<p>This thread is for the people who are applying to Claremont McKenna College during the regular decision admissions period. </p>
<p>My D is applying RD. She has already applied to Pomona ED1 but will get her CMC app in this week, keeping in mind the 12/1 merit aid deadline.</p>
<p>merit is 12/1 have to apply or auto</p>
<p>I already applied. How about you guys?</p>
<p>My D has submitted her app.</p>
<p>Hello everyone.</p>
<p>Seeing as this is a small school, which has two ed rounds, what are the odd of being accepted during rd?</p>
<p>The overall 2013 acceptance rate was 10.8% and the ED rate was 26.3%. I believe about 40% of the admits came through ED, so the RD acceptance rate is probably around 7 or 8%.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.cmc.edu/ir/CDS_2014-15_Annotated.pdf”>http://www.cmc.edu/ir/CDS_2014-15_Annotated.pdf</a></p>
<p>My D was accepted ED1 to Pomona so she has withdrawn her CMC app. Best of luck to everyone. CMC is a great school (her dad went to CMC).</p>
<p>@Encord ED accounts for about 50% of the admits, but only about 10% of the applications. The “non-hook” regular decision CMC acceptance rate is about 3%. It’s a real crap shoot, even with stellar credentials. Just look at the applicants rejected in ED1. </p>
@84stag
Pleaaseee tell me that isn’t true and somewhat misleading! So non hooked applicants who aren’t rich enough to apply early are basically screwed!?
@couplemoreweeks, if you look at last year’s CDS, CMC had 6,043 applications and accepted 651 for an overall admit rate of 10.8%. It looks to me like there were 675 ED applications and 178 admitted ED. That leaves the RD pool at 473 admits out of 5,368, or an RD admit rate of 8.8%. Still a dauntingly low admit rate, but not as bad as 3%.
HAha okay thanks, I figured something was up. But I guess it is true that if you’re an unhooked applicant, the chances are even lower than 8.8 percent, since a portion will be filled up by (sometimes) less qualified atheletes, urms, and legacies!
@couplemoreweeks It doesn’t cost any more to apply ED than RD, so I’m not sure I understand that not being “rich enough” is ever a factor for admissions. CMC gives lots of need-based aid to all who qualify, ED or RD. Keep in mind that an ED acceptee can opt out if the family doesn’t get the financial aid package they merit. That does not look good for a school if too many ED acceptees don’t enroll. CMC typically loses 1 or 2 per year, so that’s a good number for them.
The point I’m making is it makes no difference to CMC (and other top schools) whether to give aid based upon how the student was accepted.
Now, to my other point. I’m afraid my non-hooked RD rate is accurate. In fact, the non-hooked ED rate is very low too. During ED, CMC tries to nab most of their student athletes. While those applicants have to be strong academically, the requirements are much lower. Even the Ivy League schools have a similar policy for the athletes (3.5 GPA and 1600 SAT, and you’re in at Harvard if you can dunk a ball or throw a 92 mph fastball). At CMC, athletics is a much better hook to have than almost anything else, including legacy, first-time college, minority, etc.
The bottom line is this: the highly qualified un-hooked RD is in a lottery with hundreds of other similarly situated applicants. Just look at prior years’ threads, or even this year’s ED1 threads. You’ll see amazing rejects, and similarly amazing accepts. But to say that it’s anything else but a crapshoot is really deluding yourself.
I know since I’ve been through it with my kid this year: I’m a legacy, very involved with the school (with time and money), don’t need financial aid, and my extremely qualified kid (lots of varsity letters but no desire to play varsity sports in college) was rejected ED1. Had I not been a legacy and had she been a bit better at soccer and wanted to play at the school, that wouldn’t have happened.
