Northeastern is adding ED II. Also the notification date for EA decisions has been pushed back from December to January.
Deadline for Prospective Students
Early Decision I
Nov 1
Decisions released by December 15
Early Action
Nov 1
Decisions released by February 1
Early Decision II
Jan 1
Decisions released by February 15
Regular Decision
Jan 1
Decisions released by April 1
Glad to see EDII but February 1 seems very late for an EA decision date. I wonder if this is meant to combat people using EA as an early safety to increase yield by getting more withdrawn applications before the decisions come out?
EDII is definitely always used for yield management. I personally am not a fan since ED2 will take admits away from EA and RD, and many kids cannot afford to do ED because of the unknowns of merit awards. Moving EA results to January does not benefit students, that is for sure.
My son is going into his senior year at Northeastern and has been very happy with his college choice. However we would not have applied under these current deadlines. Northeastern was his first choice and he applied EA, but we could not have gambled on not being able to afford this school under ED.
I think there are plenty of students who are NEU class of 206 through 2018, who would not be at the school under the current admissions policies. My daughter (started in 2012) had a lot of friends who were National Merit Finalists who went to NEU because of the free tuition scholarship at that time. Many who applied EA (like my daughter) would not have applied ED1 or ED2. Having EA decisions under your belt before RD application deadlines was a great thing (and made for a very Merry Christmas for many students). I wonder how many other schools will be delaying EA decisions.
I found that schedule on the Northeastern admissions website:
https://www.northeastern.edu/admissions/
Scroll to the bottom of the page.
In past years Northeastern has sent out acceptance notices to top RD decisions in February although the deadline for notification was April 1st. So it is quite possible that top EA applicants may receive decisions in December despite the February 1st target date.
Back in 2011-12, for my daughter getting her EA decision early from NEU and attending their admitted students day for early applicants made a big difference. She knew she had an affordable place she really liked to go to regardless of what happened with her RD applications to more selective schools. Without it I think she might have applied ED2 at Tufts instead of RD. That being said, she was a strong candidate and would probably still get in and maybe as said above have gotten notified earlier than the actual deadline.
The college admission process just gets harder to navigate every year - you have 4 options of how to apply to just one school - NEU - multiply that by all the schools you are interested in and the decisions of how to apply becomes so complicated.
BU also has the same ED and ED2 offerings and they have not hurt them one bit (application and admit rates at all time lows)… so other schools have to follow suit to keep up. Unfortunately.
We are not in the position to apply ED and so far not one but two of the schools that my D is applying to changed their polices adding more ED options. I do not know what to think. Hmmm…
@am9799 It’s follow the leader.