My daughter is very interested in Univ of Edinburgh’s vet school—especially the idea of being able to enter from high school. But she doesn’t have all the AP science classes she would need to get in now. But she is planning on applying to Hartpury Univ for their equine program!
All true, and super frustrating when these kids are being forced to commit to a place very early in the application season. Things change, financial situations change and kids have FOMO. It is a lot of pressure for them.
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I said this is another recent thread but will say it again.
Taking the 30,000ft view - the students on this board will be going to college next year. They are smart, accomplished and capable.
While it may be frustrating to know that some applicants have more options (ability to ED, etc) than others - those advantages are already baked into each applicants admission process. In my opinion, frustration about not being able to apply ED is the same kind of frustration with the fact some 16 year olds are going to get new cars for their birthdays, some are traveling the world, some are able to do expensive ECs because their families can afford to pay for those, getting test prep help and a private college counselor. People with more money have more/different options.
Stepping back from the differences between those with more money and privilege and those without - every student is completely in the driver’s seat at this point in the admission process. The student has earned the grades and scores on their transcript. They have chosen their ECs and the level of commitment they’ve given those. The student chooses which schools are on their college list. The student chooses their LOR writers, and writes their own essays.
There are so many good to great schools in the US (not to mention abroad). No one is forced to apply to any of several dozen highly rejective schools that fill much of their class with ED applicants.
The college admission season is filled with trade offs for every applicant. Very few applicants can apply to their absolute number one school, be confident they’ll get in and know it will be affordable. This is one of the first ‘adult’ processes and decisions our children experience. Frustration, exhilaration, dealing with scarcity and trade offs, choosing between imperfect options, being told no…hopefully the college admission process isn’t the first time for a student to experience those things. Hopefully they have a more than passing acquaintance with those things so that they can process this adult experience and come into it with a sense of perspective.
Going to Oberlin rather than Wesleyan isn’t a tragedy or failure. Purdue isn’t a lame door prize if MIT doesn’t pan out. Starting at a CSU and getting a guaranteed transfer to a UC is a well worn, smart path to a great education at a fantastic price - not the last refuge of the mediocre student.
Instead of worrying about FOMO, I wish students had a better sense of the large world of possibilities out there they may never have heard of before starting their college search in earnest and open their minds to the idea that limiting their college list to ‘known to them names’ might be more limiting than the idea they won’t be accepted to their reach schools. So many students go into college thinking they want to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, banker, teacher - those are the jobs they’ve heard of. There is so much more than most 17, 18 year olds know.
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I think that is 100% true - it’s why I have never understood why kids keep testing to get another 10/20/30 points when they already have a very good score. Is the kid with the 1520 really less academically qualified than the kid with the 1560? That being said, I don’t like the push towards ED (which can really disadvantage middle class students who may want/need to compare FA/Merit) although I understand it from the schools’ perspective. With kids at the top end applying to crazy numbers of schools (and AO’s are aware of the trend) they want to lock in as many as they can.
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I don’t like the push towards ED either; I think there are relatively few students who know where they really want to go to school in October of their senior year or have a real #1 choice.
I think lots of ED applications are ‘gamed’ by students and parents to be the reach school they think they are most likely to get into via ED, or a Hail Mary “dream school” attempt. Not necessarily the number one school they would be absolutely most excited to attend.
I wish there was better counseling/discretion about the choice to ED, but that would be way too paternalistic for most. And, to be fair, using ED the way I described above is a trade-off choice - one adults get to make. No matter how much I disagree with that choice.
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I’m not opposed to ED, per se (and S24 is considering it) - I just think it is tough when the schools are admitting a huge percent of the class via ED. I think Tulane only admitted around 100 applicants in RD last year - that seems ridiculous to me. Why bother even having RD - just force all kids to commit up front - that would be more honest.
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My biggest beef with ED is deferral. Either accept or reject and let the kid (who presumably really wanted to go to that school) move on and possibly pick an ED2 school.
I know we like to say it doesn’t matter, it’s OK if you don’t ED…. But the reality is that (at least at our school) kids who get rejected RD (after they were rejected by their ED choice) are MUCH stronger than the kids who get in ED.
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I agree with you. Why draw out the process? That’s especially true of schools that defer a ton of kids. If they were only deferring a small number, those kids could feel like they might have a chance in the RD round - as is, with huge numbers deferred, it means little. Also, at our school kids who are accepted ED at some schools (looking at you Northeastern and BU) are often weaker than those rejected during RD.
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And personally, I think these are often the least likely ED applicants to get any sort of boost. Because highly selective colleges can and will defer or reject such ED applicants.
It is more either when an applicant is hooked, or perhaps when an applicant is so well-qualified that the college is worried they are being treated as a backup (aka “Tufts Syndrome”), that applying ED might help.
But if you are really marginal at best for admission, and not hooked, then the college has plenty of incentive just to reject you, or at least defer you to RD. Which does mean giving up an automatic yield, but obviously they frequently do not care enough about that such that they do in fact defer or reject a lot of ED applicants.
Those might be yield protection cases.
I think big picture, you do have to decide if a school like that is your first choice. If it is just a third-tier backup for you, I know it might be frustrating if it doesn’t work for that purpose, but the colleges are frustrated too.
