<p>There's speculation that the number of SCEA applicants to these two schools will skyrocket this year. Any indication that this is happening?</p>
<p>Yes, at least anecdotally from my school. Usually only 2 or 3 apply to Stanford SCEA each year, but this year there are 8. Most of the top students send early apps to Harvard, but it looks like they've replaced that with Stanford. I've also heard through the grapevine that it looks as if Yale's application #s will also be slightly above average from my school.</p>
<p>Incidentally, I spoke to a kid I know who goes to another top suburban high school near Boston, and he said he is "only applying to Stanford because Harvard doesn't have early".</p>
<p>Thanks. I guess that's all we have is anecdotal information until after November 1st. However, I think your school may be typical of the Northeast mentality. How do you think Yale and Stanford will deal with all these applications from kids who really want to go to Harvard or Princeton?</p>
<p>By rejecting most of them, as they do anyway.</p>
<p>They'll probably defer most of the students, not reject them. They have no idea what the numbers will be in the regular pool and no reason to eliminate qualified candidates.</p>
<p>That's not the way Stanford does it -- they reject more SCEA applicants than they defer.</p>
<p>Sorry, I was basing this on Yale last year. And on common sense, which we already know is sorely lacking!</p>
<p>It stands to reason that Yale and Stanford will each see an increase of 2,000 - 2,500 SCEA applications this year, i.e., somewhere around 80% of the people who would otherwise have applied early to Harvard or Princeton. Some will apply ED or EA elsewhere, but the mentality that leads people to apply early to Harvard or Princeton is going to lead them to apply to Yale or Stanford. That will be offset a bit by people being scared/disheartened at the number of early applications to those schools.</p>
<p>I strongly doubt that either Yale or Stanford is going to want to accept a larger number of people EA. I think both will defer a lot of people, even Stanford, for three reasons. First, the pools are going to look incredibly strong. There will clearly be people who would have been accepted EA last year who won't be this year. Second, there's no reason to believe that aggregate EA & RD applications are going to increase much, if at all. The only people who wouldn't have applied to one or both schools anyway are (a) the 550 or so kids who would have been accepted ED at Princeton, and (b) some percentage of the 600 or so kids who would have been accepted EA at Harvard. Taking everything into account, maybe each school will see a 500-700 net increase in total application from this, something that could easily be lost in the normal fluctuations of applications. Third, they are each going to have to accept more people overall, because they know their yield will go down by about the same number of people who in the past would have gone to Princeton ED or been accepted at Harvard and not applied elsewhere.</p>
<p>So I think it will make sense to defer a bunch of candidates to the RD round, because fundamentally the RD round is not going to look a lot different from last year, and anyone who would have been accepted last year will likely be accepted this year. So why exclude people from being considered then?</p>
<p>JHS,</p>
<p>Interesting thoughts you had regarding yield effects in the early round. I don't envy the admissions folks in trying to develop a strategy for admissions this year! (not that I have much sympathy for them, given their historic disinformation and all).</p>
<p>I also wonder what it means for schools like U. Chicago, who have non-binding early action. Probably no effect, since the students always had the right to apply?</p>
<p>I think Chicago and the other prestigious non-binding EA schools (Georgetown, MIT, Cal Tech) will probably see a bump in EA applications, too. A kid who last year would have applied to Princeton ED, and who thinks he or she is a strong candidate for Princeton, isn't going to apply anywhere else ED and lose the chance to apply to Princeton. Maybe he or she will apply to Stanford or Yale SCEA, but I can certainly see some percentage of them saying "It looks like a get a better bang for my early application at Chicago, Georgetown, MIT, maybe all of them vs. entering the Yale lottery."</p>
<p>In terms of total applications, I think the same thing applies to them as to Yale and Stanford: There are probably something like 900 really, really strong candidates out there who last year would only have submitted one application apiece, and this year they're going to be submitting something like 4-10 applications. I bet Chicago, Georgetown, MIT etc. each get a bunch of those. But it's not going to boost their total application numbers by a whole lot, and it's not going to do anything for their yield, either, because those hypothetical kids are still overwhelmingly likely to wind up at Princeton or Harvard.</p>
<p>The bottom line for me at Yale and Stanford is that, if you could run last year's class through this year's rules, in theory at the end of the process exactly the same people ought to be accepted, plus some extra (strong) candidates who are going to wind up choosing Princeton or Harvard. The applications should be almost the same, but instead of 22% EA - 78% RD, it may be 33% - 67%. So I expect the dynamics of the EA round to be really different, but the dynamics of the RD round (including EA deferees) to be really not different. Except I would be surprised if the waitlists aren't important at both schools this year, since they really won't have any way of hitting the right acceptance number on the nose, and will have to be cautious about accepting hundreds more people than last year.</p>
