Both MIT and Northwestern are meets full need schools so one can’t assume that MIT’s amount is “most likely significantly more than NWU would have offered”. And I’m sure the girl would have been thrilled to have been accepted at Northwestern as well. Let’s not draw assumptions for one incident posted here and assume we know everything behind the applicant’s thought process or that it even represents the majority of ED applicants.
Among other things, NWU takes into account home equity but MIT doesn’t for the primary home. That makes a big difference.
Just to clarify, when I say “stuck” I just mean, for us, that while we would have honored an ED,unless they came in at full cost, which we didn’t think would happen since we qualify for FA, but the question was ‘how much’? Although D loved all of the choices she put on her list and some may have been a little higher on the list than others, she didn’t feel the ‘bump’ in odds she would get from ED at a school she may have liked a little more was enough to outweigh the possible difference in less debt…even if the debt was something we could work out. She didn’t feel there was any school, regardless of rank, worth “any” cost.
ED is not any more emotional that RD. I explained it to my kids the same way I explain all relationships. There will be a very large number of entities that meet your basic requirements. In return, you will meet the basic requirement of any number of entities. You are looking for the entities where there is overlap between what you are looking for and what they are looking for. If there is one that goes above and beyond your requirements, then you should definitely go for it.
My kid had one college that met her basic requirements and then went above and beyond. We crunched the numbers, talked to the financial aid office, assessed whether she was what the college was looking for and then went the ED route. She was accepted with a good bit of need based aid because we are definitely not wealthy. It has saved her a great deal of time that she is able to spend on preferred avocation and she is delighted in an entirely emotional way too. I am sure that those chasing the best deal get emotional satisfaction as well.
As for the legalities, I can see how sharing information could be collusion or possibly not. I am not a legal type, so my opinion is not worth much anyway. But I do wonder about the amount of effort and money being spent on a group of colleges that enrolls a very small percentage of the nation’s college students.
@1NJParent who cares if someone is emotional about their ED choice? It’s called being passionate and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I don’t get how you don’t get that. There are literally thousands of kids that use an ED on their #1 dream school - that is 100% acceptable if that’s what they want to do. Maybe you think it’s a waste of an ED because it’s not a school that is good enough for you. Well, thank goodness you’re not the one going.
While perhaps true, not sure its relevant since the typical kid does not search out “hundreds” of colleges.
This too, is bordering on a straw man argument. But what if the one you fall in love with is #22 on the list of college visits?
A school that gives you a better aid package.
A school that has a better program in the field you’re going to major in that you haven’t even heard of yet.
A school that grows on you over winter break.
A school that, it turns out, is a better fit for you than the one you thought was a perfect fit at age 17.
A school that has more caring professors.
A school that has more hard-driving and demanding professors.
And so on.
If you’ve done your research and made your visits - sometimes more than once - you already have the info you need. an extra 5 months isn’t going to make a huge difference for most people. I assume you don’t mean it the way it sounds but it’s kind of insulting to assume that a student working in conjunction with his/her family and maybe even a decent college counselor hasn’t considered things like strength of major, quality of faculty, affordability vs. one’s ability to pay, etc. You better believe that given the amount of $$ being spent on a college education, my family and many others have done our homework, @dfbdfb.
The implications here that those who apply ED aren’t being rational or unintelligent about the process is off-putting. It’s obvious that some of you abhor the concept of ED but for others of us, it is an educated choice. Good thing is that the college process allows for different paths.
My point is that you (a) can’t predict the future, and (b) if you go ED, you’ve cut off options.
Yes, that can be rational, and it’s certainly not unintelligent. It is also selfish, in that it distorts the system for others.
[Insert some sort of D&D alignment chart meme covering approaches to college admissions here.]
