My understanding had been they do not give money to OOS but I believe that is not true, at least as far as need. So after applying to so many schools my one wish is he had applied to one more. His friend with similar stats was accepted although he will be full pay and the parents will be happy to do that unlike us. Of the two privates, he almost withdrew his application from one after being deferred EA and the other would never have applied to if he was limited in how many he could apply. Still I believe it is the ED2 that messed with this year and the wait lists will be interesting to see what they change

You just need at least one that is a safety. Twenty reaches is more likely to give a shutout than one safety.

Of course, if, due to financial situation, there are no schools that are admission safeties that are definitely affordable, the problem can be much harder.

@ucbalumnus Scholarship would only allow him to apply to 40 engineering schools non could be considered safety… for chemical or petroleum it shrinks even more

This may seem like a really dumb question, but i am wondering about it because the essay is where students have a chance to really explain who they are… and it is my understanding that those essays are used by Admissions to see how that student would fit into their admission class.

Is it possible that the Common App with a single essay used for every school actually harming an applicant’s chance at admission because their essay can seem too generic?

@SATXMom2 – My son applied to 15 colleges and I don’t think any of them relied on only the CA essay. Some only required one additional ‘Why xyz college or why this program’, and many had multiple prompts.

You can customize the essay if you choose to, most people do not bother. My S1 had a couple of versions. However the essay is more about you and not supposed to be a Why School essay

Nothing really new imho. It is just that the cycle just keeps on grinding away year after year. It will be worse next year. It is worse every year.

  1. More and more kids are targeting the same top 25 schools.
  2. All of those schools fill half of their frosh classes through some form of restricted early round -- ED1, ED2, SCEA, REA.
  3. If a kid doesn't hit the target school in the early round, then the kid faces the longer odds of the RD round. So those kids send more apps to the other top 25 schools.
  4. So the top 25 schools get more apps each year, and then have a lower RD admit rate each year.
  5. Which means there will be even more apps (and lower admit rates) next year. Rinse and repeat.

The number of high stat applicants coming out of HS each year is pretty much flat. And each kid can only attend one college. So the overall chances of admission of getting into at least one top 25 really aren’t getting harder.

But the continuing arms race each year requires a lot more effort and a lot more apps in order to get to the same place. The system also now puts a lot more importance on hitting the target with your early school. If you miss, you go from the preferred odds of early to the Powerball odds of RD.

If all the top schools dialed back the seats allocated early, things would calm down a lot. But that’s not gonna happen.

In the high school class graduating in 2018, approximately 150,000 kids scored in the 1400-1600 range. That is a heck of a lot of kids who think they have the scores to get in to T20 schools. @ 10-12 applications/kid, that’s around 1.5 - 1.8 Million applications. Spread those around and add in a bunch more from the kids who “heard about the kid” who got into Yale, Harvard, Princeton, MIT, etc with a 1250, and it’s pretty easy to see why there are so many applications.

Two of the top 25 USNWR national universities do not have any kind of EA or ED. They also do not consider legacy or race/ethnicity in admissions, and they are large enough that athletes are only a small percentage of the total. But the frenzy about admission to those schools is still high.