Rolling Admissions: Good or Bad?

<p>Everyone here has reflected on what what rolling admissions does for them. It is all about what it does for the institution. Rolling admissions are used by large instituitons because it gives them a way to deal with large numbers of applications. At smaller schools, they get all the apps at a certain late date (say, Jan 15, Feb 1) then they have to review them all and make decisions by April 1. That's fine if you have only a certain number of apps to review, or if you have a lot of money to hire loads of readers. At large schools such as UMich, rolling gives them 6-7 months to consider all the apps. They need to watch their yield, so they begin acceptances in the fall. They accept some, defer some, reject some. After the fist of the year, when acceptees have heard from other ED/EA schools, they gain a better idea of their yield. They can adapt their criteria for acceptance as they go.</p>

<p>What is meant by "rolling admissions"?</p>

<p>Wealth of Information, you're exactly right. Rolling admissions can be good for SOME schools, especially schools which generally admit a high number of their total applications, but it can be difficult for schools with some selectivity.</p>

<p>The problem, as you have identified, is that you have to make decisions before you know what your overall app pool will look like. You have to do some good modeling and projecting trying to conclude how many apps you are going to get, AND what quality they are going to be, AND what yield you'll get when you admit them. </p>

<p>What you don't want to do is make a decision in October that you'll later regret--for example, you have a pool of outstanding late applicants that you have no room for, because of less-outstanding students you admitted much earlier.</p>

<p>The ideal way to handle this is to admit the best ones early and keep on admitting them as they apply, and make everyone else wait until you have the whole applicant pool in and evaluated. But that's hard on applicants who have to wait so long, and in the meantime they'll get offers and scholarships and attention from other schools. So when you do get around to calculating that yes, you want them, you have room for them, and will admit them--you're no longer their first choice.</p>

<p>There is some support on Michigan's campus for dropping the Rolling Admissions model.</p>

<p>what other schools offer rolling admissions</p>

<p>Very well said hoedown.</p>

<p>Excel- check up on these to make sure but some are University of Pittsburgh, Penn State University Park, Rutgers U, Purdue U, U of Mich, U of Wisconsin, U of Illinois Urbana Champaign, and Indiana U.</p>

<p>From the applicants perspective RA is Good.</p>

<p>Re post 11, money running out is true for privates, but not for some big publics like U of A that can continue to offer OOS tuition discounts throughout the application cycle.</p>

<p>We visited a school last week that had "rolling admin". The only "disadvantage" that the admin advisor told us was that at their school, the later one applied to "rolling admissions," the higher the stats needed to be accepted. In other words, students with stats "on the lower side" have a much better chance of being admitted if they apply to "rolling" one or two weeks after they complete their junior year. The advisor said that such a child would get "deferred" or declined if he/she waited until fall to apply. Can't say that this is true for all with rolling....</p>

<p>dude..... which U of A??? Arkansas, Alabama, Arizona??</p>

<p>hehehe.........that was a funny comment.</p>

<p>Very mixed. Some schools are great at cranking out decisions on a rolling basis, some are not. It all depends on the applicant, how early you apply, and how many applications are processed. I got into two schools rather quickly after filing the application based on rolling. As for the third rolling school, I submitted my application in late october and it was processed in early november. I have yet to hear from them...</p>