Parents of the HS Class of 2024

Parents Forum Class of 20xx Community
6084

By the way–this is a little philosophical, but my observation is that at this stage of the annual cycle, most anxious parents and applicants are still in the mindset of hoping that just one college they really like will admit them.

But in just a few short months, we will be at the part of the cycle where at least some kids have been admitted quite a few places, and are choosing between them.

And at that point, it will suddenly be clear how even very desirable colleges can have pretty low yield rates out of non-binding admits, as kids with multiple admissions from very desirable colleges can only choose one.

But by that point, no one will really be spending much time thinking about all the great colleges who are seeing their admissions offers get turned down.

And then that cohort will be off to college, and the cycle will begin again with the next cohort who starts off anxious about getting into just the one college . . . .

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6085

So I think that depends on who you are.

Colleges like Middlebury get a lot of frivolous applications, meaning applications where realistically the applicant was not within the range of qualifications it normally takes to get admitted, and without anything else unique enough to warrant special consideration. For fairly obvious reasons, they don’t get as many of those frivolous applications in ED–like even if some of those people apply frivolously ED somewhere, they can only apply frivolously to one place ED, but can apply to many places frivolously RD. So logically colleges like Middlebury will get a multiple of whatever frivolous applications they get ED when they get to RD.

But those people don’t really have a 9% chance of admission (or whatever the RD acceptance rate is). They basically have a 0% chance.

Meanwhile, there are other much stronger RD applicants who Middlebury actually wants. But these are people likely to have other competitive choices, because they are strong applicants. So these sorts of applicants Middlebury needs to admit a lot of, because they are not going to yield at a high rate. And so these people don’t have a 9% chance of admission either, they have something much, much higher.

OK, so when you look at these acceptance rates, the right way to think of them is that if Middlebury accepts 39% out of ED and 9% out of RD, that just means that 39% of the ED pool are the sorts of applicants Middlebury wants, and 9% of the RD pool is. Which is consistent with that observation about frivolous applications.

But that has nothing in particular to do with your individual chances. The right question for you as an individual is whether you are the sort of applicant Middlebury wants. If you are, then they will admit you. If not, they will not. And the idea when you apply affects how they see the answer to that question is not necessarily well-supported by this data, because there are alternative explanations for those statistics.

Indeed.

From the colleges’ perspective, the question is going to be how many of the enrollees they want in their target class can they get out of ED. That is a function of how many such people actually apply ED. If they get enough great applicants in ED, they will be able to get more of their class out of ED. If they get fewer such great applicants in ED, then they will be able to fill less of their class out of ED.

OK, so there is a sort of loose tier of colleges that have ED and apparently get enough great applicants in ED to be able to use that to enroll a majority of their class through ED admits. Middlebury is in this tier, and so are a number of other colleges.

But in the greater scheme, this is still just a narrow slice of the overall US college ecosystem.

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6086

That’s fine though - even kids applying REA can EA to Maryland. ED is the issue. (And yes, only kids from our school who EA got in)

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6087

Of course Middlebury has ED II. The main purpose of ED II is that colleges like Middlebury are happy to get competitive second-choice ED applications from people who miss out on REA schools and such.

But they are also happy to be third-choice for the RD applicants they like, the ones who actually yield out of their pool of RD admits.

6088

Of course, the assumption is that the ED pool is going to have fewer “Hail Mary” type applicants - kids whose grades/test scores wouldn’t typically be good enough. Since I was curious I looked at ED applicants to Middlebury from our school over the past 2 years - it’s a small number as most apply RD. It was clear that at least in this case that the ED applicants were significantly less academically competitive than those applying RD. Only one was accepted. Lots of very strong applicants were rejected RD and a bunch with top scores/gpa (1540+ SAT) were waitlisted. A truly exceptional applicant is unlikely to be denied outright but many will end up on the waitlist.

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6089

I would be cautious about assuming that your HS is representative. That said, there are some important caveats–what counts as a strong applicant is not necessarily just about academics. Like it can include recruited athletes, legacies where that is still a thing, and other special cases.

Still, if you are looking just at “unhooked” applicants, I think it is true that colleges like Middlebury still get some frivolous ED applicants. But again when you are looking across the whole field of applicants, there are necessarily only a fraction of such frivolous ED applications to go around. Because it is at most one per applicant, and it can be many more than that per applicant in RD.

And that is consistent with these statistics. Like, Middlebury certainly didn’t admit everyone who applied ED. Take out all the recruited athletes and such, and it still only admitted a fraction of the unhooked ED applicants.

But it sounds to me like in your particular HS, Middlebury might be a particularly popular choice for frivolous ED applications. OK, but that just means those kids were not submitting frivolous ED applications somewhere else. But some other HS might be the opposite. And again in the end, it is limited to one ED per applicant at most.

