<p>One of S's teachers told him that the Ivies (and maybe others) often defer ED's, and then immediately admit them after the deadline so they can improve their stats and make their school look more selective. Is that true?</p>
<p>IME, a deferred ED is reviewed again (fresh start) in the RD pool. RD decisions are not made until close to the decision deadline. Could they like someone so very much that they “reserve him?” (Ie, he goes to the dean’s special short list.) Yes. But, that’s a surprisingly short list, IME. And includes the few kids the dean is willing to go to bat for, for somewhat narrow institutional reasons.</p>
<p>Some schools defer a number of EDs; some just reject a whole lot of them on the ED round. Not sure how deferring ED candidates that you plan on admitting improves the college’s stats…What stats do you think that the school is improving by doing such a thing?</p>
<p>There would be no gain in it, and it could actually lower their “yield” (usually seen as a “bad” thing). </p>
<p>Many uber-selective colleges use the ED round to ensure they “get what they need” - development admits, football quarterbacks, oboe player, important legacy or son of senator, lots of full-pays, and an occasional genius (though there are usually enough geniuses to go round…) That way, they can use the RD round to fill in the gap, know how much money they have left to spend in the financial aid budget (in their so-called ‘need-blind’ process), find the half-back, “balance” the class socio-economically, racially, geographically, etc., and get some more geniuses, and enough Greek majors. It’s also a good opportunity to reject geniuses from Podunk High, which increases their prestige more than if they had accepted them.</p>
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So the OP’s references don’t have any actual data or thought to the results? What a surprise.</p>
<p>Maybe the teacher in the OP was suggesting that a student who applied ED really wants that school, so by accepting them in the RD round the school is fairly certain that they would accept their offer and thereby increase their yield for RD? Since schools break out the ED vs. RD acceptance rate they can accept fewer students during RD counting on the matriculation of the rejected ED’s?</p>
<p>I am not saying this is the case at all since I have no idea, I am just trying to think of what the logic could possibly be.</p>
<p>There would be no way of knowing whether this happens, I think, because all the RD decisions come out at the same time, much later in the year. If a decision is made on certain candidates early, only the admissions office would know.</p>
<p>I am concerned that the teacher’s statement could make a rejected ED applicant who had expected to be accepted feel overconfident about his/her chances in the RD round and therefore not put full effort into other applications. This is not a constructive way to think – in fact, it has a taint of wishful thinking about it.</p>
<p>All colleges ED raetes are higher than their RD rates. Colleges publicize these higher rates to encourage more ED applicants, thus increasing their pool of quailified students who they know will accept admission & increase their yield numbers. Of course the facts of ED admit numbers are that they are inflated by the admission of recruited athletes, legacies, & professors kids. Legacies & recruited athletes make up 21% of Cornell’s freshman class. My hunch is that the vast majority of these students were ED admits. So by including these it gives the appearence that applicants have a much better chance of admittance applying ED, when in reality they may not!</p>
<p>I agree with Marian, that this teacher statement is setting students up for some major disappointments. The fact is that very small percentage of students deferred during the ED round are picked up during the RD round. </p>
<p>Dartmouth deferrs roughly 10% of the early decision pool. However, Dartmouth is very upfront with the fact that only 5 to 10 percent of the candidates deferred in the ED round are picked up during RD.</p>
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<p>No one is “immediately admitted” after ED - the process essentially starts again with the deferred group added to the RD pool; however, a few candidates may be placed on “the top of the pile” for a number of reasons - lookingforward mentioned this. Perhaps the teacher was referring to the dreaded “courtesy deferral” - some students are deferred rather than rejected ED as a courtesy and presumably to avoid some sort of embarrassment. This pleasure is mostly reserved for legacies and others who have some sort of connection. IMO this actually rather cruel because it may give students a false sense of hope.</p>
<p>I knew that they deferred some ED’s for another run in the RD pool, but I had never heard of them accepting deferrals after the deadline and before the next round. Maybe DS just misunderstood his teacher.</p>
<p>I think what he meant about improving stats is that the school gets many ED applicants, then defers or rejects a good lot of them to make themselves look more selective percentage-wise. But wouldn’t that work against what they’re trying to achieve, which is getting the best students to apply to their school?</p>
<p>I remember someone on here saying that their very smart D had been deferred in a RD pool (she didn’t apply there ED) by a second tier school because they probably figured that she was using them as a safety school. Her scores and grades were very high, but she wasn’t accepted right away. Is this the same kind of “playing with the numbers”?</p>
<p>There are no deferrals in the RD pool; students can only be rejected or waitlisted. The very smart D must have been rejected. Many do believe that some schools reject very qualified candidates “Tufts syndrome” because they want to protect yield. Hard to prove, but ancedotal evidence that it is good to show the love to safeties.</p>
<p>Sometimes, a too-good kid IS rejected from a school that thinks he’s actually more interested in another and qualified for that other. Yes, it partly has to do with yield- and a suspicion he’s not likely to accept an admit here, so let him go there. I’ve seen it with kids who don’t seem to know much about school X, write a lackluster Why Us? (or one that so clearly pertains to that other school) and have double legacy elsewhere. But, overall, that’s not an easy thing to scope out and mostly, ime/imo, schools just try to get the candidates they feel are best for them, with no machinations. (Well, not too many beyond all the ones we ordinarily discuss.)</p>
<p>I also think the deferred RD situation ^ was possibly “wait list.”</p>