<p>I found this on the NU website today:
Seeking</a> a Place at Northwestern : Northwestern University Newscenter</p>
<p>do you guys think higher numbers of good quality apps would make them accept more people? meaning they won't deny an app they'd otherwise take in the RD round just to have a lower ED acceptance rate? could this mean a greater percentage of the class next year could come from ED? I certainly hope so. fingers crossed.</p>
<p>from what i understand, in the old days where harvard and other “elite” schools had ED, nearly half of their incoming class would be ED applicants…for NU, its more like 1/4, so maybe they would decide to up the number of EDers they take? Or the ED accept rate could plummet to 30%, and out of the 2200 applicants they decide to take roughly 600.</p>
<p>You can, as of the last few years, be deferred to RD. If you’re good enough for RD, you’ll likely get in.</p>
<p>honestly, if there’s a higher than usual number of us who are good enough, they should just take more of us ED even though a higher percentage of the class will consist of ED kids.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, that’s really not likely to happen, for a couple of reasons:</p>
<p>First, as you probably know, the whole topic of ED is a little controversial. Because it requires applicants to be organized, decisive, and ready to go two months early, the ED system favors applicants who are relatively sophisticated and well-advised (i.e., relatively affluent). Because it requires that accepted applicants withdraw their other applications, it effectively excludes anyone who feels he needs to compare financial aid offers (i.e., anyone who isn’t very affluent, or in some cases very poor). So colleges are pretty careful about what percentage of their class they take ED, and the percentage has tended to go down rather than up as more criticisms are leveled at the ED system.</p>
<p>Northwestern is at the very low end of ED schools in what percentage of the class they fill, but they are proud of the fact that they keep their ED program to only 25% of the class. Plus, now that they are deferring applications to the RD round, they aren’t in the position of rejecting good applicants they would like to accept anymore. Finally, it’s pretty rare that ED applications go up and RD applications stay flat or go down. By the time they make their final ED decisions, they will have a pretty good idea of how many RD applications they will be getting, and if it’s any kind of an increase they are not likely to want to take slots away from the RD pool.</p>
<p>The university is probably trying to get its admit rate down, and it would not be shocking to see at least a slight increase in the raw number of ED admitted.</p>
<p>The admit rate will drop no matter what happens. Unless NU rejects every ED applicant, the inevitable impending bump in RD applicants will let the admit rate drop (assuming yield stays constant).</p>
<p>If the raw number of ED acceptances goes up, then that means that even more RD applicants than last yr are competing for fewer acceptance letters than last yr. It doesn’t make too much sense to reward the ED field while punishing the RD field. </p>
<p>At the end of the day, there are simply more RD applicants and they comprise a bigger part of the NU student body. I would hope that NU would not overtly favor one pool over another. </p>
<p>Take a school like UPenn which is pretty overt in how much it favors ED students. Applying to UPenn RD is like doing so with one hand tied behind your back. I presume that has some dampening effect on the amount of RD applications UPenn sees. Whereas Harvard, Yale, Princeton etc operate under the principle that eliminating ED yields an overriding rise in RD applications.</p>
<p>My unscientific prediction: the amount of ED acceptances is roughly flat (maybe a SLIGHT increase), while the ED acceptance rate drops. NU is starting to prove that it can compete with Penn, Duke, MIT, Stanford etc. Note that the yield that the past few yrs has been higher than expected and getting off the waitlist has become increasingly difficult. I presume that the admissions office will respond accordingly and just accept fewer kids with the assumption that the higher yield will necessitate fewer acceptances.</p>
<p>Don’t forget the X factor: our football team is GOOD. A few hundred (thousand?) kids may tune into ESPN on Saturday morning and see College Gameday @ Wrigley. The immediate recognition that NU is a great school (I expect at least a few references to our intellectual heft during Gameday), with a good football team and is a few miles from a FANTASTIC city could sway a few kids who would’ve applied to Duke for Coach K but ignored the Power of Fitz.</p>
<p>Go Cats!</p>
<p>It’s a great time to be a Wildcat!</p>
<p>Well this win over Iowa was also well recognized. The fact that half of espn went to medill and you had greenberg, blackistone, and wilbon all congratulating the football team on national tv today is something else to consider.</p>
