Why do you care? (not singling out any particular poster, just asking in general.) As CHM pointed out- if the school fits, apply. Why does their particular assessment/yield/evaluation strategy matter? Once a kid gets to college, their contact with the admissions office is exactly zero. They are there for everything else. And if everything else is what your kid is looking for, why would you let your own (and probably off the mark) perception of how they handle yield color the rest of the educational experience?
I have friends who grew up in Boston. They would not let their kid apply to Northeastern because they remember when it was a commuter college when it basically accepted anyone who applied. Northeastern had a fantastic program for their kid’s interests, the price would have been right according to the Net Price Calculator; the location was fantastic.
I remember asking “why do you care what the college used to be 30 years ago if right now, today, it’s the right place for your kid?” No response.
Same deal with yield protection or whatever y’all want to call it. Why would it matter to your kid once they got to campus???
In this case, and I suspect other schools at this level of selectivity, a lot has to do with yield predictability as it relates to aid, need and merit. A high stats kid who commits to ED is going to get in unless there is a red flag elsewhere in their app. A high stats kid who applies EA when ED is available is clearly signaling that school X is not their first choice since they have opted for the optionality of applying to other schools, whether for academic, financial or other reasons.
Once an EA applicant is accepted, it becomes a one way option for the admitted student. In the case of CWRU, the aid decision comes with the EA decision. The school is also a 100% needs met college, so sufficient money (probability weighted I am sure, but still something) for this student must be set aside in the school’s internal FA budget/forecast. They may also assume for the most desirable candidates that they will have to fork out merit money and will need to budget for that. What this all does at this stage is limit their flexibility in the RD round because some amount of money has to be prudently reserved for admitted students.
I can’t blame or criticize a school for trying to manage its resources in the face of high levels of unpredictability as to which students will eventually matriculate. As a parent, you need to walk in with your eyes open, but at the end of the day, I agree with @blossom, our job is helping our kids navigate to a school(s) that best serves their academic, financial and personal interests and ignore the sausage making unless fraud/deceit are involved.
Short answer from my perspective…because the games played and extended timeline associated with being a student who is dealing with a school that engages in it aggressively might not make it worth considering. If I am highly qualified, but they defer or WL me due to management of yield, I might not have an an answer on admission or aid until months later than many of the schools who don’t play these games.
If the school is clearly my #1, maybe I suck it up (or maybe cave and ED). If I want an acceptance and f aid package to compare it to my other options (it could be my #1 if all factors align) then it probably doesn’t work.
Besides all of that, the tactics likely leave a bad taste to many such that lose interest. To many, deferral and WL equate to “we will get back to you if no one better comes along”.
It may seem a “game” from your perspective, but all schools try to manage yield. They need to.
Won’t speak to Caltech, but almost half of the STEM majors graduating from the UC system spent their first two years at community colleges. To my mind, this would suggest that the differences in certain types of classes offered at various “levels of colleges” aren’t quite as profound as has been suggested. This isn’t to say that there aren’t profound differences in the overall educational experience, higher division courses, job prospects, etc., but much of what is being taught in lower level courses may not be all that different.
If you peeled back the onion of pretty much any college you would find something distasteful. From yield protection to hiring practices to endowment management you could find something.
Not every school can be Harvard and not worry about yield.
Ultimately this is your kid’s list of schools, not yours. Good luck.
So aren’t admissions offices correct to equate a candidate who chooses to apply non binding EA (vs ED) as saying “we will get back to you if no one better comes along”.
This is how the game is played with both sides trying to identify their best options, maintain flexibility and ensure fit.
UCs, like many other universities, probably have multiple levels of the same course targeting different students. At Harvard, for example, Math 55a is dramatically different from Math 1a, even though they’re both calculus courses. Having successfully completed Math 1a doesn’t even remotely qualify the student to take Math 55a.
I wouldn’t either. However, the question I have is whether the college should offer EA (in addition to ED), that it knows are rather meaningless, to attract unsuspecting applicants who, for one reason or another, aren’t in the position to apply ED.
I assume that some EA are accepted, so it turned out to be a good option for them. It would be interesting to see the makeup of those. Do they over-index in certain traits? Would not be surprised for example if many of them were full or close to full pay. Cleveland, Ohio or W. PA residents? Other connection with CWRU? Or even more interesting if a lower level of academic grouping had a higher admit rate than the next highest level – something like we saw with the Harvard Westlake admissions rate to U. Chicago if I remember that thread correctly.
I’ve read this with interest. I don’t think any student can know for sure whether their deferral or rejection is due to yield protection. Most kids don’t get into all of their match schools (let alone their reaches) and they should set their expectations accordingly. Personally, I don’t like the proliferation of ED/EA/ED II because it tends to favor wealthier and savvier students (who already have many built in advantages) but it is what it is. If you don’t like how a school manages their admissions process you can always vote with your feet.
