<p>^^^^
Well, I am not very sympathetic to people in families who can afford computers. I mean come on, I went to a rural HS in Nebraska where no one has heard of things like the SAT subject tests. However, it took me all of 5 minutes on google to find CC, which has literally guided me thru the entire admissions process. Everything from the best way to study for the SAT to “your chances” at top schools can be accessed here. I would attribute an inability to prepare oneself for college admissions for people in stable families with incomes 60K+ to laziness or incompetence.</p>
<p>I disagree with both Hernadez and Hanna.</p>
<p>The kid who really wants to go to Harvard may well apply SCEA to Stanford or Yale or EA to MIT. If (s)he gets in, (s)he is NOT going to file 15-30 other applications. Well, maybe a few will, but they would have done the same thing if they got into Harvard early unless it were ED rather than EA. Most will say, okay "I got into Yale, the only place I’d rather go is Harvard, so I’ll apply there too. If I get in, I’ll go to Harvard. If not, I’ll go to Yale. " They are NOT going to apply to Duke, Amherst, Boston College, WUSTL, and other colleges. </p>
<p>It’s common at my kid’s old high school to apply EA to Georgetown, MIT, and/or UChicago. (One top student applied EA to MIT, Cal Tech, Georgetown, UChicago and one other school and got into all 5 early. ) Some kids apply early to all of them. If they get into one or more in the early round, they adjust their lists and they do not apply to 15-30colleges . UChicago in particular is a common “bracket.” We’ve had kids who applied EA to UChicago and ED to Columbia or Brown, which apparently is acceptable. Again, if they get rejected by their ED school, but accepted at UChicago, they rarely apply to colleges less selective than UChicago.( One kid got rejected at UChicago EA, but accepted at Columbia ED. )</p>
<p>The kid who applies SCEA to Yale, if he really thinks he has a shot at Yale, but doesn’t get in benefits on balance, I think. Sure he’ll be demoralized. But at that point, which is STILL before the deadline for regular round, (s)he can change the list and add some more safety and match schools. I really don’t see why Hanna thinks this kid would be more likely to be realistic if Yale was like Harvard and didn’t offer an early option. </p>
<p>And a lot of savvy second tier colleges have adapted to attact these kids by offering ED round II. So, the kid who applies early and gets rejected by Williams may apply ED II to Middlebury. </p>
<p>My alma mater is selective, but not as selective as HYPS. I remember interviewing one young woman who applied ED to Princeton and was rejected. (I asked her why her app was so late.) She and her mother were STUNNED, and I do mean STUNNED. She got out 10 more apps during Christmas vacation. </p>
<p>I get criticized a lot for “raining on” a student’s “parade.” I would much rather see a kid be pessimistic about his/her chances and applying to too many safeties than see a kid who thinks being first in his class of 700 with a 2300 SAT and 3 SAT IIs above 700 gives him guaranteed admission to HYPS and who applies based on his assumption and is rudely awakened in April–when it’s too late. At least when (S)he gets rejected in December, there’s a chance to adjust the list. </p>
<p>And of course, if you need fin aid, early action doesn’t lock you in. You can compare packages. And when you come in top 40 in Intel, after submitting your apps, you can take the free ride at NYU if you so choose. Or if you are named a National Achievement Scholar and can use that $ anywhere, you may end up at a college you like which didn’t give you as good a fin aid package as you hoped for. </p>
<p>What we really ought to do is limit the number of schools to which each student can apply. I know there are exceptional circumstances, but there’s way too much trophy hunting. There are also way too many kids who apply to schools they really aren’t interested in to get fin aid packages they can use to negotiate with the colleges they are really interested in. </p>
<p>Or maybe it ought to work more like med school admissions. You can only keep multiple offers open for a certain amount of time. If another offer comes along, you’ve got to let one go after some reasonable time to make the decision. Now, there are kids who sit there with 20 acceptances until May 1. That’s unfair.</p>
<p>I think it’s Wellesley–I may be wrong–which gives you an “early read.” You’re told that it’s probable you’ll be rejected, your application is competitive but the outscome will depend on the applicant pool, or we are virtually certain we’ll accept you. </p>
