I noticed all the Ivy leagues will be posting their ED results between tomorrow and Friday. My daughter applied to MIT which does not come out until Saturday. How does it work if some Ivy students immediately withdraw their MIT application in the next few days? Does that have an immediate impact on who might get accepted at MIT on Saturday? Is it an automated ranked process where if MIT is going to accept say 700 EA students, and # 50, 100 150, 200, 650 and 698 withdraw- does that students ranked that # 701-706 are now in? Will those spots of students that withdraw just roll over to RD pool of acceptances? I am trying to understand how automated versus manual the process is…
My guess is that is all built into the yield projection and any tweaks would occur during RD.
Note that Princeton has no early round this year and applying to either Harvard or Yale early precludes applying EA to MIT.
Also note that any withdrawal of applications does not occur until FA offer is received. So in reality, there will be few withdrawals before Saturday.
Personally I do not believe it is automated at all, they do have to balance accross area of interest, and replacements are more likely on a one for one basis.
MIT is not REA. I know the ED schools request that you do not apply anywhere else ED or REA, but looking on these boards, it appears many do not heed that ethical position. I have seen posts where students have indicated that they applied 2-3 places ED, and will reject two based on “financials” should they get intoall three. I hope karma bites them, and they get found out and have all offers rescinded.
I just was hoping somebody that used to work in admissions could lend some expertise about the process- and if there is an official ranking type automated system, or if it is a much more manual process.
It seems MIT made sure to be the last to post EA decisions, which makes me wonder if they are expecting some ED folks to withdraw applications prior to Saturday, which would allow them to offer those spots to others in EA
Well aware of that, but HYP are. Which was my point. Except for P this year.
Violating the rules will bite the applicants in the butt, so let’s leave them out of the conversation.
MIT’s choice of release date is based on the time it took to process the applications. They did nit deliberately choose the date with Ivy decisions in mind.
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According to MIT’s 2018-2019 Common Data Set, their overall yield was about 76% of accepted students enrolling. My bet is that the yield is much higher for EA. I don’t think there are enough applicants who are both capable of being admitted and willing to break the rules to move the needle.
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Decisions are now made. Applicants are accepted, rejected or deferred. That’s that.
You can look at MIT’s Deferral FAQs. A deferral will get re-reviewed with RA.
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Ivy decisions will have no impact. If you apply Ed (upenn or Columbia) or Rea (Harvard and Yale), you may not simultaneously apply for early action or early decision to any other schools. This means if you apply to Harvard rea, you are not allow to apply to mit early action. Your high school counselors should know the rules and would not send out transcripts or recommendations to both schools. This Ivy early decisions would have no impact on mit
That is incorrect. You can apply ED to almost any one school (including any Ivy other than HYP) while apply EA to MIT (which is unrestricted). If you’re accepted by the ED school, you should withdraw your application from MIT as soon as possible.
However, if a student applies EA to MIT and simultaneously ED to another school, s/he obviously is being opportunistic (and likely not an MIT “material”). There’re always a few of these applicants every year. MIT likely doesn’t care and has taken it into account. Caltech is the only other school with early admission process identical to MIT’s. It almost always makes its announcements on early acceptances earlier than the Ivies (or MIT). Timing of announcements on early acceptances is mostly driven by each school’s readiness to make such announcements.
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@injparent thanks for supporting what I was saying, or trying to say. I do agree it is late in the game. If a student got in ED at Columbia last night, and immediately went in and withdrew their MIT application, that spot would likely not get filled in time for this weekend’s decision release in EA, but rather in RD.
I think that MIT mostly already knows who is going to be accepted EA on Saturday. Maybe they are still thinking about the last few students. If some students who would have gotten in EA withdraw their applications between now and Saturday, I would expect MIT to fill these spots from the RD round.
I understand that Harvard and Princeton are just as strong as MIT at what I majored in (Math). However, I generally think of the typical strong MIT applicant as being a little bit different from the typical strong Harvard or Princeton applicant. I might be biased here since I am personal more skewed towards what MIT might be looking for (math, science) and was not as good at some other things.
Mostly I just would not worry about it. These schools are all reaches for most strong students and out of reach for nearly everyone else.
Hmm. I pulled that exact language I used from the Yale website where it states if you apply REA to Yale you may not simultaneously apply to another Ed, rea or ea school. Harvard and other schools have similar rules. I just looked up the Harvard website and it states the same as Yale. You may simultaneously apply to public universities (state schools) and military schools. But that is it. I know our counselor would not allow my son to apply both to Harvard and mit or Caltech. He had to pick.
Yale, along with Harvard, Priceton (not this year), and Stanford (even though its early admission program is called “REA”) offers the same early admission program known as SCEA (or Single-Choice Early Action). Single Choice means you can’t apply to another private college early (ED or EA). The restriction that an applicant can’t simultaneously apply to MIT/Caltech comes from SCEA, not from MIT or Caltech (which places no restriction whatsoever). The other Ivies (other than HYP) all offer an ED program, which binds their applicants to attend if accepted. But they do NOT prohibit an applicant to simultaneously apply to another private college if that college allows it (which is the case since EA to MIT or Caltch is completely unrestricted). At one point, UPenn did consider place further restriction on its ED program not to allow its ED applicants to apply to any private college early, but it backed off.
So your son’s counselor is correct that your son can’t apply to Harvard and MIT/Caltech simultaneously. But he CAN apply to an Ivy with an ED program (i.e. except HYP) and MIT/Caltech at the same time.
late but no, we do not make a ranked list, and anyone who withdrew just withdrew and was not automatically replaced with next-in-line or anything like that
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Thank you for the definitive answer @MITChris
Ugh. Seriously? That is so unethical and unfair to all of the students following the rules. I would assume the college counselor would put a stop to this. I don’t know how they get around it.
The counsellor also has to sign the ED agreement and send transcripts. I cannot imagine a counsellor risking their career on this.
It probably only happens in some schools (outside US) that rarely send any kids to these US colleges.
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True. And international applicants wonder why their apps get extra scrutiny. 
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