<p>While we tend to bracket HYPS, for individual students they may not be substitutes at all. My daughter was sure she didn't want to go to school in the West, and didn't like the urban feel of Harvard at all. She grew up in a city and didn't wasn't interested in more of the same.
Her best friend had a "Yale thing", and turned down both Harvard (and several thousand dollars better aid), and a full tuition scholarship at Chicago to attend Yale. I don't think she was interested in going out West either.</p>
<p>My understanding is that some of the schools whose rate of early applicants went up were not Single Choice EA -- so Chicago and Georgetown can have overlapping EA applicants, whereas Stanford and Yale are SCEA and are a one shot deal.</p>
<p>Well, seniors from my son's private HS class [class size 130] usually send in 5-6 applications to H and Y, 15 to P, though that may have changed this year because of the elimination of ED, and over 45 to Stanford. Obviously they are very familiar with Stanford, since it's right in their backyard. Stanford historically does accept a large # of applicants from the school- 15 on average, 20 last year. Almost all apply to the UC's, and about 60 apply to USC. It's hard to justify leaving Calif for college elsewhere for many students.</p>
<p>All of the above is true. But for many students, on both coasts and in between, Stanford IS a close competitor for Harvard. </p>
<p>As I said, about half the kids my kids know who applied to Harvard also applied to Stanford. Yale-Harvard had more overlap, Yale-Stanford less. Stanford and Princeton are a pretty close match in every way except for being far away from one another -- both beautiful self-contained campuses in ritzy exurbs that have become commercial centers unto themselves, each about an hour from a major city, strong math/physics, engineering, very social . . . Some kids will have a reason not to like one or the other (my son loved Stanford but wouldn't apply to Princeton -- too close to home), but many kids are going to like both, if not equally, then almost equally.</p>
<p>Even Cali kids. Our tour guide at Princeton last year was from LA, and the last of my cousins to attend Harvard left California, and turned down Stanford, to do it. There were an awful lot of Harvard and Westlake kids at HYP in my day, and I'll bet there aren't many fewer Harvard-Westlake ones now.</p>
<p>That's what's so puzzling to me about these numbers. I never thought every kid who might have applied early to Harvard or Princeton would automatically apply early to Stanford or Yale, but I can't understand how, net, none of them seem to have applied to Stanford, and not an overwhelming number to Yale. And the other non-single-choice EA schools besides Chicago and Georgetown -- like MIT, Notre Dame, BC -- seem not to have had such an enormous boost in EA applications. Even if one assumes, irrationally, that kids only applied to one of those EA schools, the number of students who would have applied early to H/P/V, based on history, isn't accounted for.</p>
<h1>Re post 78.</h1>
<p>With all those caveats, I still cannot shed tears for folks who get to keep more than twice the national average after tax, especially when there are so many wonderful colleges in this country that provide an excellent education.</p>
<p>Okay, if students bracket HYPS together, then why did Yale's early applications increase the by the same number as Chicago's and Georgetown's, and Stanford's not at all?
I'm not feeling combative. I'm just trying to figure this out.</p>
<p>JHS: I totally see what you mean in the overlap of Stanford and Princeton. Princeton is my #1, and Stanford is a close #2 (and FWIW Yale is close #3, not higher only because of weaker engineering). </p>
<p>I am also very surprised that Stanford didn't receive more SCEA apps. For the record, I would have applied ED to Princeton but since I would be perfectly happy at Stanford and since the only detractor for me is the distance (Ohio girl), I applied SCEA there. I am just surprised that there weren't more who did the same. Not that I'm complaining... a little better chance for me! :P</p>
<p>
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I'm stunned at the Stanford number -- that just doesn't make sense to me at all. I thought Stanford would go up by 2,000 applications minimum.
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</p>
<p>Fwiw, the differences in the changes in Early applications might be tracked to the schools different ways to account for ALL early applications. One might speculate if Yale counts applications for programs such as Questbridge in the same fashion. While Questbridge is a regular decision application at Stanford, it could be an early decision at another school. With pools of several hundreds, if not thousands, of applicants, this could account for drastic differences.</p>
<p>
[quote]
QuestBridge is pleased to welcome University of Chicago, Emory University, University of Notre Dame, Vassar College, and Yale University as new partner colleges.
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</p>
<p>Any pattern?</p>
<p>Well, we're talking about the CHANGE in application numbers. Xiggi, are you aware of Yale or Stanford changing their policies this past year?</p>
<p>opps...missed the quote.
But that would make Yale's increase even SMALLER, if not by much.</p>
<p>You know, there might be lots of kids like my son. Rather than applying early elsewhere, he didn't want to apply early anywhere at all. Once you undo the "every top school has an early option' rule set maybe a lot of kids just think, fine, this year, since I don't have a clear favorite, I will take the extra time to write really good applications.</p>
<p>Danas, Yale was not part of QB last year; this year it is. If Yale counts ALL QB applications as early, this means their number would increase by several hundreds.</p>
<p>That would mean that without the Questbridge change, the increase at Yale would have been less than 1000, rather than the approximate 1274 reported.</p>
<p>Danas, wasn't that my point? For Yale, and for Chicago, and for the others with substantial increases?</p>
<p>Mine too. I think you think we are not on the same page. We are on the same page.
Yale's increase was MUCH smaller than predicted earlier in this thread.</p>
<p>Gotcha ....</p>
<p>Xiggi:</p>
<p>Is Questbridge really sending out 100 of applications? wow!</p>
<p>Marite, the number of candidates who make it to the final rounds is quite large (way more than 1,000.) Finalists can select a large number of schools for their ranked list (more limited this year.) Since the highly selective schools are almost on everyone's short list, the number of applications forwarded to each of the ranked schools can be very large.</p>
<p>Last year, there were more than 100 successful applicants for the College Match.</p>
<p>Thanks! I'm glad that so many low-income students are well served.</p>
<p>I think the reason that there wasn't the big jump in early applications at Stanford and Yale, is they are SCEA, NOT ED. Yale and Stanford don't historically accept nearly as large a % of students early as ED schools did and do. So there is not that much of an advantage in applying early to S or Y compared to applying ED at H and P in the past. In addition, by applying early to S and Y, students then CAN'T apply to other top EA U's like Chicago, etc. So they would be restricting their early application options without gaining a much higher hope of early acceptance.</p>