Herein lies the problem. ‘You think’ they’ll throw merit.
I allowed my kids no ED apps bcuz I was fearful ED = little or no merit. They don’t need to. They have you.
I could afford a school like CWRU. However as a parent, I chose not to.
So ED was out. If we gave up possibilities…that was our choice.
That’s why I advise students in that category to only use their in-state flagships as safety. They really don’t have any other real safeties. Or matches.
So there is no harm? Just disappointment and/or feeling slighted by a “lesser” school not giving an early result?
Not sure what being a lawyer has to do with anything. I think it is fair to ask for clarification on your position because it is frankly very confusing.
Just curious … those high stat students who are deferred in EA, what are their RD decisions?
They were all waitlisted. None of them chose to ED2.
Please square the “harm means not getting accepted” with your response here. Because I don’t see how the student not getting accepted (yet) EA means that she missed out on an opportunity or that she relied on any misrepresentation.
The decision tree is (1) figure out if you are applying to a school SCEA/ED? (2) based on that choice, can you apply EA anywhere? (3) If you can, do you want to? By the time you get to 3, the only impact EA has is that you possibly get a decision earlier than if you applied RD. Maybe there might be a boost to your chances of merit or admissions on EA depending on the school, but if as you say people aren’t rejected EA, then there is no negative impact EA v RD.
My friends and acquaintances in the legal profession tend to interpret certain words legally, and sometimes very differently than I’d normally use them.
I’ve explained it before.
That might be your kid’s decision tree. Not sure how you assume it’s everyone else’s.
One of the students I mentioned earlier actually needed some FA (her family was on the borderline in terms of FA). She was also deferred and then waitlisted by CWRU. She was accepted by another school but wasn’t offered FA. She contacted CWRU to see what it could offer (even though she was waitlisted) so she could compare and perhaps negotiate better. Amazingly (at least to me at the time), she was told by CWRU she would be taken off its waitlist if she agreed to commit and it would offered her an aid package that’d make her attendance cheaper by some substantial amount. She eventually decided not to accept the offer, however.
Is there value in a kid getting accepted to a college s/he has no intention of going to? I’d argue no. Is there value in a kid applying to said college JUST because there’s a possibility that s/he MIGHT get a microscopic advantage in applying early to a college s/he has no intention of going to? I’d argue no.
What exactly IS the decision tree of the kid who is unsophisticated (your word) and doesn’t understand that applying EA to a college which isn’t going to accept him/her, either means an early rejection (which stings for sure, but that’s what happens when you over-reach) OR getting deferred and THEN getting rejected?
Again- each kid. Attending one college once the dust settles. You don’t get extra brownie points for multiple acceptances…
Sounds like the school bent over backwards to try and accommodate, attract and make CWRU a competitive choice. What else would you have them do, make a financial offer into an abyss and basically negotiate against themselves?
Clearly as events unfolded this student was using CWRU as an absolute last resort. Her ED application served to provide her with
a spot at a great school, a financial fallback and negotiating leverage. Far from being damaged she benefited tremendously.
How does this prove your point?
Waitlisting must mean something different to you than to me. If the college wasn’t playing a game, I don’t know what it was doing.
When you list your house, you don’t slash the price by 10% overnight. IF you get an interested, qualified buyer (i.e. the realtor says they qualify for the mortgage and are serious) and they lowball you by 15%, you may- in fact- counter with a number which is 10% lower than your asking price.
You don’t offer this “discount” automatically and to everyone (i.e. lowball your own house). You offer it to a serious buyer if you believe they are ready to go to contract, to save you the trouble of showing the house, keeping it heated and insured for another five months until another potential buyer comes along who might pay full price.
See the parallels? This isn’t a “game”, it’s how houses get sold.
She was taken off the waitlist and declined the spot and advantageous financial aid. Sounds like they both were “playing games”.
Regardless, in any sense of the word how was she harmed? She clearly benefited.
It appears that many writers here, and in other threads, are upset about schools practicing “yield management”. Let’s turn the tables. I see posts from parents whose student applied to as many as 20 schools (which bogles my mind, but that is grist for a different thread), yet they will only matriculate to one. Let’s say that student did not apply ED anywhere, and was accepted to only half of the schools to which they applied. This means that there were nine schools that were rejected by the student. In effect, the student is doing reverse yield management by applying to enough schools that they will get into at least one, and hopefully have some choices. And both the schools and students are acting rationally in their own best interest.
Colleges reject students for all kinds of reasons - they don’t meet the SAT cutoff, they are from high school whose students have performed poorly in the past, the school has too many students from that applicant’s state, etc., etc. Likewise, students reject colleges for many reasons - they saw a post about the stress on campus, their ex-flame goes there, there aren’t enough restaurants nearby, etc., etc. In fact, there is an entire thread about it on CC.
So then CWRU made the right decision, as they were not the applicants’ first choice… how was anyone harmed?
She didn’t accept the offer??? CWRU clearly made the right decision…
Anyone still remember the title/subject of the thread? It’s about “yield protection”.
The school you ED to needs to be your clear first choice. EA? Not necessarily.
It seems to me that each party was acting in its/her own best interests. We can call it “gaming,” but both parties equally participated. CWRU saw a qualified applicant but was reluctant to offer acceptance and an attractive financial package because it was skeptical of this candidate matriculating, for whatever reason. When the student showed further interest by seeing if she could get off the waitlist, CWRU came through with what sounds like a very generous package. The applicant still chose to go with another option, so CWRU was not a preferred choice. She may or may not have shopped the CWRU package with the other school she finally chose. In any event, this seems to me show a healthy example of the marketplace working out and not a college taking advantage of a student.
CWRU offered her an acceptance and she flat turned them down. What kind of sense of entitlement does she have? CWRU probably should have outright rejected her EA rather than deferring…