ED can be quite problematic if finances are an issue, but I thought OP indicated they were not.
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@2018_2022mom I remember having this conversation with my spouse when my oldest child went through college admissions. He was experiencing what ifs and my child was not. Her preferred schools happened to be match schools for the most part. Many of them offered nonrestrictive EA and looking backwards, it was a relatively low stress process. She had many great choices, including her favorite, and had a great college experience there. Kid #2 has equally competitive stats, ECs, and the like, but has gravitated more towards reach schools. It has been much more stressful, the waiting is exhausting, and the rejections or deferrals are no fun. If your kid has a genuinely no-regrets ED choice that you can afford, count your blessings!
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@roycroftmom Our school college counselor is new this year, so we’ve branched out and had my daughter’s profile reviewed by a few sets of experienced eyes. No hook and like you mentioned, we’d be looking at less than 5% chance of admittance.
@mamaedefamilia Thank you for sharing your experiences and I will think good thoughts for you and your second child! : )
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I am a firm believer in ED. Even more so if finances are not an issue. The colleges love ED for a number of reasons and it truly gives your applicant’s chances a significant boost. With Ivys and top 25 caliber schools if you don’t utilize ED your applicants chance are infinitesimal. If your child has her heart set on a particular Ivy League school she really has to apply ED. I am not sure what your definition of “Level 2” school is, but if its a school that offers ED 2 there’s your out. She can apply ED 1 to the Ivy and if she isn’t successful, apply ED2 to the level 2 school. What is key is that you take a layered approach. You can be more aggressive in ED as long as you have a plan to back that up with some solid EA opportunities, possibly an ED 2 and then a handful of regular decision schools that fit in the target (i.e. that have acceptance rates in the 20%-40% range or higher) and safety (acceptance over 40%) range. You just don’t want a list exclusively of top 25 schools. Lastly as a full pay applicant you will have options in regular decision as long as you have a balanced list.
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A number of Ivies (and Stanford) don’t offer ED, just SCEA.
At first glance, ED would seem to offer a distinct advantage at Ivy level schools - a typical split would be 18% acceptance rate ED vs. 6% RD. However if you are an unhooked applicant from an over-represented region, once you account for recruited athletes, URM’s, first generation, international students, and development/VIP admits, the true acceptance rate gets pretty close to that 6% level. ED might give you an advantage, but only in the sense that buying two lottery tickets gives you an advantage over buying just one - the end result is likely going to be the same.
I think ED gives you a much bigger advantage at schools a step down from Ivy level. To use an example, if you apply to Boston College ED and are well qualified, you have an excellent chance of getting in. If you are well qualified and apply to BC RD, your chances drop considerably because so many slots have already been filled by ED applicants and the applicant pool is so much larger.
Also, one thing to be mindful of, ED only works at schools like BC if you are well qualified - it’s not a magic bullet that will make up for deficiencies in an application.
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@EricStratton First choice school is SCEA. Second choice school is also private and does not have ED 2.
I don’t know if you realize that one of the main reasons their chances are infinitesimal in RD is because of ED. ED (along with ED2) lock up 50-80% of the seats in an incoming class, leaving few seats open for applicants during the RD round.
When you are talking about top 25 schools they are all “Level 1” in the sense that you only get one bite at ED /SCEA. There are however a few top 25ish schools that do offer ED2 -Vandy, Tufts, Wash U, Bowdoin come to mind.
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The list of schools that do ED2 is now much longer. They’re often the worst offenders, making RD almost meaningless.
ED /SCEA does eat up a big chunk of seats, but most top schools don’t fill more than 50% of their seats in the early round. The real reason is that there are tens of thousands of applications in regular decision. You want to be considered in the small pool of applicants that apply ED. As an example last year Harvard took 895 out of 6424 applicants in the early round and 1085 out of 33,824 in the regular round. Even accounting for athletes and hooks etc, your chances are significantly better in the early round.
That’s incorrect. Most fill more than 50%. A few (such as Chicago) fill up to 70-80% through ED and ED2.
