<p>"Is there ANYONE who has a 50/50 chance of admission to the country's top colleges, almost all of which accept less than 20% of applicants?"</p>
<p>Actually, if you are one of the top five students in our school and one of the Intel semifinalists of which we have one or two every year or so, I think that's about your chances from our school. (At least that's what the scattergrams and anecdotal info tell me.) BTW all of these top students also do at least one other thing well, track, orchestra, etc.</p>
<p>"Is there ANYONE who has a 50/50 chance of admission to the country's top colleges, almost all of which accept less than 20% of applicants?"</p>
<p>Yes, bearing in mind that a 50/50 chance of admission is also a 50/50 chance of rejectionl there are plenty of such applicants. Which is why the colleges are saying they could reject their entire classes of admits and admit an entrily different class of equally qualified applicants. The 20% of admission takes into account weaker applicants than the 50/50 ones.</p>
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If the students take their lotto-ticket wing and a prayer shot at Harvard, it means that Harvard is their first choice, and the only reason to apply ED at other schools is to increase their chances of getting in.
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<p>Well that's not necessarily true. My son is applying to MIT and Caltech early action. MIT is his first choice Caltech might be 3rd, might be 2nd. He's applying to Harvard regular because it truly isn't his first choice, but on the other hand as a double legacy - if he got in there and didn't get into MIT it would definitely be a place to consider. Now I've read that legacies get a big leg up at Harvard's SCEA program, so it did cross my mind that the smart thing to do would be for him to apply to Harvard early where it might matter and not at MIT where it almost certainly doesn't. However, I just couldn't bring myself to explain to my son about gaming the system.</p>
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However, I just couldn't bring myself to explain to my son about gaming the system.
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<p>These kids aren't as fragile as we think they are.</p>
<p>My daughter and I discussed the possibility of her applying at her second or third choice schools Early Decision. It wasn't any big dramatic conversation that left her shaking with angst. She had already rattled the idea around in her brain, fully cognizant of the admissions odds implications.</p>
<p>It was a useful conversation to probe the strength of her first-choice preference (very strong) and kick around whether or not it was an unreasonable reach (conclusion: a reasonable reach).</p>
<p>I know. I know. Some would call this "gaming" the system. In our house, it was just a dinner table conversation.</p>
<p>ID now you are becoming facetious. If it was just a dinner table conversation at your house, fine. For other kids, it would be more problematic. Surely you don't believe your mode is the only possible mode, huh?</p>
<p>At our house, we declared the dinner table a College Free Zone. Kept us all sane because the college discussions did have their share of angst. Isn't that one reason we came to cc?</p>
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ID now you are becoming facetious. If it was just a dinner table conversation at your house, fine.
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<p>Not facetious at all. Why wouldn't you kick around "what if" scenarios? </p>
<p>Because of legacy considerations at one school and strength of her "academic rating" at the other, we figured her odds of acceptance ED at her second or third choice schools was approaching 100%. We had her first choice school pegged at somewhere in the neighborhood of 50%/50%.</p>
<p>She liked things about all of the schools. So, it was a perfectly reasonable discussion to have. Heck, she had already mailed applications to both of those schools before hearing the ED decision on the first one, so it wasn't like she hadn't visited and given some consideration to both schools.</p>
<p>As a parent, I felt like I owed it to her to question and confirm that sending a binding ED application was really what she wanted to do and that it was, indeed, a clear first choice school.</p>
<p>Quote : "Heck, she had already mailed applications to both of those schools before hearing the ED decision on the first one, so it wasn't like she hadn't visited and given some consideration to both schools."</p>
<p>ID: What am I missing? If your d. had already mailed out her applications including her ED one, what was the point of the conversation?</p>
<p>My Ds college hunt looks like it's going along similar lines.</p>
<p>Fortunately her likely ED target seems like the best choice in any event. Right now, anyway.</p>
<p>But it would be nice if she would be able to get a number of actual offers, and have the additional time to evaluate these options in more depth. Maybe she'd wind up preferring one of the others.</p>
<p>But, as chancy as admissions has become, she doesn't want to risk the scenario you described. Which is not at all far-fetched.</p>
<p>She mailed three of her applications at the end of October, early November. She had already mailed all three apps before she got the acceptance letter from the ED school.</p>
