Perhaps the student’s special gift is not to come over as a pretentious blowhard in his/her application. An underrated asset if you ask me.
-
Too many top institutions reject qualified or over qualified students to control their “yield” simply for the purpose ranking.
-
With over 1 million foreign students currently in US…universities are often would admit a foreigner than a domestic student with the same stats to control the ‘yield’. Also colleges know there is plenty of cheating coming from foreign students, but they totally ignore it.
-
In US 57% of college students are WOMEN and 43% of college students are MEN. This gap is so HUGE…that the only way to explain it would be … discrimination (even after adjusting for some social factors why there are fewer men in colleges than women)
One thing that hasn’t changed is the assuming.
@EyeVeee Regarding the Wake Forest ED. Why is this a bad thing for Senior Year? Seems as though having no applications to do and not having the incredible stress would only be a positive?
@gmfreedom If every college spot was taken, you might have a point to argue about discrimination of men vs women in the college selection process. However, many colleges still have openings (another thread in Parents Forum discusses NACAC listings). Men that want to go to a college can.
I suspect that the social factors you allude to are much greater than you think. From what I can tell, it looks like the ratio of men to women that enlist in the military is greater than 5:1. Men may also be much more likely to enroll in trade schools for professions that are still generally associated with men (diesel mechanics, truck drivers, electricians, etc - I haven’t had any luck finding detailed reports on this). On a darker side, it looks like ten times as many men between 18-24 are incarcerated as women.
@carachel2, there are always some. But last year they were coming out of the woodwork – parents and kids who somehow thought binding didn’t mean binding for them…
I second that ED acceptances seem to be increasing, leaving fewer spots for those who have to wait out finaid packages.
@friday28 - why not kids apply after the PSAT sophomore year? Think of all of the stress you could eliminate Junior Year.
Any kid who applied to Wake regular decision (ie all of those who can’t afford to commit to the $300k) is stacked with AP exams going on right now. Allowing ED so early tilts the playing field too far…and I would suggest hurts those accepted (and their future classmates) by not having them work hard their senior year. I’m all for reducing stress, but a few schools playing games isn’t the answer.
It seems like schools are viewing ED applications in a more friendly fashion. This seems rational given the apparently larger number of students applying to 10-20 schools. It’s one thing for a school to admit students in RD who may have been accepted to 3-6 other schools. It’s a different thing when students have been accepted to 8 or more schools. Of course, schools love to receive more applications, which makes them appear more selective. But I believe there are limits to this. It seems like schools face greater uncertainty in putting together their classes when yield is more unstable and unpredictable. A more extensive use of ED has financial benefits but also gives a school more control over the shape of the incoming class. This is problematic, though, for society because the cost of college is so high it makes it difficult for many students to commit ED.
I’m not sure if the comment about discrimination against males is tongue in cheek, or not. Anyway, I think there is a male crisis in the country. Males struggle to make it through high school with an ability and desire to go on to college and succeed. High schools, as they’ve evolved, are extremely hostile to students of all genders, but especially, I think, males. Learning is rote, the testing regimes are onerous, learning is often passive, the day regimented. Young people, especially males, are by nature physically, emotionally, socially, mentally, and sexually dynamic. As a result, the structure of their lives often does not match their natural inclinations. Males often flail in the typical high school environment. They are often not well prepared to go on to college and often have little desire to do so. I see it all the time in my community. Very few females struggle or fail to make it through high-school/college, yet many males struggle and fail. It is a large problem for our society.
With the effect of ED I and II on regular admissions acceptance rates, holistic admissions practices which often include “demonstrated interest”, and the stiff competition in certain impacted majors, my personal take-away is that the traditional three-tiered “safety, target, reach” paradigm is not very useful anymore. There are safeties, and then there is everything else.
WF has been offering that early ED date for quite awhile and other colleges have not jumped on that bandwagon; its mostly used by legacies (I think).
Not only Wake, but the vast majority of the more competitive schools have a similar ED/RD profile, and have had one over the 7-8 years I’ve been following admissions as our family has been participating in the college search process. It just seems to have ratcheted up across the board over the last few years.
I think applying ED/EA as a legacy has a multiplier effect for applicants–the admissions dean at my alma mater told a group that it did–but also many students applying ED/EA are not legacies. I’m guessing the multiplier effect is rooted in research that shows multiple generations at a school enhances alumni giving.
