Wake Forest wants to feel the love, as others have stated.
They may perceive some applications in the RD round from the Northeast and California as a backup plan if the students don’t get into Duke or a T20 in other parts of the country. They do not want to be that school.
If you can ask the counselor how many ED applications were accepted that may help. And how many RD acceptances actually enrolled.
From our competitive large public high school outside of Chicago, no one gets into Wake unless they go ED. All in RD were denied or waitlisted at least over the last five years. Lots of kids with stellar transcripts and strong ECs and recs, including our D21, show as much interest as possible and are still WL in RD. Our D did get into Boston College and Colgate RD and her year I believe the RD acceptance rates for those schools hovered around 10%. (Too lazy to look it up now but I did at the time and I’m 99% sure I remember that correctly.)
You’re not focusing your question on Colgate but that’s where our D21 enrolled and I know that in 2021 and 2022, they accepted about 60% of their class in ED and that does not leave a lot of spots. Acceptance rate for 2022 ED was 41%.
Bottom line for the list of schools in your title is, if you want your best shot, apply ED. No one likes to hear that. I get it!
Want to respond to your comment about being from a region that’s highly represented at Wake (or any other school). Of course it can be a disadvantage. A school like Wake wants to have kids from across the country. But you’re never going to know why a student gets in or doesn’t so you have to just take that into consideration when making a reasonable list.
We really just used the history from our high school as much as we could to predict our kids’ chance at acceptances and their results were almost exactly as expected. Colleges have patterns with high schools. We may or may not know why. Talk to the counselors at your high school and see what you can find out.
also Lafayette say they meet 100% of need but they manage that by taking the tack @tsbna44 mentioned they reject kids if they have too much need and that pool of money is out or running out.
I was curious so I checked SCOIR for our public NJ suburban school and similar. Multiple RD admits for 1400+ and weighted GPAs in the low 4s so top 30% of class
See. It depends on the school. Top 10% at our school (who manage to get admitted to top 20 schools) get WL at Wake in RD. These are kids with 1500+ and multiple APs who showed interest. Colleges have relationships with high schools. No one ever goes as far as to say that colleges have quotas per school but there are patterns.
My DD23 is going ED2 at Wake for the reasons above. Loved Wake ,Colgate and U Mich, but did not want to chance RD. SAT 1450 and GPA 3.83 UW
Per the 21-22 CDS, Wake’s overall yield was 37% – 1412 enrolled/3816 admitted.
Wake does not give us their ED admissions stats, though, so without that we can’t tell what the RD yield is. We know it’s below 37%, though, because their ED yield is at or near 100%.
I am from NC. Wake Forest really wants you to demonstrate interest. I would highly recommend the summer immersion classes Wake offers. My Senior loved her course and learned a lot about Wake Forest in the process. Ultimately chose a differently school further from home. Around here if you want to get in you ED. The RD pool is so much more competitive. So if you love Wake ED.
I have one child at Wake and another who graduated in 2021. Both submitted test scores. The first was admitted RD, the second by ED. Admit rates have dropped significantly over the last five years, due to several factors:
The common data set section regarding importance of factors for admission for Wake is quite revealing, especially when one compares it to other schools and would be worth OP’s time.
The school also has a new president who is determined to expand access to first generation students and those from reduced economic backgrounds. There have been many scholarships established since her arrival and the school’s endowment has grown substantially. I’m sure this is also reducing the number of admissions spots available to others. Current student enrollment is also maxed out now due to physical plant limitations, small class sizes, etc.
There is also an overrepresentation of students at Wake from the northeast. After NC, the next three states contributing the most to the student population are FL, NY, and NJ. CT and MA are also in the top ten. Trust me, there is no bias against northeasterners.
The underlying premise of this thread (24-29% acceptance rate) is not valid for Wake Forest now. DS chose ED because he knew several students with top scores and grades who were denied RD. I would encourage ED as well if possible.
Wake’s one that I wish we made a trip down to visit. Not a lot of interest up front of going to NC but as we got further into seeing other schools, it ended up checking a lot of boxes. He ended up applying RD and we’ll make a visit if he gets accepted. He did EA where he could (Nova, Richmond, CW, UMD) hopefully he has some choices after all the results come in
D24 goes to a public school in North Carolina. One NC school that particularly stuck out when looking in Naviance was Wake Forest, since close to 50 kids from her school have applied over the past few years with zero acceptances. Worse admit rate than Duke!
This is very helpful. Thanks!
To your point about there already being overrepresentation from the northern states (plus NC & FL) – my point is that if they already receive a lot of qualified applications from these states, and if they are trying to achieve geographic a diversity, it stands to reason that the admissions standards going to be higher from these regions.
A familiar refrain I’ve heard from students at our high school: no matter where they end up, from Ivies to less-selective state Us, all say that they were “over prepared” and they wonder why they killed themselves in high school. Don’t get me wrong – I think geographic diversity makes for a better college experience, so I understand why colleges do this. I just wish there was a way for students and parents to access the regional data to avoid wasting time on crapshoots.
At the end of the day, we have to go by the data we have when trying to figure out where he should ED. Wake may be more competitive now, but it wasn’t as much in the decades prior, and even then they were only taking kids with 1500+ SATs from our school. It’s unlikely that in 20 years nobody ever demonstrated interest or did an interview. Seems impossible. If Wake is even more selective now, then for our purposes we’ll treat it like an Ivy and avoid it, even for ED.
Wake has been competitive for a long time. It’s not just a last few years phenomenon.
I’m confused. No one said getting into Wake was the same as getting into an Ivy. Can you just have your student talk to their counselor and find out the ED acceptance rate from your high school? Certainly, it’s higher than any of the Ivies. I wouldn’t discount it if it’s a favorite. And, like everyone is saying, even if a student uses his ED card, he should try really hard to not get to invested in the outcome and have a balanced list to apply to if ED doesn’t work out.
I would definitely visit before deciding. We had to visit during Covid but had a wonderful student show us around who we knew from one of my CC friends. 
In the end, it didn’t feel like a good fit for D21 and she didn’t take her WL spot. Kids who love it love it but it definitely has a certain vibe.
One doesn’t have to ED. A lot more needs to go into that question. Is the school a top choice and can you afford or do you want to afford?
Too many ED to schools that aren’t their top choice just bcuz they think they’re supposed to….
Most kids do not ED.
As an observation regarding Colgate, which may pertain to other schools as well, its acceptance rate for domestic applicants (18%) is significantly greater than its overall acceptance rate (12%).
Yes I bet it’s because International students who need financial aid won’t get it from Colgate so that limits who they accept from outside the US.
Also, with overall acceptance rate around 16% and ED acceptance rate at 41% (and that’s over half of the class), RD acceptance rate is below 10%. I just heard President Casey say they still admitted too many in RD last year. Yield was higher than expected so the class of 2026 is larger than they want. He said they’ll accept fewer this year and go to WL to get to the number of students they prefer (around 800).
And based on our Seattle area experiences, that is almost always the case for kids willing to go to what they perceive as “the south.” Duke is the top target. Every kid we knew who applied to Wake also applied to Duke. Every single one.
While I haven’t seen the OP say it directly, it seems that WF is the school he/she doesn’t want the kid to fall in love with.
The other take-away from this thread, which includes several contributors whose kids have applied to / attended Wake, is that WF highly values demonstrated interest, and there’s no greater expression of interest than an ED application.
Assuming it’s the top choice, and assuming the OP can afford it - and it’s worth noting they haven’t brought up finances - then ED seems like a no-brainer. The success rate for ED appears to be in another zip code from RD.