I still think it is unfair, unless it really is the kid’s absolute #1 and scholarships are not in play elsewhere, and I am very glad ours does not. Our school nominates for some well-known full merit scholarships to top schools and there is usually overlap with those nominees and the ones applying to the big-4 EAs you mention. Those scholarship rounds are not very far along in the process by the time December results come out, as well as some lesser-known but still T25 partial merit scholarships that are not known by then. Also, those who need to see need-based financial aid packages and put the whole picture together after RD would also be at a disadvantage with that rule.
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I’d assume if you are in the hunt for Morehead,Robertson,Stamps or other big name Merit scholarship it’s okay to continue with that. It’s in the the Schools best interest to be able to tout winners of those just as much as attending HYPSM.
My opinion is EA > ED > SCEA. ED and SCEA shouldn’t exist if schools were ethical and cared about the students, but is what it is. But at least with ED in most cases it usually comes with some admissions chance upside and it doesn’t prevent you from applying to any other EA. SCEA has little to no admissions upside (other than hearing sooner) and restricts you even more than ED for applying to other EA’s (restricting. it only to public school EA’s). Someone could apply ED to somewhere for example and still do EA to schools like MIT. Not so with SCEA. The problem with ED is colleges are massively overusing it, admitting such a large percentage of their class in some cases that it materially disadvantages RD, putting kids in a difficult situation.
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PREACH!!
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Oh yes I agree with this 100% as well.
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College admissions are all about the college’s institutional priorities. It’s all about what works best for the college, not its applicants.
Rick Clark, director of undergraduate admissions at Georgia Tech clearly spells this out in his excellent and honestly written blogs.
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Why does it matter? There are such a small number of schools that do this and only a couple are public (UVa and W&M). There are plenty of great schools that don’t use those practices.
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They are not and they do not care. They all have revenue targets to meet and that can be only guaranteed when you have students that commit to attending and paying. Parents are more than happy to pay for that privilege. It is what it is. As @Dolemite pointed out, most schools do not practice these policies. However, in the CC and A2C universe, schools like NCSU, Pitt, A&M are often afterthoughts.
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Only one school on my kid’s 15 school list doesn’t have either EA or ED. Only 2 have EA. The rest are ED or SCEA so the game is really to figure out where best to play that ED card. I agree it is one of many things that is broken about the admissions system and turns the whole thing into exercise in game theory rather than anything else.
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Same with us. Only Penn State has EA, the rest have ED. Such a game. One that sucks to have to play.
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Well, at least until the TO circus continues.
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If a student wants to have a fair chance at one of the ones that do, it may preclude them from applying to the others that don’t. Of three kids collectively applying the dozens of colleges, every single one for the older two had some form of early option and all but 2 do for the youngest. This included their reaches, matches and safeties.
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I would suggest that there are some colleges that do care more about the students than their what counts for institutional reputation these days: most community colleges and many though certainly not most open-admissions four-year+ colleges (especially the public ones where that’s clearly part of their mission).
But those aren’t the ones likely to ever be discussed here on CC, or in fact even to have their existence noted except in threads where people are trying to talk down a kid with legitimately low (as opposed to CC low) stats from applying to Dartmouth and nowhere else.
(Edited to fix a typographical issue I just accidentally discovered: Apparently if you put a + immediately followed by a - in the edit box, you get a plus/minus symbol, as ±. Not unuseful to know.)
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MIT, as one example, does it right. True EA with no limitation on where else you apply early or regular. The only limitation is that those other schools themselves often prevent you from also apply EA to MIT.
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I would just add that the students/parents may have had a part in driving colleges in this direction. Common App, Test optional, 20+ applications for students… then add in the mess that COVD caused. It’s not surprising to see them turning toward options that drive more certainty.
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S23 is finally arranging his recommendation letters. Two science teachers volunteered to write letters for him (AP Chem - 10th grade, AP Bio - 11th grade), plus his orchestra teacher (who has taught him for all 4 years of high school).
Is it considered redundant to have 2 science teacher recommendations? He will be applying to engineering / applied sciences.
It depends on the school. Most prefer 11th grade teachers and, if they ask for more than one teacher, they often prefer that they are in different subject areas.
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Bio and Chem aren’t considered to be different subject areas?
The orchestra teacher is the best one to attest to his ability to write a research paper in the humanities. Honors orchestra students are required to do a year-long project each year in which they choose and study a piece of music, analyze its structure, write an extended research paper placing the piece in historical context, and present their work to the class. The project is more involved than anything he has done in his English or history classes. Unfortunately, music isn’t considered to be a core academic subject, so this teacher’s letter will have to be considered an “other” recommendation.
They are both science courses and some schools want to see LORs from different academic areas.
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We went thru this with my kid; school wanted one stem and one humanities. He had no teacher in stem for even a full year (rotating door for his particular 2 classes) in junior year - did not feel like it was a good idea to ask anyone from 10th grade and didn’t feel like the 11th grade teachers knew him well, nor was he knocking it outta the park in those classes.
So he has 2 humanities LORs. It was a fight, though, with the counselor. Sheesh.
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