I can’t wait for the semester to be over. I think it’s about 2 weeks until finals. D25 actually has a week left of 1st semester after Christmas break but they do all of the finals before break so it’s a nice easy week. Her Mock Trial season is just starting and she is a captain this year (she didn’t realize until a couple of days ago). She is the only junior on the team, which is just crazy to me. Yesterday she had to help decide which kids would be on varsity vs. jv. I don’t envy that at all!
We’ve visited most of the colleges she wants to, but might make a 2nd visit to one over spring break.
Funny that the colleges have no problem coming to us for our athletes! Go to a football game and you can spot the recruiters all sitting together. Maybe they could set up some booths for the other students
Wanted to pose a couple of questions on a crisp Friday: What is your opinion on the advantages of ED/REA/SCEA in terms of admit rates? What are you basing this opinion on?
A cursory stroll through the scattergrams of admissions data for my child’s HS, seems to show that for the very, very competitive schools, ED/REA doesn’t seem to affect the test scores needed to be considered viable candidate. It seems the same is true for GPA at these schools.
As one descends on the competitiveness scale, the ED/REA “bump” in admit rates seem to increase, with certain schools reflecting this behavior more than others.
On interviews, I’ve heard various admissions officers say that there is no difference/advantage and there are others that say that the slots for institutional priorities are more plentiful for the early rounds (which makes sense). Thoughts?
At our school, Ivy+ don’t seem to give a significant boost, but there is a slight edge in terms of acceptance rates. Having said that, the very strong kids who took that shot, routinely get rejected by the “plan B” schools (JHU, WashU, Emory, Tufts, etc…). At the same time, the kids who did not quite have the stats for that first tier so ED to these schools have a great success rate.
Up until very recently, Penn explicitly gave legacy applicants a leg up specifically during the ED round but not during RD. I’m not sure if any other colleges do this.
(There is much debate about whether Penn has actually changed its policy, or whether they’re just not being open about it—and Penn isn’t saying one way or the other.)
I think I get what you’re saying: StrongGroup1 applying ED to Ivy+ appeared to get a slight edge in acceptance rates, but they coupled that with rejections from “planB” schools… i.e. yield protection? StrongGroup’ (not as strong) EDing to “planB” schools had a great success rate. Did I get that right?
That’s basically it. The difficult part for many of them is walking away from a deferral in favor of an ED2 option. And most end up applying to MANY schools because the results are completely unpredictable.
Nope. Our classes are only about 150 kids and the school is academically elite but not particularly known for athletics. We have a handful of commits each year but they are usually easy to identify.
Well its that time again–class selection portal opens on Monday. Its insane they pick classes when not even halfway through the second quarter. D knows what she is doing except for Social Studies…
Did campus tours a couple weeks ago. Confirms that she is looking for small to medium sized schools with the larger state universities off the list.
Our school requires financial literacy as a graduation requirement but instead of taking it as a stand alone class it’s also offered as part of AP Macro.
Agree with this. The “Plan B” schools give a quantifiable boost for ED app. I’m thinking WashU, Vanderbilt Northwestern type schools.
The tippy tippy tippy top schools won’t boost for ED because they don’t have to, their yield is just that high without needing to play these games. The early admits with this cohort are the strongly hooked: athletes & whatever institutional priorities admissions is focusing on. So admission rate might seem higher for this cohort but it’s really not for a regular unhooked folk.
Agreed that works very well for the students do not have anything hanging over them over break. Just like colleges do. Is this a private schoo? The expensive private schools in our area do this but public school has end of semester late January.
I think as a rule, since ED2 does nothing for the student, schools offer ED2 only because they are interested in yield protection, so very likely do give a “bump.” I am not suggesting they are accepting sub par applicants, but by the time RD comes around for these schools, there are very few spots left.
Yes. We start towards the end of the 3rd week in August. Because of how Christmas falls this year we have school all the way to the 22nd so almost an entire week longer than usual. That leaves only about a week left of the semester in January (we go back Jan 8 I think). So mid-January is the start of semester 2. It is really nice to get finals done before break, but kind of weird to still have a week of the semester left after. Oh well.
