So I can't apply EA to Northeastern University if I ED to Penn?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Pennsylvania
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@Much2learn

In terms of enforceability, in the small world of college admissions, could the consequence be this: if a student claims that another school offers a “better” financial package (or merit aid), UPenn reserves the right to call the other school, and inform that Ad Comm of the applicant’s behavior.

Wouldn’t this curb a lot of "bad’ behavior by the 0.5%? If the other Ad Comm found out that an applicant was expressly violating Penn’s ED agreement, this would certainly give the other school pause. Especially at an ultra-competitive school like Chicago or MIT, this could have severe repercussions for the applicant.

Before approaching UPenn’s Ad Comm about this, I’d want to test the limits and parameters of any such suggested policy change. That’s why this discussion board can be put to good use!

These points aside, the current policy really does seem like overkill. There’s a certain point where actions go from reasonable to shenanigans, and it looks like Penn went off the deep end here.

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Another point of confusion I have with UPenn’s new ED policy: why are students still allowed to apply EA to public schools? Why does Penn only target other private schools in its newer, more restrictive policy?

Let’s say, on any given year, 5-10 ED admits (say, 0.4% of the accepted pool) opt out and go to a private school with merit aid. In the same year, it’s conceivable that another handful go to a public school with merit aid. For either group, the actual number “breaking” the rules is miniscule.

Why does Penn care about the tiny fraction that opt out for private schools, and NOT the tiny fraction that opt out for public schools?

Even if only 1-2 students opt out for public schools, and a handful opt out for private schools, we’re talking about tiny, tiny numbers going to either public or private schools. Why punish the students who apply to private schools, and not those that apply to public schools?

Given the petty overkill of the current policy, and the puzzling allowance to exempt public schools from the restriction, I feel like I’m missing something here.

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@cue7

Consequence seems reasonable.

I suspect the issue is that once a few are successful, word spreads quickly. They have to respond to maintain the integrity of the program, and put a stop to anything that penalizes students who are doing what they are supposed to do. I don’t know enough to say whether it was the proper response.

They probably did not limit public schools because most of the top public schools are constrained on merit money, and Penn does very well against all publics on cross admits, so they probably do no have an issue with those.

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@Cue7 This new policy makes official what they told us (before applying ED) was their policy for students who opted out of ED for financial reasons. I think they made their “unofficial policy”… “offical” now and I for one am glad they did- they said if son opted out for financial reasons they were ok w him going to a Public but not another ivy or top school…

Son qualified for full tuition scholarship to Temple and U Alabama but we had a feeling he wouldn’t get any FA at Penn. (we are low income but high assets - assists whose values are volatile…) It was a hard decision $300K vs Free. I think they leave in the Public and hefty Stamps Scholarship school options so you truly have a financial safety net for high achieving students who might not be need based. you are going to dismiss this idea but I think this is very important and might reach more students than you know. Penn is only 50% students receiving FA.

Also there might be certain demographics that they are going after or not going after -that you might not be taking into consideration. I think there are a lot more reasons in this decision than you have focused on.

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Admission deans already talk with each other, especially with peer schools; our dean was open about it, mentioned in casual conversation.

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@runswimyoga and @Much2learn

You raise interesting points, but they only serve to confuse me further. @runswimyoga you say that: “[UPenn] said if son opted out for financial reasons they were ok w him going to a Public but not another ivy or top school…”

Why would Penn be ok for your son to opt out and go to a public school, but not another top school? As @Much2learn said, opting out for (unjustified) financial reasons constitutes “breaking” the rules - why does it matter where the student goes after they “break” these rules?

Also, @runswimyoga you say that “Also there might be certain demographics that they are going after or not going after -that you might not be taking into consideration. I think there are a lot more reasons in this decision than you have focused on.”

How would restrictive ED expand outreach to different demographic groups? Won’t restrictive ED actually, um, restrict (or lower) the number of ED apps?

@Much2learn said: “[UPenn] probably did not limit public schools because most of the top public schools are constrained on merit money, and Penn does very well against all publics on cross admits, so they probably do no have an issue with those.”

