I am sure Georgetown is interested in increasing their yield, even though they don’t offer ED.
Regardless Georgetown seems to not be as interested as their peers in increasing access of low income and POC students as evidenced by their continued decisions to:
Choose to use a separate application
Choose to not adopt a test optional policy
Offer inferior financial aid, relative to some other meet full need schools (the aforementioned relatively small endowment is part of the reason)
I am sure they would still be ‘strongly recommending’ SAT subject tests too, had CB not discontinued those.
I agree that Georgetown, like most schools, is concerned with its yield. Predicting yield is important for enrollment purposes too. Where I disagree is that it games to improve it.
I also agree that Georgetown wants as much information on testing as possible, and that it would still ask for subject tests if they had not been discontinued. That does not mean such information is not viewed within the context of each applicant’s particular situation however. For example, a wealthy student who took the SAT multiple times to improve the score would have to report all those attempts. If one cannot take the SAT or ACT, then applying Test Optional is allowed.
I am veering off the original ED topic now, so I will stop here.
Again, I’m sure there’s an amazing dissertation topic in all this.
I see no reason whatsoever why a student shouldn’t renege if the fin aid doesn’t suit. The entire arrangement – the ED/EA/etc. etc. lineup – exists solely for the very, very expensive universities’ benefit. It orders the applicant herd and puts their risk on the floor. I don’t see why that ought to be any student’s problem.
If this business of taking it out on the high schools is true, and someone’s outraged enough about it, sue. But I do have to ask why you’d want to send your kid to a wildly expensive school that attacks children.
Given the massive inequities built into ED, I don’t even think it ought to exist. I’m still fond of Felicia Ackerman’s solution: one big pool, draw a line under all qualified applicants, then run a lottery. Just imagine the gains in mental health out of that one. If you didn’t get into your dream school, it’s not because there’s something terribly wrong with you: it just wasn’t your lucky day. Try again somewhere else. Corollary: if someone’s walking around with the college name, it says, “this person was qualified and lucky” and nothing more.
Logistical question on the lottery: do all schools pull the names at the same time? If not, which ones go first? Is it based on USNWR rankings?
If they do go at the same time, then students would have to put their names on multiple lists, and then risk not getting in anywhere at all. And if a kid gets into multiple schools, that gives rise to yield concerns for the schools, just like ED.
And then, how does financial aid fit in? If you get picked by a school but can’t afford it, then what?
I am not seeing the lottery as much of an improvement.
Would it work if every student applied to 10 schools and listed them in order of preference?
Then if a student got into three on the list pursuant to lottery, the student would go to their highest ranked choice and the other two schools could draw again for that spot.
Students that are not drawn for any school on their lists could apply in a second round, choosing among schools that indicate they still have capacity.
Ooh, so the college sweatshirt would just say “College” across it.
I like where you are going with this. So many applications (pun intended)! If someone joins a sorority, the t-shirt would just spell out “sorority” in greek letters.
A person’s GPA would be “GPA”. No need for actual calculations. Of course, with grade inflation, it is kinda that way already.
Serious answer: So that’s kinda like QuestBridge, except the schools don’t have a say in who they take. It would be interesting if QuestBridge was done for everyone- the schools list their order of student preference, along with the students listening their school preferences. That way schools can curate their classes to prioritize athletes, musicians, mathletes, etc. They can’t do that with a lottery.
Wild and crazy alternative answer: How about making it like an epic fantasy football draft. Each school could have a fixed budget they can spend on students. They could even trade draft picks. After freshman year, the students become free agents.
Which is more or less how most countries run it, or did till recently. There wasn’t any need for outlawing names, of course, because there wasn’t an entire industry of desperate end-of-empire social climbing and clinging. But most kids would go to whatever uni their catchment area went to, and because school funding wasn’t based on local property taxes, there similarly wasn’t the desperate crowding into rich neighborhoods to get the kids into the right catchment area. There were just…schools. Which meant that when you said where you went to school, it had all the impact of saying “Lincoln Elementary School” in six hundred towns, USA. And you could lavish your perseveration time on something else.
ED is good for the criminally wealthy, good for the universities, and bad for everyone else. The criminally wealthy can afford to shrug at the possibility of a $300K bachelor’s degree, and of course nailing down ED early in the game allows the universities to reduce risk massively in the rest of recruiting. For everyone else, it’s terrible. Either you’re at a table you can’t afford or you’ve looked at the table and said “can’t afford that table.” And since ED’s the province of power-elite schools, it’s just another form of gating. Buy your kid’s way in if you can. Great if you’re a fan of oligarchy, but otherwise no.
While I wouldn’t encourage kids to waste their time and money subverting ED purposefully, I have zero problem with their subverting it along the way by being bad-faith actors in a game that’s already rigged.
Almost sounds like the start of a “manifesto” of sorts.
You seemingly have some issues with contemporary American society and capitalism well beyond your concerns about ED.
Just food for thought and using one example…
“ Among this year’s diverse cohort of admitted early decision students, 57% applied for financial aid, and 17% of students will be first in their family to attend college. Of the total cohort, 51% are students of color, defined as those who self-identify as Black, Latinx, Native American, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, or Asian — a 3% increase from last year.”
I suspect most of these kids benefiting from ED at Brown aren’t “criminally wealthy” as you describe, and I suspect the criminally wealthy full pay families financial support helps subsidize and provide these opportunities to the less economically fortunate.
@bennty, I am shocked and offended by your rant against the “criminally wealthy”.
I grew up with modest means but I went to college, worked hard these 25+ years, saved as much as I could and invested wisely. So I am at a point where we would not qualify for financial aid and may need to pay $300k, but in no way would I consider myself to be wealthy.
Your suggestion that anyone who is able to pay for their child’s education must have obtained that money illegally is both ridiculous and offensive.
I could go into a long and detailed rebuttal but we’re veering away from the topic of this thread, so I’ll give it a pass.