<p>I’m in favor of increasing the percentage of student body admitted under ED to 40-50% if they have strong enough credentials. I’m also in favor of having an EDII option.</p>
<p>Students who are low-income/from low-income schools are savvy enough to know their options. If need be, there’s plenty of room for them to be pulled from the regular pool.</p>
<p>^^not true. students from low income schools are not very savvy at all. I go to a Chicago Public School where 69% of the students are low income (not me). My counselor was surprised to learn I was applying ED to Northwestern last month, because she told me only five other people in the entire senior class (350) applied ED as well, and those five people were in the top ten of our class…many of my classmates, even the ones in the IB/AP classes with me, have no idea what ED/EA/ED II/or priority is…</p>
<p>and further more, in regards to “pulling from the RD pool” remember that RD is going to get tens of thousands of apps… Even more 3.999 GPAs and 33 ACTs from kids in Connecticut that those “low income” kids have to deal with…</p>
<p>Maybe they don’t care enough to research their options. If they looked up these schools, deadlines and explanations of ED/EA/etc are clearly mentioned. ED or not, low-income kids will get a boost in admissions. I know many of them are not willing to go ED for financial reasons (unless their EFC is 0 or near 0 and they’re confident they’ll get a substantial amount of aid anyway). Schools have a responsibility to let the public know what their options are but students also have a responsibility to research them.</p>
<p>^^Strangely enough, I thought the same way, but I had to realize what low income really is… No matter how smart the student or motivated, there will be constant roadblocks to getting into college for low income students, many of them that have nothing to do with money… But I digress. Good luck to me and you and EVERYONE on getting into NU ED!</p>
<p>I think a more aggressive use of ED and securing a high number of full-pay <em>high-stats</em> students in the early round might actually enable the University to admit more low-income students (who might have slightly weaker records on average) overall. One reason for this is that wealthy kids won’t take away from the FA budget and can even add to it (in the case of applicants with wealthy parents). In addition, their stats can also compensate for the weaker records of their lower-income peers. Admitting high-stats applicants in the early round can give Admissions the security it needs to take lower-stats applicants without hurting the overall stats. NU Admissions has been pretty aggressive lately in trying to recruit low-income applicants, but what would be the use of that if they can’t take them in large numbers anyway? Having a critical mass of full-pay high-stats students that you know will enroll could be one solution.</p>
<p>In addition, securing a greater percentage of the class ED could help create a stronger campus culture, increase the giving rate in the long run, and increase the selectivity (lower the overall admit rate) while increasing the yield at the same time. It’s not a secret that the more exclusive a place is, the more it can attract the best and the brightest. This is true of applicants across all socioeconomic groups, so maybe this is one way Northwestern can pull low-income students away from other elite schools in even greater numbers.</p>
<p>Your first paragraph espouses a very divided student body with high-income, high stats (let’s ignore that income and SATs/GPAs aren’t as well correlated the higher you get up the scale. i.e. while you can say that middle-income students have higher SATs than low-income it is FAR tougher to argue that upper-class trumps upper-middle class) and low-income, low stats. This is essentially a Jim Crow school - separate but equal in the most classic of senses. I am not saying you aren’t right or that we shouldn’t pursue students who can pay the whole tuition, but there are some socio-cultural effects to consider.</p>
<p>Your second paragraph is also debatable. I am not sure that ED students are “more dedicated”. I was an RD kid who ranked NU 7th of the 9 or 10 schools I applied to. When I applied, I had no intention of going. Long story short, I am one of the most school-spirited people I know. As a former tour guide and involved in assorted student activities, I am working on getting on assorted alumni boards. </p>
<p>I think what makes school spirited students and involved alumni is not based on whether or not you love NU when you are 17 yrs old. I am a strict adherent of the belief that some people are bound to love the college experience, some will be underwhelmed by it, and a third group will have their happiness determined by circumstances. I would have loved whatever school I went to (I considered everything from Hopkins to UT-Austin). I think NU has unique things that clicked with me, but I probably would have been a tour guide and an active alumni anywhere.</p>