<p>That seems fair to me–especially the “you’re highly unlikely to get in” and we’r letting you know that early program. It hurts, but this benefits the kids who get lousy advice.</p>
<p>Just a note – EA to Chicago and ED to Brown isn’t kosher, based on Brown’s idiosyncratic “single choice early decision” policy.</p>
<p>Other than that, I agree with jonri’s post in general. An EA school that has accepted you on a nonbinding basis in December makes a great safety, as long as you can afford it.</p>
<p>“I really don’t see why Hanna thinks this kid would be more likely to be realistic if Yale was like Harvard and didn’t offer an early option.”</p>
<p>The key is that I don’t believe that there’s really no difference in admissions odds in the early program. I think there is a small advantage in applying early. The Yale kid might spend his sole early application on a school where he might actually get in, and then he would have the “safety.” Either way, he can still apply to Yale as a long-shot dream school, which it pretty much is for everyone anyway. I’d like to see all the hypercompetitive schools drop the whole early business altogether and look at everyone the same way. I do think an early system is valuable for the second tier of selective schools that want to lock in the most enthusiastic kids who truly view Colgate (let’s say) as a first choice. Yale doesn’t have a problem with unenthusiastic enrollees.</p>
<p>“there’s way too much trophy hunting”</p>
<p>I hear this a lot, but I don’t see it in real life. I’ve never actually met a student who I believed was doing this. I don’t even see it that much on CC, which is a really narrow slice of the pool, and even here we don’t know whether posters are telling the truth. Even assuming that there’s a lot of trophy hunting going on, so what? Schools are enrolling the right number of freshmen each fall, and no one cares whether they spent some time on the wait list before being admitted.</p>
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<p>Huh? There’s something you’re trying to say that you’re not getting across, Hanna.</p>
<p>There’s a very small number of EA schools where a student can apply early, get accepted, and then still apply to Yale or Harvard RD. And many state colleges have rolling or early admissions, but students don’t have to choose between applying to their home state’s university on a rolling basis or applying SCEA. They can do both. So all you could possibly be talking about is 5 or 6 true EA schools – MIT, Georgetown, Chicago, BC, Caltech, Tulane. </p>
<p>And guess what? Those colleges attract a whole lot of EA applications – as many as Yale and Stanford. There’s very little, if any, advantage to applying EA there. In some recent years, MIT has actually had a lower EA acceptance rate than RD acceptance rate, although if you factor in deferred EA students it would have been about the same. Chicago had a big difference last year, but in prior years the difference was not very impressive, and maybe nothing after you correct for athletic recruiting and Questbridge.</p>
<p>So I don’t see how kids who apply to Yale SCEA are giving up something meaningful that would still let them apply to Yale RD if they got in. What they ARE giving up is a meaningful chance to be accepted ED somewhere, as long as they are willing to give up their chance at Yale or Harvard (etc.) and take whatever financial aid they are offered. That’s NOT always a great deal, although it is for some kids.</p>
<p>I agree with you that lots of kids are unrealistic when they apply SCEA to Yale or Stanford. But those kids at least get a wake-up call when they are deferred or rejected, and they even have a chance to apply ED II somewhere if they want. The kids who really get into trouble are the ones whose wake-up call doesn’t come until March, and who never have a second chance to pursue a realistic strategy.</p>
<p>Someone explain why this article isn’t nonsense. If top students really are applying in droves to all the top colleges and taking up their admit spots, then yields will drop. The applicants that got ousted because of the valedictorian’s multiple admits will get picked up off the waitlist. </p>
<p>Otherwise, if the waitlist is too small, then the class sizes of top college would be too small and they’d have to admit a larger class the following year.</p>
<p>It’s a zero sum game–the number of applications per student can’t affect the ultimate decisions of top colleges. It might mean more students are picked off the waitlist. It might also mean that colleges are having a harder time predicting their class sizes because yields drop. But top colleges will quickly adjust their admit numbers if yields drop; this is a short term issue.</p>
