EA is for a school to tell its applicants to choose it for their own reasons. The schools that offer both EA and ED aren’t serious about EA. They just want to use it to increase the total number of applications.
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But how do you know this? Someone gets in EA. Maybe these high stats students have not constructed the best app for this school. Maybe it’s apparent that this was a cut and paste from another app.
If you like the school, throw your hat in the ring, especially if you think you’re a strong candidate. No need to do the work of the AO for them by rejecting yourself!
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For CWRU at least, no “cut and paste” is necessary. It doesn’t require supplemental materials or essays.
Probably something along the lines of Black Friday sales. I’m guessing that ED is more popular at the T20 type schools. Sooner or later someone will always open the doors earlier to try to make a sale. Might as well have an EA.
As a donut hole family ED wasn’t really an option. EA might be for that group. Imagine having everyone wait until March for RD with scholarships and visits crammed in before May 1st.
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I always wonder about this.
If you have no supplemental, you’re making it easier to apply and this likely will get more - why not - apps?
But if you’re perceived as near elite, you’d think they’d want an essay…whether it’s creative or a why this school is major.
It’s almost like you are begging for apps…no different than WUSTL or W&L, allegedly elite schools that waive app fees as well as Chicago who waived if you submit a FAFSA. Of course more work is required.
Many colleges admit by stats only (no level of interest consideration) for at least most of their class. Of course they know that yield for higher stats admits is lower, but they take that into account.
BTW. Congrats on ND. We know many grads and they’ve all done well. One of my close friends just had kid number 3 accepted. One graduate doing well and his junior is doing fantastic. Just got an internship at one of the top hedge funds this summer. 4.0/36/NMF type like your son. He’s doing very well. Last one wants to be a doctor.
Not coincidentally, CWRU is also one of those few schools (which happen to offer similar application options) that offer application fee waivers broadly, so it’s a freebie for some students.
Those tend to be public universities which receive large number of in-state applications. No public university that I know of practices yield protection for in-state applicants.
Personally and I know others disagree but you have 20 common app slots. I’m not saying to use all 20 although one of my two did. But if I had 6 or 8 apps and there was a school that looked like it could work and had no fee or essay why not waste an app?
Maybe someone thought CWRU was no shot so never considered and found out it worked. Or a Dayton, etc.
With kids applying to more and more schools overall yields have to be lower (in general, not 100% of schools).
What family sends in their deposit before acceptance?
If you have no supplemental, you’re making it easier to apply and this likely will get more - why not - apps?
Agree, not sure why low-yield colleges would encourage more “why not” (no essay or other work required) apps. Sure, you do get lower acceptance rates but you have a harder time figuring who will actually enroll.
Most who get accepted or don’t get accepted to UF and UGA, etc.
Chump change - $25 and $35 for those two. Guess you can call them an “application fee” if you wanted.
But if you don’t pay early, you may not be able to stay 
on campus that is.
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Thank you all. This thread has been an eye opener. We have been a been naive in thinking there were some hidden gems where my daughter might have a better shot of getting in because the school was in what was considered a “less desirable” location (Pitt, Cleveland, Rochester, etc.). But it appears the places we had genuine interest in have been used as safeties for a while now and these schools are doing something about it.
I still don’t buy some of the rationale for them doing yield management (“they could end up overenrolled”) because if they are sophisticated enough to id incredibly qualified kids and stun them with a no, they are obviously capable of factoring this into their enrollment forecast.
They could definitely get just as good a class and maybe better (if some of their “unlikely to enrolls” surprise them and come) without it. So I think it comes down to institutional ego and the chase for prestige.
We now know to have no expectations of admittance at the “yield managers” that we apply EA to. And some of those we will forgo completely (fee waivers and no supplemental are now a red flag for us for expectations, but a green light for submitting and seeing what happens).
I will not let my daughter bend to the trend of ED, especially as it makes its way down the food chain- which these things always do.
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Not really. The CWRU’s in this country don’t have the huge endowments of Harvard. Sure, all colleges would like more prestige. It all comes down to managing the money they have and getting the most qualified students who they know will attend. It’s not about stroking egos.
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Lindagaf Not sure I follow what you mean. If they admit a very high stat kid and offer them merit, if that kid does not attend, it costs them nothing. If they do, their admissions stats are enhanced. I don’t see a financial upside to weeding them out, but do see a possible yield enhancement which is strictly nonfinancial unless I am missing something.
This conversation is becoming circular.
They want to offer merit to a kid who shows interest because they want that kid to attend. They don’t want to waste their time offering merit to a kid who views the school as a safety and shows no real interest.
When they manage to get a student to matriculate, perhaps by offering merit to a very high stat kid, that helps them in many ways. Like begets like. Better applicants enrolling leads to desirable outcomes across the board. It might not happen tomorrow, but it’s a boost to the end goal: increase reputation, increase rankings, increase retention rates, all of which will lead to an increased endowment, among other benefits.
I don’t want to derail the thread, but I’ll mention Northeastern. They used a similar strategy. It took time, but they essentially “faked it until they made it” and now they are in an enviable position. Not saying that CWRU does the same thing. Northeastern used to be much easier to get into and was very generous with merit scholarships, and now they don’t need to be. (Northeastern’s location definitely helped, but that is a different conversation.)
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Your son has amazing stats. He’ll do well in any college he decides to go to.
IMO yield protection is not a simple rejection of high stats students. Colleges do want kids who will enroll. But part of this legend of yield protection is also the psychological need of the high stats kids to make sense of any deferrals and rejections. The truth is that to some extent admissions are random. Students are regularly not accepted to some schools that are targets or likelys.
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Maybe someone can educate me. I am looking at CWRU CDS for 20/21.
A total of 29,084 applied.
A total of 8,804 were accepted. (acceptance rate of 30.2%)
Side note, they offered an amazing 9,760 a spot on the wait list- almost a third of applicants: a potential source of high yield I suspect - “we will admit you, but only if you agree to come”. People should note that 1,076 were admitted from the wait list. Many CDS’s I have looked at admitted none or nearly none.
A total of 1,305 ultimately enrolled (14.8% yield). This is quite low.
Now go down to the Early Decision section.
Only 962 of their 29,084 applicants were ED, and of these, 366 were admitted. ED is a very small proportion of their pool. Very small. If ALL of the admitted ED’s attend as expected, they amount to (366/1305 in freshman class) 28% of the incoming class. Further, these 366 admits were a TINY % of overall admits (366/8804=4.1%). So after ED, they presumably admitted another 8,438 students to fill the remaining 939 empty seats (1305-366=939). So they expect to yield 11.1% of those who did not apply ED.
Check me on above. If so, a good template for evaluating other CDS’s. A few observations:
- CWRU has not enticed a huge number of applicants to ED. Many selective schools fill 50% of their class through ED. case is down around 28%. Yield is obviously a sore spot, and they are fighting back.
- I suspect they use the waitlist to further enhance yield as noted above. Not alot of chatter about this on this forum.
- CWRU is still very dependent on EA and RD to fill out 70%+ of its class
- I suspect many deferrals become acceptances when the kid demonstrates great interest post deferral. Deferrals are not admits, so they do not affect yield. They really want to know they will come, despite what they indicate on their CDS re “demonstrated interest”.
In sum, CWRU seems to be pulling out all of the stops to increase their yield.
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Yield variability is definitely a financial concern. Adding more low yield, highly variable acceptances can increase the financial risk of the college.
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If they were, their yield would be stuck in the teens for many years.