Well, in the ED round, Penn is doing very well against ALL schools on cross admits - because the ED yield is 98-99%. Say they lose 1 ED admit to a public school, and 5 to private schools, or 0.5% of their admit pool. Neither seems like a material loss.

To me, again, this doesn’t seem like a problem that requires an overbroad, sledgehammer-like solution. They have a tiny problem, a minuscule problem, really, and they’re swinging a gigantic axe at it.

At an ad comm event, I’ll raise the issue with an admission officer, but I’m not holding my breath. All I’ve ever heard from these ad comms is the party line (e.g. a regurgitation of the website or public materials).

@runswimyoga and @Much2learn - if you have any more info, please do share. What you’ve both presented (that Penn seems to care more about an admit going to a top school rather than a (non-top) public school, and that the school felt a need to respond to stop the “bad apples” from spreading) is quite revealing.

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@Cue7 @runswimyoga @Much2learn Seems like Penn ED applicants could skew even further toward the wealthy end, as a few others might shy away due to the new rules? Maybe that’s the demographic they want? Or, maybe they want the internationals and others to not be able to play ED/EA/RD games as easily with the top schools? Maybe Penn is seeing a trend toward lying and breaking ED agreements that they want to try to nip in the bud before it gets worse?

I know my comments above repeat what everyone has already been saying, but I will say that I heard more about breaking ED agreements this year than I ever have in the past. No one seems as afraid of ED as they used to be. Until last fall, I didn’t even know you could break an ED agreement for financial reasons. I always thought it was carved in stone that you had to go. My older son applied ED2 to a school five years ago, so I am not a novice to the concept, but I definitely didn’t know about the games some people play until reading this thread.

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So I have a slightly different and more sinister take on Penn’s new policy. I think it is attempting to help Penn’s RD yield. Right now, if an ED applicant is deferred, the student might get into Chicago, MIT etc. Those schools get 3 months to convince the student to attend and students will probably accept their offers during that period, either because they received a good financial package, or because they become attached to the school. If those deferred ED applicants are forced to apply to Chicago etc. in the RD pool, it is less likely they will be accepted. Thus, if they ultimately get accepted to Penn in the RD round, they will be more likely to attend Penn - I don’t know how many students fall into this category (deferred ED who then get accepted RD), but I suspect it’s enough of a percentage that it might affect the ultimate yield.

Maybe I’m just a conspiracy theorist, but I can’t see any other reason for this policy.

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On one hand that sounds like a rational explanation. But it begs the question of just how many people does UPenn defer and then later accept were also accepted EA at UChicago or MIT. By most metrics, both UChicago and MIT are more selective than UPenn right now.

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@hebegebe MIT is of course more selective than Penn. Chicago is not in any meaningful way. It is like saying Yale is meaningfully more selective than Princeton because its acceptance rate is a bit lower and the SAT averages are a bit higher.( All of these schools could have near perfect SAT scores if they wanted to). The perceptions of desirability, selectivity of the two schools in the general consciousness are pretty equivalent, i.e. they are considered the tier below HYPSM, along with Columbia and also maybe Duke. In the case of MIT there aren’t probably too many people who get deferred from Penn but get into MIT, but for Chicago I don’t see why there wouldn’t be a good number of such cases.
I do agree that this whole thing looks a bit petty for sure.

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UChicago is one of those self-selective PhD prep schools, so popularity is not much of a useful comparison.

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@vonlost Used to be for the most part. Chicago has been working super hard to go mainstream and has been marketing itself as a direct substitute to the ivies, stanford, mit. People are increasingly seeing Chicago this way rather than its historical perception of a really self-selective, niche place.

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Quite so: From 1975 to 2004 UChicago was sixth in per capita PhD production, but from 2003 to 2012 dropped to tenth.