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I think this is wrong on two counts. The first was already pointed out, that they are not reporting rankings, they are creating them, and based on absolutely nothing scientific or even shown in any way to be true measures of quality. Which is no surprise because what is the “best” college is absolutely unmeasureable. But I digress.</p>
<p>The second thing is that it is clear that many students and parents take these rankings seriously. Highly unfortunate, very misguided, but nonetheless true. What business (and universities are a business, although very unique ones) can afford to ignore what its market segment thinks is important?</p>
<p>As far as the article, well things might be simpler if all colleges played by the same rules and had the same dates for everything, but that will never happen. I think justtotalk is right, she is making a mountain out of a molehill.</p>
<p>BTW JHS
I don’t understand this at all. Don’t most EA schools let you know by Dec 15? If so, what would stop one from still applying to Harvard RD? For that matter, what would stop that student from applying to Harvard RD no matter when the EA came through? I don’t see what one has to do with the other. I must be misreading what you mean.</p>
<p>I think his point is that not many schools offer EA – they’re mostly ED. Which is true. But my central point is simply that I believe schools do give an edge to early applicants (consciously or not), and kids who don’t have the resources/advice to take strategic advantage of that fact will miss out. The reason the conversation shifted from ED to EA, despite the small number of EA schools, is that the financial aid problems with ED so obviously punish less-well-off applicants that it’s not even open to debate. The only part that’s open to debate is whether, and how much, EA does the same.</p>
<p>[Colleges</a> Where Applying Early Action Helps - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/articles/2009/09/30/colleges-where-applying-early-action-helps.html]Colleges”>http://www.usnews.com/education/articles/2009/09/30/colleges-where-applying-early-action-helps.html)</p>
<p>I hate to quote US News & World Report, but according to this 2009 article, many schools offer EA and their acceptance rates seem to be higher than regular admissions.</p>
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<p>EA admit rates are deceiving. For the most selective schools such as Yale and Stanford, for instance, although the EA admit rate is considerably higher, it’s a more self-selecting pool. Many of the most outstanding applicants apply early, not to mention athletic recruits, so it’s natural that the EA rates for those schools be higher. Don’t be fooled, though; that doesn’t mean it’ll be easier to get into Yale and Stanford. In fact, several CC’ers have stated that Yale SCEA is more difficult to get accepted into in comparison to Yale RD, even though the Yale SCEA admit rate is more than double the Yale RD admit rate.</p>
<p>Not to mention, when you look at that list, there are very few colleges on it where the EA acceptance rate is more than 1.4 times the overall acceptance rate (which of course includes the early acceptances), and except for Yale and Stanford those colleges tend to have overall admission rates around or above 50%. With ED colleges, the ED acceptance rate tends to run 3+ times overall acceptance rate.</p>
<p>Referring back to an earlier comment–Schools have long denied that they limit the number of students they accept from any one particular high school. Is there any evidence anywhere that they do in fact limit acceptances from schools?</p>
<p>^^I’ve seen first hand evidence of that some colleges won’t take <em>any</em> applicants from certain high schools. Yale, for example, has never accepted anyone from our local HS in the entire living memory of the school. HPSM take our graduates regularly, so it would be hard to argue that the academic quality is not there. So for Yale our acceptance limit is zero. But to say that a school will take only some arbitrary limit of say 2 or 3 in a given year would be harder to document.</p>
<p>why do you think that is, coureur (that Yale takes no students from your school)??</p>
<p>^^No idea. You’d have to ask Yale’s San Diego regional admissions rep. Plenty of the school’s vals and sals have applied over the years. I guess the school just got blackballed back in New Haven somehow. Or maybe they just never made it onto Yale’s radar in the first place.</p>
<p>We got blackballed from Harvard. lollers.</p>