Which are the others apart from Chicago that fill so much? I was also under the impression that most colleges capped ED admits at around half of the expected freshman class.
Sure, if by “significantly better” you mean your chances go from 2% in RD to 4% in early. And yes- doubling your chances.
But Eric- you are giving the impression that for a particular kid (unhooked), applying early is the way to go. And that’s why the top schools get oodles of applications from the “Hail Mary” crowd, who think “Oh my chances are significantly better”. Guess what- if you aren’t competitive in the regular round, applying early doesn’t somehow magically make your application better.
“Even accounting for athletes and hooks”- you are really misstating the reality here. If you are an athlete or hooked, you are going to apply early. That’s how it goes. So a high percentage of the kids in the early round are getting in- because they are hooked! That’s how hooks operate.
U Penn is transparent in saying that if you are a legacy, apply early or don’t expect legacy to give you a bump. The other colleges are not as transparent, but the message has seeped out anyway. An unhooked kid in early is still competing against the mega donors, legacies, athletes, Julliard-level musicians who don’t want a conservatory education, etc. That unhooked kid just doesn’t know it…
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ED1 typically locks up 55-60% or so of all the seats. If the school also offers ED2, then an additional 10-20% of the remaining seats are spoken for. CMU (and maybe others) becomes creative this year. It asked its RD applicants whether they were willing to convert applications to ED post ED announcement! The inducement was that they’d get their acceptance decisions within a week of conversion (long before RD announcement). EDs are so one-sided in benefiting the colleges that they’d do anything to make students apply ED.
Harvard got rid of early decision in 2008 or so for a few years. To have a level playing field, particularly for those needing financial aid. I don’t remember but I think it proved burdensome for admissions and financial aid offices to deal with everyone at one time.
I don’t know where you are getting your info, but of the Ivies that offer ED only Penn at 54.6 % admitted more than 50% of their class in ED last year. Dartmouth& Columbia were 44%, Cornell and Brown were 40%.I wouldn’t say most fill more than 50% in ED. UChicago is very secretive about their admissions numbers, they don’t publish a common data set for instance. They also have Early Action, so any numbers that you see out their are likely a blend of ED & EA.
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Blossom - I agree with your point. I am assuming for arguments sake a candidate that is competitive. But the numbers are what they are. If you are a competitive applicant you have a better chance if you apply early decision. Adding in the human factor - that there are much fewer applications to read in the early round, your application is going to get more of a look. Colleges love ED because they are all preoccupied with their yield numbers because having a high yield improves your ranking with US News & others.
I would take a layered approach, but let her go for it with an SCEA to her top school. if its HYP they let you simultaneously do early applications to state universities. If she has interest you could also do a Michigan or UVA and then apply to her second choice in regular decision if things don’t work out with her first choice in the early round.
So it looks like we have narrowed it down to HYP or Stanford as the #1 college choice?
If she is competitive for those colleges, she will likely have many great college options if she applies to a good mix of reach, match, and a few safety colleges.
Some things to consider:
How many students from her HS will be applying to her #1 choice college SCEA?
How often does someone from her HS get accepted to said college?
Is there anything about her that “stands out” in her application? (e.g unique EC or national awards that would draw attention to the adcoms?)
If she is your average, excellent student but does not have a “hook” than I might agree with you that ED to her second choice might be the better “play” to shoot her one ED shot. I am assuming that her second choice college is a Brown, Cornell, Duke, Vanderbilt type of college?
These “second-tier” colleges will give her a better chance of acceptance (around 15% - 22%) in ED than her first choice. Not a given by any means but if you can “package” her application correctly, she will have a much better chance to get in ED to her #2 top college.
With that said, the most accomplished and naturally gifted college student I know personally, applied SCEA to Stanford and was flat out denied. She ended up getting RD acceptances to Brown, UPenn, Cornell, Duke, Berkeley, and is a current student at Harvard.
So the moral of the story is that most tippy top students will get into some very good colleges no matter if or when they use their EA/ED card.
Maybe my post confused you even more?
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