Continuing in the spirit of confessing my weak moments as a parent–I found out Grinnell not only had no application fee, they had no supplemental essays. And they offer merit. And so I was like, “S24 should totally apply to Grinnell! Why not!?!”
And then I reminded myself of what we have been doing all along, the importance of being thoughtful and selective, and why I should NOT be encouraging him to apply everywhere he can, just where he would actually want to go.
So yeah, good to remind ourselves sometimes of what this is really supposed to be about.
FWIW we added Grinnell bc we were reasonably confident of acceptance - the focus was NE LACs it was a better fit than the state school. By the end of the spring it had grown to be a very loved school. The 35,000 merit didn’t hurt either (and it was so hard to walk away from!). Watch out for a very brief “we love to hear why you love Grinnell” show up sneakily in the portal.
Take the water taxi from logan to seaport and get a lobstah roll(alwsys cold). Lunch or Brunch on Newbury street for people watching. 600 or so block of Boylston street is the finish line to Boston Marathon and pretty cool, right where the Boston Public Library(cool library and one of the TV news stations films from the cafe) is.
Macalester really has like the best setting a college can have as far as I am concerned. S24, though, liked Carleton’s more expansive campus significantly better, and the associated traditions for that matter. And he liked Northfield and it is close-enough to the city for him.
So Carleton I think is really hitting the campus/setting sweet spot for him, between Macalester (too compact) and Grinnell (too small-town/rural) . . . and of course is the only one of those which does not offer merit. Because he is apparently allergic to merit.
But I think Macalester will at least stay on the list, so that is something.
This is going to sound made up, but it is 100% true.
After he submitted his REA application, I found out if admitted, he might actually be able to get a substantial outside scholarship, but for only that college.
I swear when I told him this was a possibility, he looked seriously disappointed. Like I had somehow tricked him into it . . . .
I get it. I have one child who seems to make it a point of pride to not buy things on sale. Even knowing they’d be able to get more if they looked for a coupon or waited for the item to be on sale does not move them.
The one good thing about that attitude is they do seem to really think about what they do want as they have limited their choices by this decision. Very few post purchase regrets.
I have enjoyed reading this thread for a while and wanted to introduce myself: I have a S24 and a D27. S24 is in the middle of EA/ED applications, focusing almost exclusively on SLACs with the (smallish) state flagship thrown in for good measure. My husband and I both went to (different) SLACs as well, so he comes by these preferences honestly. I grew up in Europe and applied to colleges with the intention of studying there for only a year (as a post high school year abroad), but ended up staying. My own search was very haphazard since I did not know anything about the process - I applied to only three schools sight unseen. It has been fun to tour colleges and experience the search process from a more informed perspective.
Our situation is a little unique in that S24 attends a private school that does not give grades, only written reports. The school has excellent college placement, so I tend to trust the counselors, but it has felt a little as if we are flying blind. We really have no idea where S24 stands in his class - we just know that he’s taking a very challenging course load, and that his counselor is supporting his applications to top SLACs. He does have a good SAT score and plans to submit that.
S24 is interested in a variety of subjects, including chemistry and foreign languages/classics - so very much a liberal arts kid. He is a serious volleyball player, but very, very few SLACs that interest him offer men’s varsity volleyball, so he plans to focus on club sports in college.
I’m an economist and deal with data for a living, so I have enjoyed digging into the CDS data for colleges of interest. I have been particularly interested in some of the ED strategy discussions on this thread. I remember that the admissions rep at the Williams info session we attended was very clear that applying ED does not increase a student’s chance of admission. Given that the ED applicant pool is fundamentally different (athletes, legacies, wealthier students,…) but that there is no public data that would allow an outsider to observe these differences, it is impossible to disprove that claim based on the CDS data. But my economics training makes me a little suspicious, given the various incentives at play. S24’s counselor was very clear that top SLACs prefer ED applicants and that it would be in S24’s interest to pick an ED school. The counselor said the school has been surprised by the very impressive students that have been rejected by SLACs in the RD round. Given that S24’s school has been sending about a quarter of its graduates to top SLACs each year, and that I know they have conversations with at least some SLAC admissions reps, the counselors should have a fair number of data points. It’s tricky because S24 might not apply ED if he didn’t think it would give him an advantage, since he likes a lot of the schools he saw. He wouldn’t mind seeing where he gets in first and then choose based on admitted students days and more focused research. But he would be very happy to attend the school to which he is applying ED, so based on his counselor’s advice, ED it is (and ED2 if ED1 does not work out).
Welcome to the thread. Good luck to your S24. Hope the ED choices work for him.
It is so hard to decide to do ED or not when the kids dont have a clear favorite. Our S24 also did not have one so we decided not to ED but we are second guessing ourselves and thinking if we should ED2 to some where.We will see how things go in the next Month and then decide.
I hear you. D22 applied to 21 schools with no ED or EA. It was a VERY long spring (and busy Xmas break) As for my 24, we are taking a break to enjoy school and focus on end of term exams. We will revisit the CommonApp on Thanksgiving Break.
On the other hand, I suggested a last-minute, no fee, no supp application to my D21, and that is where she ended up! Oberlin has proven to be a wonderful fit. And now I am more convinced of the wisdom that “kids wind up where they’re supposed to be.”
DS was unhooked, and had excellent stats from a prestigious private school. His was the kind of application that is admitted to top schools (and he eventually was). BUT, he had much better luck in RD round. He applied to Williams ED and was deferred. I suspect it may have been because he was an unhooked student. What incentive did Williams have to admit him before comparing him to hundreds of other students just like him in the RD round?
When we got to RD, he had his pick of top notch schools to choose from - including Amherst, Bowdoin, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Middlebury. But ironically…never Williams who deferred him again in the RD round. I wonder sometimes if he would have had better success competing “fresh” in the RD round at Williams.
If you apply ED to highly competitive schools unhooked, you really have to ask yourself: why would the school say YES to me right now rather than wait to compare me to the full application pool? Sadly, I think this dynamic is even more in play if you need financial aid and apply ED to schools that are not need blind.
That said, I am strong believer that kids end up where they are meant to be.
Congratulations on your DS’s excellent options! I’m sure the wait after a deferral felt long, so it must have been particularly validating to have such a great list to choose from.
Williams’s incentive would have been to lock in your DS rather than risk losing him to one of the many other excellent schools that ultimately chose to admit him. In more general terms, ED helps the school to manage yield and reduce risk. Who knows why they chose to defer a clearly qualified kid in your particular case: maybe they had other institutional priorities that year, maybe they knew from past experience that they get a number of kids with your DS’s profile in regular admission and were willing to risk losing him, etc. Not knowing each school’s individual priorities, or the composition of the applicant pool as a whole, is what makes this process so uncertain - not to mention that we have human beings making these judgment calls and they will get it wrong occasionally. But to me it is not clear why a school would introduce ED purely (or even primarily) as a process to admit hooked applicants who can be clearly identified no matter when their application is processed.
I wouldn’t generalize whatever information Williams shared about their process.
For some top SLACs (who might fill more than half their class from ED), the admission rate for ED is up to 5x better than what then remains still “left” for RD - due to the manifold larger RD application counts.
As you stated, in particular for strong applications, where a college predicts that the student will also get RD acceptances at other more competitive schools and might prefer to shop & enroll elsewhere anyway, they can do a no-risk acceptance during ED of a student that otherwise would have become an RD waitlist.
There is no more definite way to “demonstrate interest” than ED.
For lower percentile applications (within that college’s range), I do suspect that there is less (little?) ED/RD advantage.
