“Look at these numbers a minute and consider the ramifications of NOT applying EA to Princeton.
EA students have an almost 15% admit rate.
RD students are at (1142 spots with 29968 (I discounted the EA apps)-- 3.8 percent admit.
So it’s not 5.5 percent–it’s 15% to do EA and less than 4 to do RD.
Appears to hold true for all the Ivy’s.”
Sort of.
The admit rate in the EA round for Princeton is much higher than the EA rate in the RD round, but… and this is a really important but if you’re an unhooked applicant, the EA round includes admission for a lot of places that you wouldn’t be eligible for anyways. Here are just a few of the hooked applicants that are admitted in the EA round:
Questbridge and other diversity outreach programs
Recruited athletes
Legacies
Unless you have the data on what % of EA admits had one of those hooks, it’s tough to know as an unhooked applicant what your EA chances are. Is it more than the 3.8% experienced in RD? Probably. But it’s not remotely as high as 15% because you wouldn’t have had a shot at the Questbridge, athlete or legacy spots that were included in EA.
Princeton is an example that’s near and dear to my heart because it was one of the first ones we researched because my son’s school appears on paper to have a pretty good track record of getting kids in - several per year. But when you dig into the admits, we weren’t able to find a single one from at least the last three years that wasn’t hooked (Questbridge, recruited athlete, legacy). So on the face of it, high stat unhooked kids from DS’ school might think they have a reasonable shot if they reviewed the Naviance acceptance data, but that’s because they wouldn’t know that all the recent accepted students had a hook. Without a hook, the actual # of admits has been zero. None.
It’s a good example of how we all make mistakes in our assumptions because we don’t have all the data.
Quote from AO at Cornell during admissions visit… “if anyone tells you that applying ED doesn’t increase your odds of acceptance they are lying, let me say that again, if anyone tells you that ED doesn’t increase your odds of acceptance they are lying. We accept a greater percent of applicants ED than RD”
Oh, she also said “we are not the competitive one” …actually they all said that lol
I respect honesty and the truth…speak the truth and give me the facts and I’ll decide if I want to play!
I did, however, find the “we aren’t the competitive one” funny!
I think schools that say your chances are better need to make clear what those chances are if you are an UNHOOKED applicant. Strip out the athletes and legacies, at the very least. If students and families are willing to give up merit aid (and with one of my kids, that was an extra $27,000/year off tuition at his second choice school) then they should let applicants know a better ballpark number for the boost they are getting.
She gave the %, just don’t remember what they were off the top of my head. She was probably one of the few I felt gave a less scripted and more honest talk (with the exception of the competitive comment, haha) of all the ones we heard. The other was Georgetown which also gave numbers and said it was harder EA but they were the only ones.
Whatever the actual facts, it’s abundantly clear that colleges like getting ED applications. They like knowing if they are a high choice or an afterthought. They like knowing that if they accept you you are psychologically (at least) committed to enroll. They like not having to guess how much merit aid you will need in order to commit.
So it’s absolutely in their interest to tell you that you get a benefit out of applying ED, whether that’s really true or not.
I tend to think that there is some benefit, even after all of the recruited athletes, legacies, and other special cases have been accounted for, as well as the fact that the ED pool is generally of higher quality than the RD pool. But it’s nowhere near has high as the raw data imply.
The only fair assumption might be that any given college with an ED practice is perhaps more likely to admit a qualified student during the ED period BECAUSE they know the student will attend. It’s a pretty straightforward thing. They are NOT going to admit a C student if all they admit are A students. Finally if kids go ED to their number 1 choice then they might not care as much whether or not it gives them a boost because that is the college they want to attend. Why else would you pick one college to show the love?
@evergreen5: Thank you for sharing the Pitt Law Review article regarding an antitrust analysis of college ED admissions programs.
Seems as though the author’s conclusion is flawed, however, because a pre-price estimate (discounted COA via financial aid) is not analogous to getting multiple bids from various contractors (such as engineers) to do a specific job. Why is it not analogous ? Because the presumption in bidding for work is that all bidders are willing to do the work for their stipulated price (bid). We know that this is not analogous to college & university admissions because admission is not assured or guaranteed when an applicant or potential applicant agrees to pay the stipulated (projected discount through financial aid) price. And that may be one concern among many of the Justice Dept.'s initial curiosity regarding college ED admissions when viewed through an antitrust lens.
Another concern that I have about the law review article is that the author fails to address the effect(s) of ED admission & information sharing practices upon the higher education marketplace. The article is too narrow in scope & too shallow in analysis, although well written and informative.
If someone signs a release that acknowledges their information may be used in some way that info sharing may be moot…I don’t know exactly recall what the application specifies.
First, want to make a general comment on this thread: I very much enjoy reading everyone’s respective opinion on this controversial topic; and I’m glad none of the debates have strayed from civility. Really becoming a huge fan of CC…
From the general, to the specific: In short, I’m not sure how much of an advantage ED will be for non-athletes/hooked students in the future anyway. The “secret” is out, and everyone now knows getting into an elite/T-30-type college is frankly absurdly difficult. Great stats, compelling EC’s, leadership, purposeful and interesting summers, amazing LoR’s, demonstrating interest in one specific area–yet still being on the swim team and or playing piano, all apparently guarantee our kids…the chance to apply (possibly to 14 or 20 or 36 schools or whatever the current number is). To wit, I expect ED’s popularity to rise and rise, to the point where a very large percentage of top students basically pick an ED school as a matter of course. Hope to be wrong. We shall see.
The DoJ has well over 100,000 employees. Granted that not all of them are lawyers, but a pretty good proportion are. I’m pretty sure they have the resources to go after lots and lots of different things at once.
Let’s assume that highly selective school has a 8% overall RD acceptance rate. And let’s assume that ED offers the unhooked a couple of percent of advantage to 10%. Not all that much of a benefit, right? Uh, no.
2% of 8% is 25%. In other words, the ED boost is 25% in this hypo.