A lot of schools’ financial aid offices, at least at LACs I’m aware of, are willing to talk to families before applications are submitted.
You don’t apply ED unless you want to attend and it is your top choice so what difference does it make how many kids they accept? If anything it helps the college marketplace because it moves all the ED acceptances from the glut of applications. Shoot if they wanted to they could fill their class from ED if they had enough apps and be done. Is there an ED college that is packaging up kids with real need with loans? I tend to doubt that.
It could remove some colleges from the realm of possibility come January because they have filled their class but really if you don’t have a first choice in September or October you probably aren’t an ED candidate and need more time to figure out what you want.
We passed on the ED option, we went EA and it worked out great for us and made our holidays much less stressful! Our D made a list and had some she favored over others but did not apply anywhere she couldn’t see herself, including her “safety” which she actually loved. She decided she much preferred to weigh the cost and the ED options with the bump they might give were not worth getting stuck if the cost was high… we got very lucky that her original top choice worked out the best. Again, that was a lil bit of luck working for us. We wouldn’t have back out of an ED but I’m sure there are many that do.
I did come out of that one session with an unshakable feeling that if you applied there and backed out that they would be contacting other top schools with your name…can’t prove it but he was very convincing in his message. Just a gut feeling!
There’s no getting stuck; if the financial aid offer is insufficient to support attendance you just say thanks but no thanks and apply elsewhere.
Kids apply ED because they think they have a better chance of acceptance, not because the college is their first choice. If they have a choice to pick without considering the odds of acceptance, they’ll most likely pick a different college.
^Didn’t work that way for mine or many other kids I know. They applied ED to their first choice. Sure, I’m sure some apply ED gaming it but to claim that is generally how it is done is inaccurate, IMO.
By applying ED, an applicant gives up a valuable option to go to an even better, and perhaps cheaper, school. Why would an applicant do that if s/he is rational? Now, not everyone acts rationally, however, so there will surely be exceptions.
If you are applying to your favorite school (and very frequently people apply to reaches as ED), you are giving up NOTHING. What school could possibly be better than your first choice?! Not everyone is hung up on rankings anyway. Both my kids applied to reach schools ED. Again, same is true for their friends and classmates. Sounds really rational to me.
Sure, if you are chasing merit and want to maximize that, perhaps ED isn’t right for you. But it is right for many others both full pay and those needing FA.
You miss the essential point. Which is that each of the “cartel” members are agreeing to cooperate for the purpose of enforcing the ED agreements of the OTHER schools. Why should Williams care about whether a kid stiffs Amherst on its ED contract? But Williams will agree not to poach the ED admits of Amherst only if Amherst similarly agrees not to poach the ED admits of Williams. That’s collusion on its face. I’m not surprised it would get investigated.
But I’d also guess that the practice holds up to scrutiny. Presumably Williams and Amherst each hired its own AT counsel to take a look at the practice before beginning to share the ED admit lists. And the Ivy League fin aid AT case would be well known to all these schools.
But it seems like it would have been smarter to avoid the issue of sharing admit data. There’s probably very low amounts of attempted ED cheating. Given the very low RD admit odds, not that many ED cheaters would get into the other schools RD anyway. And there’s plenty of other ways to enforce the ED agreements without sharing the data between schools.
Sounds emotional to me. It’s not rankings (they’re part of the problem, just like ED), but there’re literally hundreds of schools out there and some of them will be better. If you fall in love with one among the first few you’ve seen, you’re emotional.
The vast majority I’ve seen is simply: Both. To apply ED simply to increase chance of acceptance doesn’t make any sense, getting stuck at a school you’re not particularly fond of, too much time between December and August to change your mind, learning that you made a poor financial decision. The risks are just too high to accept an ED spot at a school you don’t totally love. The other way around: If you do have that one school you like way more than all the others, and the NPC says you can afford it, and your parents are supportive, why not apply ED, potentially leading to a less-stressed senior year? Yes, the emotion of loving the ED school should be there.
Of course! Why would someone apply ED if the student had a better fit college that costs less in mind. ED isn’t something a student should do silly nilly. It is for students who know where they want to go! They know in December if they are in or not and if no then they look at their plan 2. Kids that apply ED give up not much and are able to say in a forceful way they will attend if admitted. That is a pretty powerful statement with plenty of kids applying to a whole bunch of places and very little way to express desire.
" But Williams will agree not to poach the ED admits of Amherst only if Amherst similarly agrees not to poach the ED admits of Williams."
The word choice of cartel and poach - seems like hyperbole. Nobody is poaching students away from other schools. Students are choosing where to apply.
“Sounds emotional to me.”
Sounds smart to me. You apply to your favorite school, face better odds, and, if accepted, you spend less time, worry, stress as well as money on application fees. And you get to enjoy the holidays with your family. What’s not to like there? The proverbial bird in the hand. I think you think it is irrational because you don’t get that kids ARE applying to the school they like best and would be thrilled to be accepted and done.
“Kids apply ED because they think they have a better chance of acceptance, not because the college is their first choice.”
What do you think would happen if the top schools changed their policies to allow you to apply EA and/or ED to two schools rather than one? All of a sudden tons of kids would have two top choice schools rather than one first choice.
If the schools went to triple ED or TCEA, then all the kids would have three top choices.
You really think all those kids taking the odds to ED at Duke or Penn have zero interest in Yale or Stanford? Ridiculous.
Uh, no you do not.
No one suggests the ED school an applicant applies to is not among his/her top choices. The question is whether it is his/her FIRST choice.
“You really think all those kids taking the odds to ED at Duke or Penn have zero interest in Yale or Stanford? Ridiculous.”
News flash: Not everybody is chasing rankings.
I have been monitoring this thread for a while now… here’s my two cents: regardless of what students decide to do during EA/ED, it is their decision. A decision made by a student is a lesson learned or experience gained.
I seriously think this thread is getting out of hand; instead of a discussion, many debates are brewing…
Indeed. I have never understood why they would need to share the data. Sure, it makes the Adcom’s lives a little easier, but what is the big deal if they have to accept another kid or two (or three?) from the WL?
There was a recent case here on CC. An applicant was rejected by her ED school (maybe Northwestern but I don’t exactly remember which one). She also applied to MIT EA. She was deferred then accepted in the RA round and received very generous FA package from MIT (most likely significantly more than NWU would have offered). She was obviously ecstatic, not only about her MIT acceptance but also her NWU rejection.