Caltech “calculus” is closer to real analysis, and has the expectation that students have had a regular high school or college calculus before, so it is not a good example of nominally the same course taught differently. Most actual calculus courses (not the business version) do cover similar material at various colleges.
But the point previously made is that there is a lot more room for topical variation in history courses than calculus courses.
I’m using a Caltech course only as a more dramatic example of the differences. For other colleges, many calculus courses, not to mention other “standard” courses in STEM, can also be significantly different.
Actually, Harvard Math 55 is the hardest of several variants of nominally sophomore level math (21, 22, 23, 25 are others), not nominally frosh level math that is single variable calculus that Math 1 is.
Forget the class and forget cal tech and Harvard which is the .1%
The point being - an education in whatever subject is available is out there whether at Murray State or Macalester or wherever.
Schools can use their own apps…even if less convenient…bcuz as consumers we allow them to by perceiving some are better than others and thus worth the extra cost…which in this case the cost is the hassle of obtaining 2nd and 3rd LORs from the same teacher and redoing other things that can be communized in a shared resource.
Sorry you don’t understand the point but I’m moving on.
The hassle of obtaining a 2nd or 3rd LOR from a teacher is what exactly- is there a teacher in America who does not have access to a computer- or, absent that, a Xerox machine? Surely you don’t believe that a teacher who is writing 12 letters for a kid is writing 12 different letters do you? One more button to push?
This. IMO, people overthink the gamesmanship. Stripped back, is the school - the academic program and community - a good match for you? If so, apply. If finances are an issue, then apply in a way that lets you compare opportunities. Oh, and apply to some safeties and matches. What the schools do with the application? That’s on them and has nothing to do with the worth of the applicant. Why let whatever you think the school admissions office is doing re: yield limit your choices? That is just you limiting yourself, based in pure speculation.
A couple of observations on EA: (a) schools adopt different strategies over time. Up to 2017, University of Chicago only did EA, now they also do ED. Wouldn’t be surprised if they drop EA once they believe they don’t need it anymore. The snapshot in time analysis doesn’t tell the story. (b) some schools do EA to spread out the workload - MIT straight up says that on their website.
Re: Case, they are encouraging early applicants, but that doesn’t mean they have the ability to commit to early admissions en masse. That’s the reality of EA anywhere. Deferral is not rejection. Yes, I know for elites the RD acceptance rates go down, but the Case RD numbers are far from dire like MIT’s are. You can’t judge the extent of yield manipulation before knowing RD results. And for the elite EDs, those acceptance rates are inflated bc of athletes, etc. If you are unhooked, your likelihood of admission doesn’t change much no matter which way you apply. And I don’t think the data is there to analyze if the financial packages differ between EA and RD.
So apply to the schools that meet your goals, regardless of what games you think might be afoot beyond your control. Think of EA not as ED light, but as a chance for an early reveal of an RD decision. That’s all it is.
Often the advantage in ED is that you are one of the ones around which the class is built. The CS major, boy from MA, musician, interested in journalism, etc. So when your doppelganger applies, the reaction is “got that already”. And so what if that ACT score was 36 and the admit had only 34. They both could do the work.
As for WL, having been down that road with my own kid, it was disturbing to find that a school with a freshman class of 500 offered WL positions to 900 and admitted 4 from the WL the prior year. But that’s how they avoided “forced triples” and kept the male female ratio at 50/50 (among other things.)
While it seems that many here are outraged on behalf of their kids, it is great that you are here and educating yourselves about how this works. It’s far easier to go through the process when you can do it with your eyes open and with a little foresight into what might happen. I originally came to CC through a Google search when I was learning about deferrals and WL. I admit, I felt less angry than simply clueless… It was a long year!
With that said, it all worked out great in the end. I suspect it will for you too.
Agree with Cate 100%. This “inside baseball” stuff only hurts your kid if you are eliminating a great prospective college because of some non-relevant criteria.
It is fun to play the yield party game- i.e. “who does it hurt if a school over-enrolls? Nobody”. But in fact- that’s not true. If a school is under-enrolled, the incremental cost of an additional student is marginal. Once a school is over-enrolled the costs begin to escalate- putting kids in hotel rooms? More expensive (both on a per-night basis as well as overall) than a dorm. Providing extra shuttle buses to get those kids to campus in the morning (which means 6 am to the athletic center for those who train, 7 am to the cafeteria for kids with an 8 am lecture, 8 am for the kids who sleep until the last second, 9, 10, 11… and then the reverse trip. Adding sections to popular classes, adding hours to the gym at night to accommodate the “after hours” workout crowd… costs start to escalate.
So sure- bad, bad college for trying to hit an enrollment target…to make sure that they can actually provide the experience that students expect!