6090

Also keep in mind that many colleges use ED to fill their sports teams and lock in desirable hooked applicants, including Questbridge scholars, Posse scholars, etc. Some of these applicants might not have the best stats, but they help ensure a well-rounded class. Need a quarterback, or accomplished cellist, or a first-generation student from rural South Dakota? Lock 'em in.

6091

And I would say that LACs in general get far fewer “hail Mary” applicants than the Ivies and schools like Duke and Penn State. No one from Texas is applying to Bowdoin so they can brag to their friends that they got in.

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6092

S24 dropped Tufts from his list for the same reason.

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6093

I think mine with either drop Amherst or Bowdoin based on fatigue and the supplemental essays they require. (Which is fine with me!)

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6094

They get fewer applicants in general. At our UMC suburban HS in MA (class size around 400) schools like Middlebury only get 7/8 applicants a year.

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6095

Yeah, I think their issue is more that their target admit pool likely applies to some Ivies and other Northeast LACs too. And they don’t necessarily know where they stand in an individual applicant’s pecking order, hence the low RD yield.

That said, I think these days pretty much every notable college is getting a lot more frivolous applications than it used to. This is being discussed in various ways by lots of different AOs, and it is obvious in the numbers too. Like back in 2018-19, Middlebury got 9277 applications. So in 2022-23, they got over 4000 more. Some of those are going to be good new applications, but most were probably not.

So I think a lot of people get really freaked by these increasing application volumes and decreasing admit rates, but I really don’t think that is as big a change for actually well-qualified applicants as some seem to assume.

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6096

You have to factor in a large chunk of incoming students are recruited athletes, who are expected to ED I. It would be interesting to see the stats with those students removed from the equation.

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6097

Amherst has the option of a graded paper instead. If they’d rather turn in a response you only have to choose one of several prompts and there is some overlap with other common prompts, so they are likely to be able to recycle an essay.

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6098

My guess would be an international one for D24. She goes back and forth on it so much, because it sounds like an amazing experience but she is starting to understand what it would really mean to be a very long and expensive flight away from everyone she knows. She may end up deciding that a semester abroad will be enough.

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6099

A friend’s kid was encouraged to switch to ED 2 and then was rejected by U Chicago. Such a scam.

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6100

My daughter was called into a counselors office yesterday. It was a person she had never met before and not her normal counselor. The counselor was worried and a bit upset. She said "Paige, you have a very good GPA, but you are not on track to graduate. You have not taken a math, English or history class since your Sophomore year. You have not even taken College Algebra. Why is that? "

(My daughter is ranked 7th out of 400 students. Straight A.)

My daughter just looked at her and then said “Your notes do show that I have been in the IB program the last two years now right? I have taken only advanced IB classes. All 25 IB students take the exact same schedule the school designs for us. Right now we are on Calculus for math”.

The counselor looks down and says. “Oops, I missed that part. You are good to go”.

My daughter said she was terrified at the time she had screwed up somehow, but now thinks it is funniest thing ever.

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6101

Our school’s senior college counselor sends out monthly email newsletters to parents. This month’s newsletter just came out today. Here’s some advice it included:

  1. Work on finishing regular applications. “Some students want to wait to get decisions back from their early applications before starting to work on regular decision apps. This is a terrible strategy! Most colleges will release decisions in mid to late December, and if they do get negative news, it’s a terrible time to try and scramble to get something together.”
  2. Begin looking at scholarships.
  3. Don’t keep adding colleges to your kid’s list…counselor has a lot of text here, but here’s a snippet: “Often these last minute additions are unrealistic options where your student has little chance of admission. Let’s just throw Stanford in there, why not see? Stanford had 45,000 students last year that just threw it on their list to “see” but were ultimately denied.”
  4. “Offer to look over your senior’s college application BUT remember that this is your child’s work so remain in the role of advisor and proofreader and respect their voice. The essays should not sound like they were written by an adult.”
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6102

A friend’s S23 applied to 13-14 SLACs including Vassar, Bowdoin, Carleton, Colby, Skidmore, Wesleyan. He was admitted to all of them EXCEPT Middlebury. So you’re right - the top applicants often have a lot of choices. But Middlebury was particularly tough last year.

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6103

Thanks to everyone for the Boston suggestions! MFA and Isabella Gardner for sure. Also thinking of an architectural tour of Boston Public Library and the Bells and Bones tour of King’s Chapel. MIT museum sounds great, my sis already had Harvard Museum of History on her list so I suspect she would be game. Cambridge day is going to be a busy one. Looked at many menus from the restaurant suggestions, so many good options!!

On the school front, one of D24’s friends had a really close call with her ED application…teacher didn’t turn in the recommendation, and was incommunicado for days. This teacher had written a previous recommendation for a summer program (that the friend was accepted to), so there was no reason to believe that anything was amiss, until it was. The kid was just gutted. D24 had also requested a recommendation from this person, due the 15th, she is going to ask someone else now but it’s really cutting it close. (The friend ended up calling the ED school and they gave a short extension, and the teacher finally submitted it, but that kid will never forget how they felt at midnight 11/1).