<p>Um, Nate. Sally Rubenstone clearly agrees with you, and even stated that SOME do appreciate the full merits of Penn. But remember the other applicants who are are HYPS-struck. Many of the people who GO to HYPS had Penn on the back burner. Generalizations are never 100% true, but they are still partly true.
Chillllax.</p>
<p>In response to the whole middle class ED dilemma:
Wharton is my absolute, absolute first choice, but I freaked last minute to apply ED. Just like you said, I couldn’t take the risk of being bound to an unknown financial aid package. Then again, I just eliminated a higher chance of getting admitted.</p>
<p>“I couldn’t take the risk of being bound to an unknown financial aid package”</p>
<p>There’s the risk that you could have gotten a better FA offer from another school, but what risk did you fear? Because U Penn is a Common App school, if their FA offer is not enough to support attendance, you just say thanks but no thanks (after an appeal) and apply RD elsewhere.</p>
<p>We visited Philadelphia several times but never thought to visit UPenn. This past summer while in Philadelphia, we visited the college. My son fell in love with the campus. In hindsight, I wish we had taken our older son to visit the campus too but he’s very happy at his school. My soon to be college freshman realizes the competition to get in is fierce. He has made another school his dream school - just in case. Good luck to all!</p>
<p>“Because U Penn is a Common App school, if their FA offer is not enough to support attendance, you just say thanks but no thanks (after an appeal) and apply RD elsewhere.”</p>
<p>^ Let’s get the word out: there’s no practical risk for the non-well-to-do to apply ED to their one dream school above all others. But if you don’t have the one dream school, don’t apply ED; compare your FA options with other schools.</p>
<p>i agree…especially since it takes away from people who WANT to go there.
getting the ‘ED edge’ is a horrible idea. if you don’t like it enough that you’re sure you wanna go there…you’re wasting your time, and everyone else’s.</p>
<p>This is a great business strategy on the part of Penn. They are advertising a higher ED acceptance rate, and trying to take high achieving applicants out of play. During our info session summer of '09, this aspect of the admissions ritual was emphasized several times. Now the Dean is promoting the concept. Well played!</p>
<p>I applied and was accepted ED to Penn and it was definitely my first choice. The Wharton program combined with the active community involvement I saw during my visit to Penn reaffirmed what I already knew – Penn was the school for me. </p>
<p>From a financial standpoint, I’m low-income and needed the financial aid that Penn and other top schools offer. However, I wouldn’t have picked a school based solely on aid even if Penn wasn’t my first choice. I think students need to realize college is your home for four years and a life-long investment.</p>
<p>Finally, I can honestly say I’m not looking forward to meeting Penn ED students who don’t want to be there as much as I do. All the ones I’ve talked to have been passionate about Penn, but if you complain about not going to Harvard or Stanford, I’m not going to sit there and listen to you whine. </p>
<p>what attracted me most to penn is the unique major they have that combines politics, philosophy, and economics. plus the incredible diversity/ amazing opportunities there are what makes the schools attractive to me, not just the ivy school label. it seems a like a place where amazing things are happening and i want to be there!</p>
<p>I don’t think you can make a generalization based on a limited sample of applicants. I’m applying to Penn early because I’m passionate about Penn, not because I’m passionate about the Ivy League. I’m not even going to apply to the other Ivies.</p>
<p>While it may be nice to know early, I strongly suspect that the primary purpose in applying to Penn (or any other school) ED is to boost the chances of admission. This is true regardless of how passionate the student is about the school. Even if you loved Penn, why else would you make that commitment?</p>
<p>Good question. Other than knowing early and boosting chances, are there any other reasons to apply ED anywhere? Perhaps greater availability of FA funds?</p>
<p>It’s hard to know for sure, but I’d guess that ED does not help at Dartmouth; the ED pool is likely (certainly?) more self-selected than the RD pool.</p>
<p>An increased chance of acceptance IS my primary reason for applying early. Penn is my first choice, therefore I want to boost my chances of acceptance. I was responding to Sally_Rubenstone who claims that students apply early to Penn primarily because they want to go to an Ivy, not because they want to go to Penn. This is not true for me. Another reason I am applying early is to avoid the stress my friends (who aren’t applying early to any school) are going to face in the spring, assuming I get accepted to Penn ED.</p>
Perhaps, but the same could be said of Penn and other ED schools. The point is that the ED admit rate at Dartmouth is roughly double the overall admit rate, just as it is at Penn.</p>
<p>At all of these ultra-selective schools, the higher rates can be because of the self-selective nature of the ED pools, rather than because of increased chances. At less-than-ultra-selective schools, where “love” for the school is not assumed and ignored, ED is more likely to increase chances, but can still mostly be due to the nature of the ED pool.</p>
<p>Only SOME students do this, and I didn’t mean to imply that it’s the norm. A number of those I’ve advised over the years have seemed more interested in taking their best shot at any Ivy, which has put Penn’s ED option front and center on their radar screens. Yet I didn’t mean to suggest that this is true of Penn ED’ers in general. Keep in mind that many of the students I’ve worked with are those who have paid for private college counseling and can often have more of an Ivy-do-or-die attitude than the population at large. So talk about self-selected groups … that’s one right there! It’s hardly a random sample of aspiring Quakers.</p>