<p>It seems to me that Yale and Stanford SCEA will lack a key feature this year: the ability to tell if that school is really the applicant's first choice. I would particularly expect Harvard and Princeton legacies to have a difficult time persuading Yale or Stanford that those schools are the first choice. So maybe the new situation will be a bit of an extra leg up for Yale and Stanford legacies--where it really is likely that the school is the first choice.</p>
<p>"They'll probably defer most of the students, not reject them. They have no idea what the numbers will be in the regular pool and no reason to eliminate qualified candidates."</p>
<p>They'll end up being rejected anyway, but they can hold on to their squalid little hopes a little longer.</p>
<p>Of course. But "squalid"? That seems harsh. In my extended family, we have a number of degrees from each of them, and they are wonderful places to be a student. I don't blame anyone for hoping to go to either, and the fact that no individual has a high chance of admission doesn't affect that.</p>
<p>It will be interesting to see how all this plays out w.r.t. the apparent selectivity of YHPS as measured by the percentage of accepted students who enroll.</p>
<p>I seem to recall that Mini's daughter applied to Yale SCEA back in the day.</p>
<p>Aside from that, you don't know unless you try, do you?</p>
<p>Certainly there is a freshman class every year - so somebody's getting in ...</p>
<p>"Of course. But "squalid"? That seems harsh. In my extended family, we have a number of degrees from each of them, and they are wonderful places to be a student. I don't blame anyone for hoping to go to either, and the fact that no individual has a high chance of admission doesn't affect that."</p>
<p>Sorry, you misread. The hope of admission is squalid and little: the education is (often) excellent.</p>
<p>Look there is no secret as to who gets in, or, at least who attends. We know, with some precision, the number and percentage of full-freighters, the number and percentage of legacies, the number and percentage of recruited minorities, the number and percentage of football players and squash players, the number and percentage of Pell Grant recipients, the number and percentage of international students, the number and percentage who come from private feeder schools, the number and percentage,...well, you get the idea. The changes in each of these categories year over year is rather incidental. Nothing, or very little is left to chance: there is no lottery involved, no secret formula that isn't already out there. What is the mystery is, once one understands the formula, figuring out how any one individual fits into it.</p>
<p>There are differences between squalid hope and the real thing (and for most, it is squalid. We can only speculate of course on the actual odds of a very excellent student who is not full-freight, not a developmental admit, not a legacy, not a recruited athlete, not from a regular feeder school, not the son or daughter of a senator, ambassador of foreigh dignitary, and not a recruited minority or very low-income superstar, holder of a major patent or author of a best-selling novel, but they like drop well into the single digits. I'd call that hope squalid.)</p>
<p>I thought mini's daughter was accepted at Yale but chose to go to Smith?</p>
<p>I don't get the use of squalid here, either, mini. </p>
<p>From M-W</p>
<p>squalid<br>
Main Entry: squal·id<br>
Pronunciation: ˈskwä-ləd\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin squalidus rough, dirty, from squalēre to be covered with scales or dirt, from squalus dirty; perhaps akin to Latin squama scale
Date: 1596
1 : marked by filthiness and degradation from neglect or poverty
2 : sordid
synonyms see dirty
— squal·id·ly adverb
— squal·id·ness noun</p>
<p>"Squalid" has a strong negative connotation -- it implies not just smallness and poverty, but corruption, moral degradation, dirt, rot. I thought you (mini) were accusing Yale/Stanford SCEA hopefuls of base motives. I don't think so, as a general matter.</p>
<p>(cross-posted with riverrunner, not meaning to pile on)</p>
<p>S2 would have applied SCEA to Yale, but due to the Common App's "locking" this year, decided to apply EA to MIT instead (and same locking issue precluded Cal Tech EA for him as well). By the time the folks over at Common App gave out definitive info about allowing new versions, teacher and guidance recommendation deadlines had long passed. I know lots of kids were comfortable or naive enough to send off a locked CA, but after S1 wrote a much better essay and garnered nat'l awards between EA and RD, we were leary to lock. I wonder if this affected anyone else's EA/RD decisions this year as well.</p>
<p>BTW, when S1 applied SCEA to Yale, they were late with their decisions due to the volume. It will be interesting to see how well they have prepared for this year's expected spike in SCEA applicants, and if they really have time during the RD round to re-review those deferred (if deferring is how they choose or need to deal with the extra applicants from SCEA due to time constraints). </p>
<p>FWIW, S1 wound up at P, but their elimination of ED had no effect on S2's application process; we feel that the seven months between ED deadlines and RD matriculation decisions is a huge amount of time in their young lives and therefore have discouraged ED thus far with our kids. I doubt I would have supported S2 applying ED even if he truly felt comfortable with such a decision, but that's just me:).</p>