I realize I wasn’t clear. My S23 is applying to Northeastern and we are considering letting him apply ED because the NPC was a pleasant surprise. We really don’t want to be full-pay. If he were to get in ED at full-pay, we would never know if his 2nd or 3rd choice would have been better financially. So I am wondering if going ED with the NPC calculation actually hurts his chances for admission.
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I don’t think applying with need will hurt your son at Northeastern in ED - but the assumption is that you can afford and will pay the NPC. You cannot rely on them providing you additional financial aid or merit scholarship to bring down the cost further.
And even with Ivy level stats because of the OOS limitations imposed by those state legislatures UNC, UVA and UTA are lottery ticket schools just like Ivies. My D18 with 35ACT 4.0UW 8-10 APS, varsity sport, musicals got rejected to all three and two Ivies as well.
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Well, that part is very true. I suppose there are many parents that want to apply to these schools because they are top whatever. And many times, that is the only reason. In which case, one has to take that chance. NEU LOVES full pay high stat kids. So, if the goal is to get into NEU (or Tulane, or Wake Forest) apply as full pay ED.
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Yes, I understand that. We were a NO on ED until we ran the NPC. Having 2 in college seems to make a significant difference. For S21, we got nothing and assumed it would be the same this time around.
Thanks for the insight!
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It would be a mistake to apply ED to some school that he liked less than UCB (has a great program for his major and our school has a great track record of getting kids in), USC (probably his favorite school, doesn’t offer ED), UW, etc. He has a balanced list with safeties that he would be happy to attend, so in any case he will end up somewhere that will make him happy.
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That right there is key. Don’t worry about Naviance, Scoir etc then.
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My son’s top three choices could go either way. We are aware he could get all of them or none of them. Fortunately, he has some safety schools he feels good about.
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That changes in the 23-24 FAFSA, unfortunately. The number of kids in college is no longer factored into EFC. Luckily I am on my last 2 kids.
Good to know. WHen we ran the NPC on Northeastern just this weekend, the results had the wrong year. So we need to double-check the numbers when it’s up to date.
Race/ethinicity- which portals/ colleges mandate entering race/ethnicity? commonapp/UCs/State of CA/ other?
@Pre-college pretty sure most colleges require that kind of data. I think you can opt out of, like, stating your religious preference, but they need the race/ethnicity data for federal stats purposes, I believe.
S23 is in at Alabama. I doubt he’ll go there but money could make it a contender, at least.
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Congratulations!! Keep them coming, right? 
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Some kids aren’t willing to forego finding out if they could have gotten into other reaches, even if that means reducing the odds to one of them. It’s not that they or their parents don’t understand the strategic and numerical advantage of ED, just that they are unwilling to make the trade off. It’s not purely about playing the odds for some.
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All good work, but I do wish the article hadn’t bundled things together (e.g., boys being identified as having more behavioral issues in K–12 contexts, and being less self-disciplined in the middle grades) in ways that made them seem monocausal.
My one major quibble is with the conclusion that part of the gender gap results from current economic pressures leading to boys being more likely to feel a need to enter the workforce. If that was the case you should see the gap shift consistently along with (or maybe following) measures of the broader economy, and that hasn’t happened.
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You can plug your kid’s stats into Niche and for any school you look at, it will show you a scattergram of where they fall in relation to other kids who have been accepted/rejected at the school. You can even drill down into selected majors to see that scattergram (very helpful if your kid is applying to a less competitive major, but the school is well-known for high stats majors, for example, UIUC, where the average ACT/GPA skews upward overall bc of the CS/engineering majors).
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How reliable is this Niche data, though?
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Wish I knew, and wish they said how old the data is. It is self -reported and you can see at the bottom how many data points/users are in each scatterplot. FWIW, N of 1: D21 got in everywhere she had stats “>55%” of accepted students, using data for her major, even though most of her schools did not admit by major. One of those schools was a reach, rest were matches and safeties. The percents did not correlate tightly with what we inferred from school-based naviance scatterplots, but there was some loose correlation.
The percent is not a “chance” though, so in my opinion it is limited in value.
I think it has some significant weakness at the reach schools: D23 is “>85%” and higher on all but one school(for her STEM major) and there is zero chance she will get into all but one, as her list is reach-for-everyone heavy.
Bottom line: I do not think you should put too much stake in it other than a relative and general comparison of schools/applicant pools.
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