Clearly there’s disagreement on ED here. I’m not saying applicants shouldn’t apply ED. ED makes sense for many families since most schools offer only ED and applicants don’t have a choice for early applications. But why these schools offer ED instead EA? Because ED favors the schools while EA favors the applicants. Not only that, ED distorts the system, as some of us have argued, driving RA acceptance rates much lower, which cause all sorts of family anguishes each and every year, with the exception of a small minority of families whose kids got in via ED or EA. The problem will only get worse as the cycle reinforces itself. My DS got in via EA so I understand the relief some of you feel after early admission success. You congratulated yourself with your good judgement and wanted to defend the current system. But don’t you see the increasing anguishes of many other families year after year? Do you want to see RA, even overall, acceptances rates trending toward zero?
You have only cut off options if you take advantage of ED so there is a trade off so the choice is whether to use ED or not. The decision doesn’t really impact others since they make their own decision. Since you can only attend one college the entire process is more about elimination down to one and not about the total number of acceptances a student can reap. But I am guessing that the concept is not being investigated and more likely it is the post acceptance info sharing.
Not true at all in our case.
My D’s primary criteria was a highly rigorous college in a large city, with a liberal arts focus. The only top 10 schools that meet her criteria are UChicago and Columbia. Both now have ED. She chose the former.
You’d be fine if UChicago and Columbia had offered EA (or a genuine EA in UChicago’s case), don’t you? Your D could potentially had more choices on May 1. Maybe she could have done more in-depth comparison of UChicago and Columbia, both academically and financially. Having more options is always better and that’s just eco 101.
@dfbdfb I think the point that you are missing is that not everyone views college acceptances the same way you do. Not everyone needs a spreadsheet with 17 columns and 15 rows to determine where to apply ED. Not everyone needs 25 options for their students. Two of my kids went ED - they got in and we were done by Christmas. It worked for us because my older two kids knew EXACTLY where they wanted to go. They did their homework, took their tours. They knew what they wanted and ED was perfect.
Does ED favor the school? Yes. Can it favor a student? Yes, also.
@1NJParent students have choices to apply early. IMO, it’s a mistake to only apply RD. The other driver in lower RD acceptance rates is that the system is clogged with kids applying to way too many schools they will never attend. It is entirely unnecessary and creates a lot of unnecessary waitlists.
This
Would I be happier if colleges all had unrestricted EA when she applied, rather than ED? Yes, because if UChicago didn’t work out, she could have applied to other private schools at the same time.
Also, unrestricted EA was exactly what UChicago had the prior year, and if that policy had remained, she would have applied EA there, rather than ED elsewhere. But with the introduction of ED at UChicago in addition to EA, I realized that the odds were likely increased for ED and decreased for EA, so she applied ED.
Columbia had dropped quite a bit by application time because of their handling of the mattress girl incident, so UChicago was a clear #1. She truly gave up nothing by applying ED.
If you defend ED because you think you benefited from that program. Think again. If your D or S had been rejected by the ED school, you’d be facing the same anguish many other families face, with ED driving RD acceptance rates ever lower, even if you don’t care about the additional options EA offers (which are valuable for many families).
I agree with that but ED also contributes greatly to that. If an applicant wasn’t admitted in ED/EA round, s/he would be inclined to apply to many schools to increase her/his chance of admission with RD acceptance rates so low and getting lower still.
Honestly, I can’t think of why a person who is really interested in Duke would be interested in Yale. Perhaps a Duke applicant would be interested in Stanford if they are into sports.
Fit is really important. The reason my D wanted a rigorous program is because she knows she would coast in a less rigorous program, but rise to expectations in a rigorous program. Not saying she would have gotten in, but Harvard was #6 priority on her RD list because we know from current students that it is not very rigorous.
In contrast, a rigorous program would be the wrong fit for my S when he applies to college. He already works too hard as it is, and we will be coaxing him towards a more relaxed environment so that he pushes himself less. Again not saying he will get in, but Harvard and Duke will likely be on his application list. UChicago likely won’t be.
You and your D obviously made the right call. EA at UChicago in its current form is not a genuine program. It’s kept only to attract more applications and EA acceptances are rare without a hook. Why did UChicago switched to ED? Certainty not because it wants to help applicants.