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ED is a fantastic strategy when done right but stats do matter. If your child is near the 25th percentile and really wants to go to a school, that’s what I recommend. But a 1300 SAT kid that’s unhooked shooting for Dartmouth in ED ain’t happening.
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But in all fairness, can’t it be somewhere in the middle? Just because a school isn’t your clear first choice, doesn’t mean it’s a third tier backup.
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This is part of the problem in our house. Kid is in the fortunate position that he could choose to ED, but there is so much he doesn’t know due to lack of life experience and the decision hasn’t really come into a sufficient amount of focus, hasn’t crystallized or something. No top choice, or perhaps it’s just a scary commitment. Hindsight will be 20/20, in March.
Agree. It’s frustrating that, basically, most T50s+ are reaches even for a kid with stats at or over the 75th percentile for virtually all of them and that ED seems “necessary” just to get back to the levels of uncertainty that existed prior to test optional.
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Well, we can think like a college. What is your estimated yield chance if admitted?
If there is like one other college you prefer, you might be able to figure out how to use EDII, if available.
But if there are like four other colleges you prefer–this is becoming a real problem for the college. If it admits you RD, and you don’t yield, it has to go to the waitlist. And that may mean it has missed out getting ED applicants it preferred to whomever they can get to come off the waitlist.
So I don’t know if there is a great solution here. But particularly in popular markets like Boston, these colleges are looking at really grim yield rates from RD applicants with high numbers and such. So if you are not really offering them anything more than a pretty grim yield chance, they understandably might not want to wait on your decision.
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And the thing is, there are not in fact a lot more highly-qualified applicants. It is just everyone is seemingly applying everywhere. And this is making it very hard for colleges to reliably model yield at the RD stage.
ED is an admittedly crude way of trying to solve this problem, and entirely too one-sided in the colleges’ favor.
But they need some sort of solution.
I note in the UK, the UCAS is limited to five applications, and you can’t apply to both of Oxford and Cambridge. We’d likely consider that ludicrously restrictive, but it might be closer to a reasonable compromise than a system that ends up basically meaning you only get to apply to one very selective college, wherever you apply REA/SCEA/ED.
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Ever since test optional, I worry that yield algorithms have not caught up to the reality that having a high score does not actually mean the student is more likely to attend elsewhere because chances are now lower and uncertainty now higher. Wish they would consider why it apparently doesn’t work to assign a yield probability and accept the corresponding number of high stats kids to yield one rather than waitlist/deny; I see that as a failure of enrollment management expertise. And what does that say about what a kid’s perspective is on the level of uncertainty when the experts can’t even figure it out correctly. As you note, ED makes total sense from the college’s perspective, but kids get the short end of the stick by either being forced to commit early or likely forego opportunities.
Sorry I’m just whining at this point. Maybe I wouldn’t be whining if my kid had an ED picked out at this point (hey there’s still time, especially for ED2) though if he did have an ED choice, I’d be nervous about the seemingly inevitable cold feet that would plague him with an acceptance (though I’m sure he’ll be fine wherever he ends up).
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By the way, for whatever it is worth–in our feederish HS, we still try to figure out which colleges are trying to yield protect, and which do not. And it appears to us many do not. Typically, these are colleges NOT in super popular markets like Boston. They still have a yield problem, but it appears many choose to address that issue with merit offers as opposed to yield protection. Indeed, robust merit strategies are logically inconsistent with ED-yield-protection strategies (why give merit offers to someone bound to yield?).
So I often think this is something for people who are facing this problem to seriously consider. If you are just looking at “target”/“match” colleges in the most popular locations, you likely are making it harder to avoid yield protection.
But if you are willing to look at the many great colleges in not-so-popular locations, particularly the one that offer merit aid? Maybe you do not need to be so worried.
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We see this with JHU, Emory, Tufts, Wash U… for the most part all schools kids would truly consider. Maybe (rarely) someone makes it into a T10 and passes up the rest, but these schools are 2-3 for most.
Ha, location is a major stumbling block here. Now, if Boston were in a warm locale, maybe there would be a top choice for ED by now, lol.
Two of my older kids chose the safeties with merit discounts, not so much for the merit but they simply liked them best out of the options in the end. Senior prefers the state flagship safety over those and I know I should be thanking my lucky stars that at least he feels fine about the flagship at the moment.
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I’m not so sure they have not modeled the situation well. Again, their models may well be telling them a B+ admit in ED beats an A- admit in RD where there is an X% chance the A- RD admit will be replaced by a B- admit off the waitlist.
Now I know a lot of kids are complaining X% must have been a bad estimate, because they don’t get into a college they would have preferred.
But how many other kids ARE getting into colleges they preferred? And if ALL their “targets” admitted them, which would they choose? High numbers kids are applying to up to 20 colleges–how are those colleges supposed to assign a high X% to a kid who has really good numbers and might be applying to as many as 19 rivals?
But to be clear, ED is total overkill and overly in the college’s favor since they can just defer. However, I kinda doubt personally these colleges–which these days are often spending many millions on sophisticated yield models–are doing anything obviously wrong. They are just in a situation where what might be clear to the kid in retrospect–I totally would have attended if this was the one more college that admitted me!–is very much not clear to the college in advance, because it had no way of knowing where that kid was applying and what was going to happen.
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