@84stag
Actually it does matter a lot whether you apply ED vs RD in terms of financial aid. If you apply ED first of all you are very unlikely to get any merit scholarship money (this is what someone at the admissions office told me) and that is because merit scholarships are meant to entice students and if you apply ED you are obligated to attend. Same goes for need based financial aid. If you apply early decision to a college, the college will not have to be extremely generous with their aid because roght when you submit youre app you are essentially agreeing to accept whatever FA package they give you. If you are poor, then you are right it won’t make a difference, and if you’re rich then you can obviously afford it. But if you’re middle class, then almost EVERY online resource, almost every college counselor, and even some of the admissions officers will tell you NOT to apply early decision. There have also been numerous topics about this on college confidential. Here’s another thing: at harvard my EFC IS 10k while at CMC it’s closer to 30k. Both of them purport to meeting 100 percent of demonstrated need. Applying to CMC early decision would then obligate me to pay 30k while not even considering other schools that have more generous aid. Also, if you apply ED like I said before, you will be given as little aid as possible within a certain limit of not being so unreasonable that you get to opt out of te contract. And opting out is not as easy as you make it seem. What they offer you has to be extremely out of the range of your EFC and you have to prove that there is absolutely no way that you could pay for it. Many people I know have tried to before, and it is very difficult. You also can’t negotiate with schools when you apply early and say that _______ offered me 40000 a year while you offered me 30000 how can you make it work
also @84stag
I don’t think it’s fair of you to say that the reason your daughter wasn’t accepted was because you were a legacy (because that definitely helps her case) or that she wasn’t a better athlete. Maybe if she were a better athlete her grades or EC’s wouldnt have been as impressive because she wouldn’t have had as much time. Or maybe it was her essays or letter of recs that weren’t as great. And looking at different threads for top schools basically gives you no information at all. Sure everyone has similar scores and grades wjile some are rejected and others are accepted, but that doesn’t really mean it’s a lottery system. The ones who got in were the ones who had amazing essays and letters of recs and who didn’t just think that they were entitled to get in and blame his/ her rejection on hooked applicants.
Actually I am sort of with @84stag. According to the CMC Undergraduate Fact Sheet, 30% of students play varsity sports. I don’t believe for a moment that 30% of applicants were recruited to play varsity sports and 90% of them were cut, the same as the rate of rejections for non-athletes. I believe 30% of those students had a non-legacy hook and that the non-athlete admission rate is somewhere around 6%. I have been concerned about this for a while with highly athletic LACs – they need so many athletes to meet their team needs, yet their overall admission classes are so small, that non-athletes stand little chance of getting in. Whereas a school of 7000 UGs with the same athletic needs have a much higher admission rate for non-athletes.
Choosing to apply ED (instead of RD) can be a devastatingly wrong decision for a middle class applicant with high stats. As noted above, the “poor” kid who gets in to a “full need” school will have it all met, so no reason not to apply to that first choice ED. The “rich” kid will be able to afford it handily, so again no reason not to apply to that first choice ED.
But the middle class kid will be handed a package, based on need, that is NOT always as affordable as that EFC proclaims. Unless the kid can get out of the ED agreement by showing the offer is unaffordable, this kid forfeits the right to see what type of aid other schools would have given him…including possibly full ride merit scholarships.
It is poor advice to recommend that such students apply ED…unless you are also advising that they can just back out of the ED agreement by claiming lack of affordability…which seems like equally poor advice (and questionable, morally) to me.
The whole “ED v RD” choice is a difficult one. However it seems a waste not to ED for the right school since the chances are much better than RD.
@Daddio3
Thinking about that, you and @84stag are somewhat right, but that 30 percent number accounts for the entire school. Meaning that in reality only about 7 percent each year are on a varsity team. Then, I’d say about 4 percent are walk ons and maybe 3 percent are actually recruited athletes. So that’s just 3 percent of the class, which is still a fairly large number when the admissions rate is only 12 percent. But in terms of applying early, the acceptance rate is closer to 30 percent, so having athletics as a hook is are not the only reason why somebody didn’t get in. Granted, if @84stag kid was a recruited athlete, she absolutely would have gotten in, but that goes for every single college. Another reason why athletes usually can have worse stats is because A LOT of their time goes towards athletics and practice, so it is somewhat understandable.
Also, yes it is a difficult choice and a waste if you don’t apply to ED for your first choice if you are either RICH or POOR. If you are middle class, there is very little choice in the matter and you’re stuck with your circumstances and have to tough it out in the “more difficult” applicant round or apply Early Action.
@couplemoreweeks I think you misunderstood what I was stating about my situation. What I meant to say was that the legacy component, while a positive, was much less important for my daughter than the athletic component is for a non-legacy applicant.
CMC (really CMS, since the sports teams encompass CMC, Harvey Mudd, and Scripps) have superb athletics and a top notch facility for all their sports. They take great pride in athletic excellence and they need to recruit to get those athletes. As @Daddio3 noted, the school is small so many of the students need to compete, and do so at a high level, for the sports teams to be successful.