<p>Don’t hate on the RD kids because of what they thought when they had no idea what the college experience would be like. </p>
<p>Sidenote to any applicants who are reading this - I am going to spoil the surprise but you have no idea what college is like. You might get into your Dream School and hate it. You might go to your backup and fall in love with it.</p>
<p>CerebralAssassin, ED or not, the student bodies at the elite schools are disproportionately wealthy because they are the ones who can afford the expensive tuition. Middle-income families have a hard time coming up with the money even though on paper it says they can, and the lowest income of all automatically qualify for a lot of aid. When you take in a lot of wealthy high-stats applicants though, you leave FA not just for the low-income but also the middle. I’m actually not even sure if taking in a greater % of kids ED would increase the proportion of wealthy students admitted, but in the event that it does, it will also ironically allow more low-income students students into the school. It might be premature to say though that this will create a separate-but-unequal situation. Who says they can’t coexist? A lot of elite schools are this way already (probably including Northwestern) and I haven’t really noticed much in the way of tension among different socioeconomic groups. Maybe pressure to spend while on a limited budget, but you will encounter that anywhere unless you live in an economically segregated neighborhood already (which is better?).</p>
<p>Taking in 50% of kids ED would still leave plenty of room for those who are not sure about Northwestern or don’t have it at the top of their list. What is a school to do though when making decisions given the info they have? They will naturally choose the ones who display the most interest who have strong credentials at the same time.</p>
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<p>This. +1 to you sir.</p>
<p>brebeuff what do you consider wealthy? Today in California two prison guards or fireman combined can earn over 250K as can any number of other city and state employees.</p>
<p>You’re ignoring the alleged correlation between wealth and “stats”. I will grant the overgeneralization that high-income applicants have better SATs and GPAs and than low-income. However, there there is a big difference between income that is high enough to not need a job during HS while getting an SAT tutor instead and income that is high enough to pay full ride for NU. There are PLENTY of people at NU who are on financial aid who live quite comfortable and had more than enough resources to do well on the SATs and keep their GPAs up.</p>
<p>Here’s another problem - NU admission is need-blind. Ignoring that your proposal makes NU anything but need-blind, we can’t know who is rich enough to pay full-ride. You can see that someone is from a nice suburb and doesn’t like a part-time job as an EC, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have financial need. The applicant could have 3 siblings or his parents just lost their jobs. Even if you could sort things out this way and let in all the ED kids from “recognizable” high schools, you are not going to get the financial aid distribution that you want. It pains to me say this, but your outcome will result in you being disappointed that the kids you accepted are poorer than you wanted them to be. Whether or not that is your intention, that’s what happens. I’d put on some cleats, because you are on one slippery slope.</p>
<p>one often hears about a ‘hook’, or a URM, having a bit of an admissions advantage. Does URM or hook include economically disadvantaged or only ethnicity? NU is need blind but not ‘ethnically blind’ since ethnicity (as well as legacy, and athletic) info is on the admissions app.</p>
<p>Financial info is not available to the admissions people --on the application at least.</p>
<p>Does anyone know how the ED process works? Is it the following?</p>
<p>1) student prepares and submits ED application by 11-1</p>
<p>2) NU admissions folks review the ED app during the [next 30 or so] days.</p>
<p>3). Student’s family prepares and submits the CSS Profile (estimated financial data for 2010) BY 12-1.</p>
<p>4) NU admissions publishes/discloses a decision by 12-15 or 12-16 (can’t recall offhand) , along with a provisional but supposedly pretty accurate FA award offer for the admits.</p>
<p>question–</p>
<p>in the above steps when is the admission decision rendered?
a-Before step (3)?
b-After step (3) or
c-all the above (for certain fencepost apps)?</p>
<p>In your answr, please square with the notion that NU is ‘need blind’ and an institution of high integrity.</p>