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For the Class of 2019–the latest class for which Penn currently posts statistics–115 of the 2,471 applicants accepted during the RD round, or 4.7% of those accepted RD applicants, were deferred ED applicants:

http://www.admissions.upenn.edu/apply/whatpennlooksfor/incoming-class-profile

Given that the RD yield was a bit over 45%, and not knowing how the deferred-ED yield compared to the non-deferred-ED yield in RD, it’s hard to know how much of an impact the accepted deferred-ED-applicants had on RD yield. However, I DO wonder what Penn and its Admissions Office might be doing in response to Penn’s recent US News rankings, falling from a high of #4 to the current #9, especially given that the rankings of peers such as Chicago, Duke, and Columbia have risen past Penn’s ranking during that same period. I would imagine that there must be some pressure to drive Penn’s ranking up relative to its peers, and significantly lowering their acceptance rates while maintaining or increasing average SATs, etc. has been one of the methods used by those peers to enhance their rankings.

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@“45 Percenter” I agree that Penn must not be too happy about going from #4 to #9. I think Penn above all desires to ensure its consistent ranking in the top 10, i.e. doesn’t want to be in a position like Dartmouth, which some years is in the top 10 some others it is not. Now what place it has in the top 10 is less of a priority in my opinion, since it is widely known and understood that the relative positions within the top 10 do not have, for the most part, great significance and are not accurate reflections of the relative standings of the schools. For example Stanford is ranked at the same place as Columbia and Chicago and below Yale, which nowadays most would agree in rather inaccurate. Also most would argue that the different positions of Penn, Duke, Columbia, Chicago do not reflect any substantial relative differences between the schools, and do not change the widely held perception that these four schools are the next tier after HYPS. (I consider MIT, Caltech in a group of their own given their specialization and don’t compare them with the others).
What is significant for the perception/desirability/standing of a school is a constant presence in the top 10, and out of all the top 10 schools, Penn, Columbia, Chicago and Duke need the most to remain in the top 10, given that they are the weaker brands of the top 10, and thus stand to benefit the most from inclusion in that top group.
Penn is at a disadvantage in that its class is significantly larger than the other schools, so it is more difficult to drive down acceptance rate (although yield is around the same/ a bit higher than Columbia, Chicago). Hence the measures to optimize yield and acceptance rate.

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Here is what Furda had to say about the new policy (although I think there’s more to it than what he stated)http://www.thedp.com/article/2016/09/early-decision-policy-change

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Read the Daily Penn article. Seems that Furda is stressing the idea of making applicants more certain of the implications of ED, and less likely to regret their choice. Seems to me you could do that within the ED process.

I also wonder: If someone breaks their commitment without good reason, isn’t Penn better off not having someone who would do that in their class? Yes, Penn may end up wasting their time on 20 or 30 (or whatever) ED admits who don’t work out. But there will be plenty of people to take their place in RD.

My guess is that one reason they are doing this now because the moving up of financial aid deadlines means that more applicants will have info about their financial aid possibilities earlier, and will be more likely to take a chance on breaking a commitment with a more certain backup.

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@Penn95 @“45 Percenter” I agree that Penn must not be too happy about going from #4 to #9. I think Penn above all desires to ensure its consistent ranking in the top 10, i.e. doesn’t want to be in a position like Dartmouth, which some years is in the top 10 some others it is not."

It is just hard for me to imagine that Penn cares about these differences in USNews rankings.

Imagine that you went back in time, and someone said that over the next 8 or 10 years applications to Penn would rise more than any other Ivy, that its yield would also rise, that Penn grads would have higher salaries than all Ivies except Harvard, and that the Endowment would be over $10 billion, but the school will slip a few places in the US News rankings.

With everything going so well for Penn, I can’t imagine why they would care what US News thinks. They are killing it!

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“Penn must not be too happy about going from #4 to #9.”

Ironically, US News is owned by Mort Zuckerman, a Penn graduate.

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@Much2learn I agree with what you are saying. I meant that Penn cares about being in the top 10 above all else when it comes to the rankings, not that this is its main overall goal of the admissions office. I meant that gaming the rankings to rise within the top 10 is not a priority for Penn and instead it chooses to stay true to its identity, i.e accepting a diverse student body all of whom have something special, not just people with super high scores. Of course things have been going really well for Penn and I m glad that the school has focused on the things that matter.