<p>We had the conversation about final ED decision in late October, after her second visit (overnight) to her first choice school. It was part and parcel of several conversations as she "debriefed" us about her overnight visit.</p>
<p>"She knows, though, that if she applied to Yale, it would be best to do so SCEA because her chances SCEA would be better than her chances as an RD applicant. But applying SCEA to Yale would make it impossible for her to apply ED or SCEA anywhere else. And the same rules apply to other schools: SCEA/ED applicants have a greater chance of admission. Thus, if my daughter applied to Yale, she would be decreasing her chances of being admitted to her second and third choice schools, and increasing her chances of being stuck at Safety U."</p>
<p>I totally understand. A year ago, my daughter was in a very similar situation. She had visited Penn and liked it very much, and she felt that she would be very happy there. However, she absolutely loved both Harvard and Yale and would have been thrilled to be at either. Her guidance counselor felt that if she applied ED to Penn she had a very strong shot; my daughter and I felt the same way. (Counselor did not push her to do so in any way.) She visited Penn again, overnighted, took five classes. It was great, but not magical for her. She contemplated hedging her bets and applying ED to Penn, as at the time she liked it better than anything else other than H or Y. We kept out of it. After a few days, she came to us and said that she just could not give up her dreams of Harvard or Yale. We told her to go with her heart - that something would work out. She thought hard and decided to apply SCEA to Harvard. As we had followed Andison's story, I insisted that she have several good safeties. She also had put in Dec 1 deadline applications for scholarship programs such as Emory's and Rochester's.</p>
<p>My daughter is a BWRK - not a URM. In December she was admitted SCEA to Harvard. Quite frankly, we were astonished. After years of reading CC, I had braced her for the possiblity of not getting into any "elite" schools. </p>
<p>In February she was admitted to Emory as an Emory Scholar. In April she was admitted to Columbia. The next day she was rejected from Penn and Yale.</p>
<p>The only moral to this story is that my daughter decided that she couldn't give up her dream and never know if she would get into Harvard or Yale. She did not hedge her bets and it worked out for her. We are not a gambling type family, so we consider ourselves very lucky. I do believe that she was not admitted to Penn because she did not apply ED. Maybe they just didn't like her application - who knows?</p>
<p>Today, she is an ecstatic Harvard freshman.</p>
<p>"She knows, though, that if she applied to Yale, it would be best to do so SCEA because her chances SCEA would be better than her chances as an RD applicant."</p>
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<p>BTW, I don't think this is true. I think it is a false reading of the statistics to make that assumption. IMO, kids do not get admitted early who would not get admitted in regular decision. </p>
<p>The only true advantage comes at schools with binding early decision programs. Here you shift the standard, in small part, from the qualifications of the accepted class to the qualifications of the enrolled class. In addition, you put your app in the hands of the admissions office at a time when they have a small pile to consider and have not reached burn-out stage. Thus, your app may get a more thorough evaluation.</p>
<p>Other than this small impact, the notion that a kid would get accepted early but not regular is false, IMO.</p>
<p>Actually, at Yale, Harvard, et al, I think it is harder to get accepted EA. From what I have seen only the creme de la creme get accepted EA. Makes sense. There's no benefit to the college from a non-binding EA acceptance.</p>
<p>Garland: The scenario in post 103. With ED in effect, apply to Northwestern only. With no ED apply to both Northwestern and Princeton . Maybe you wind up with Northwestern anyway, maybe not. This assumes both schools in question have binding ED.</p>
<p>In our case the Northwestern analog is also more desired, currently. But this could change, if more options were to be actually in hand.</p>
<p>FWIW, my observations of results from my first kid's school do not support the notion that the same standards apply ED versus RD.</p>
<p>Thing is, these days the Northwesterns of the world have also become highly competitive and cannot remotely be taken for granted either.</p>
<p>My daughter is at peace with her choice of a "Northwestern analog," to use monydad's term. I'm the one who is not at peace with the whole system. I would prefer that the student who is interested in a Princeton-level school and a Northwestern-level school could simply apply to both without worrying about whether he is gaming the system correctly.</p>
<p>That is exactly the reason why EA/ED should not exist. </p>
<p>My daughter lucked out, but she would not have been at peace had she not tried. Everyone is different ... I'm glad that your daughter is at peace with her decision and I hope it works out for her.</p>
<p>I asked my daughter how the students at Harvard reacted to the announcement of the termination of SCEA. She said most everyone was thrilled, and they hoped other schools would follow suit.</p>