The flip side of the colleges’ ED trend is that it seems to have been internalized at many high schools. At my kids’ private high school, over 90% of kids this year applied early and my sense is that it’s the same at peer schools. Many kids used their ED as an opportunity to throw a “Hail Mary Pass” to a highly selective school. This led to quite a few disappointed seniors who had quite mixed results in the RD jungle.
I predict that ED will continue to be the norm but that seniors will more and more try for “Target”, not “Reach” schools.
Just saying, people love to get hot abut ED.
And demonstrated interest can be as simple as knowing what that college is about, (not simply picking based on prestige rankings,) being able to answer a Why Us question (or others that scope that out.) If a kid can’t get that understanding, his chances go down anyway, whether early or not. This is much more than getting your name on a mailing list or having a few extra months to send the AO ten emails.
@EyeVeee As mentioned above this is not a new policy for Wake. Also, how is it any different then applying ED to a school in Nov? There isn’t any new information or grades to submit so what’s the difference if it’s July or November? and who’s to say that a kid who gets accepted early doesn’t work hard during their senior year? Highly selective schools accept motivated students who don’t come to a halt because they are into college. Just my opinion from observation.
@EyeVeee I do agree with you that the schools play games though… all of them. It’s unfortunate but I’m not sure it will change any time soon.
After the rinse cycle that my twin DD '21s just went through with ED deferrals, waitlists, and rejections from schools that would have matches 10 years ago, I can’t imagine what’s in store for my DD '27. Someone mentioned a 1% acceptance rate will be posted in the future, and I now firmly believe we’ll see it along with many sub-5%'s.
@pantha33m totally agree that ED is the new norm. My daughter attends a very good honors program here in Westchester and I’d say more than half of them went either ED or EA most getting accepted to some pretty good schools and first choices. She’s my 5th daughter and the other four all went RD and even though its been 10 years since last D went I thought why should we go early. I think it was a big mistake after seeing the results. April 1st felt like we were slapped repeatedly as school after school WL or said flatly said no. She had far better stats than a lot of her classmates that got in ED and definitely better stats than her sisters who attended Fordham, NYU, Cornell and Barnard. I think ED was the ticket this year.
@Daisy192, our twin DD’s from NJ didn’t see any benefit from the ED process as they both applied to schools that had only slightly better ED acceptance rates - Bowdoin in one case and Brown in the other. Both were deferred and then denied so in hindsight they probably should have tried to ED at schools that had 2x better acceptance rates, but those were their dream schools so you can’t look back. For them, the RD round was unusually clear with 50% acceptances, 10% waitlist and 40% denials; this was very different than classmates who seemed to be mostly WL and denied.
@friday28 I agree that kids accepted to selective schools have a motivation and work ethic that rarely changes just because they are accepted. I also agree that not having to deal with the frustration of @Daisy192 is a great benefit. All of the WL spots truly sucks.
I would suggest that @Chembiodad used ED as a strategic option to increase (albeit slightly) his daughters chances. We did the same. Where I struggle with the escalation of ED is mixed messages that all of the colleges send as they balance diversity and rankings. ED is a game for the affluent by design. Unless you are paying for school, you can’t commit to someplace without knowing the net price (please, no reply’s about backing out…that’s its own complications).
The results (in sweeping generalizations) are:
- Schools accept 20%-40%+ of their incoming classes ED I. These are primarily full pay and athletes.
- Schools focus on diversification, using their financial aid budget to fill out the classes while accepting more ED II kids to balance their budgets.
With half of the class full before waiting for accepted students to commit, schools have to be careful not to over allocate spaces they don’t have. As more and more applications arrive everywhere, it’s hard to know how many of the RD kids are going to accept the offer of admittance…so they conservatively accept and put a lot of kids on the WL.
Change won’t be easy, as there is too much money at stake. SAT, ACT, AP, Common App, the ranking publishers, websites …there is a lot of pressure to expand the status quo.
In the end, the schools and the students don’t seem to like where the admissions process is…but they don’t see any alternative but to play the game as best they can. Odd, that so many smart people can’t think of a better way. The common app is 40 years old. Maybe it’s outlived its useful life?