Do the math. A few percent out of a small percent can be significant. For example, lets assume that ED only gives the unhooked applicant 2%* more chances. Yes, still extremely low.
But, in a school that has a 10% admit rate, going from 10% to 12% is a 20% increase in chances. That to me, is big. Add in the fact that the top xx are extremely generous with need-based aid…like they say in the Lottery ads: ‘ya gotta play to win’.
A few years ago, an Adcom at one of the Ancient Eight admitted that ED gives the unhooked a “few percent” increase. Let’s say “few” = 3%. Thus, ED is a 30% increase in odds from their 10% RD rate.
btw: Duke freely admits the fact that ED is a ‘big’ (my word, not theirs) bump for the unhooked.
I totally agree with @roycroftmom this thread was not sour grapes at all just people trying to figure out based on the stats their kids had WTH happened! It’s was good to have people validate the fact that I wasn’t going nuts alone and that this admission cycle IMO seemed to be VICIOUS! My take was that ED did better than RD based on what I’ve seen at my D school. As I’ve stated before, I’ve done this four previous times and I’ve never experienced the kind of stress associated these days with getting into a decent college and after all that work to only be accepted to schools that she would have gotten into anyways. If anything I blame some GCs who for what ever reasons tell these kids they have a better than decent shot at the Ivies or top 25 Schools, instead of concentrating on the for sure you’re getting in and small area colleges first then choosing one or two dream schools to throw your hat in the ring. If you get in its gravy, if not you’ll live. That’s what I did with the first four and had way better results with less effort. So go ahead CC Community VENT!
That’s not how math works…an increase of 2% increases your chances by 2%. To your point though, ED greatly enhances your chances as the true RD rates are below those of combined ED/RD rounds. Here are the actual facts for a school for the class of 2020.
Application Plan / Applications / Admitted / Enrolled
Early Decision I / 365 / 165 (45%) / 162
Early Decision II / 213 / 75 (35%) / 72
Regular Decision / 4652 / 1124 (24%) / 241
Overall / 5230 / 1364 (26%) / 475
The ED1 apps had nearly double the acceptance rate, while the RD kids had a lower than overall chance.
Of course, no college reveals its ED versus RD admission stats including strength of applicant pools and how many special applicants like recruited athletes are in the ED pool. If those were accounted for, ED would likely be revealed as a smaller boost than it appears from just admission rates.
^ if you did that way, your unhooked kids would have a lower acceptance rate in RD. The only guarantee is that they are going to have a football / soccer / field hockey / etc… team.
“My takeaway from this year is that those without hooks (whatever they might be) need to aim lower and ED at colleges ranked 11 thru 25 or so.”
Agree on the takeaway that you do not want to be playing Powerball. By which I mean RD at a school that fills one third to one half of its seats via ED. But the ED zone is really more like 7-20 (roughly Duke through Emory).
The related takeaway is that missing the target with your ED silver bullet/golden ticket/flaming arrow can make your admissions experience miserable. We knew several smart kids who were terrified they wouldn’t get admitted anywhere all the way into late March.
So if your are going to ED, really try to make it count. And back up your ED bullet with some EA applications to the extent allowed by the rules. Or just lay off ED and aggressively play EA where you are allowed to.
Also, the size of the ED bullet really varies among schools. Yuge at Penn and Duke, not so big at Brown.
What ever happened to having a safety that is known to be assured admission, assured affordability, and otherwise a school that one likes? Or are too many students and parents caught up in exclusivity-seeking such that any school that is not a reach is undesirable?
@ucbalumnus Exactly. Another way to look at it is to expand your horizon and understand that there are way more than 20 great schools to attend as an Undergraduate. My Neuroscience perspective D got into Pitt in September and got word that she had Full Tuition scholarship by November. She was thrilled and happy to attend there and was able to cross some schools off her list which were all USNews higher ranked schools because ranking didn’t matter.
The intellectual laziness/dishonesty reflected in this post is incredibly ironic on a site dedicated to higher education. Though I guess if it fits with an agenda or worldview those things become less important.
We all agree what’s going on. Assume a kid is competitive for Stanford. Shoots and misses in SCEA.
Sure that kid can certainly apply to some back-up schools like a Pitt.
But will be waiting a long time to hear and will have lower odds at a lot of the ED zone schools that the kid would be very competitive for – Duke, NW, Penn, Vandy, WashU, Emory, Tufts, Rice, etc.
So the miss at Stanford creates a lot of uncertainty for a long time.
Take Away from this year: Spend most of your time finding safeties and matches that your high stats students LOVE and can afford. Spend less time visiting top 15 schools and for heaven’s sake don’t apply to 15+ schools with most of them being top 15! Stop feeding the beast. You can only attend 1 school.
I heard on a talk radio program today an admissions director talking about trends in private college admissions - some of which I thought were interesting and kind of illustrated some of what this discussion has said.
She spoke about her school’s admissions trend towards moving away from seeking well rounded students to moving more towards seeking well rounded classes. In order to do that she said they put more emphasis in early action and early decision acceptances and she expects that trend to continue.
@northwesty So EDing those at 1-6 won’t help? Then why do some of the 6 keep EDs?
When RD acceptance rate drops to <2% for the ED schools, those who EA the 1-6 EA schools are real risk taking top students and thus are attractive to the ED schools in the RD round. (The whole thing is crazy and something will happen in the next few years).
There is no better business strategy that I can think of for college admissions offices to fill a class when kids are applying to ten or sometimes more colleges than to select from kids that are “telling” them through an ED application that that the college their first choice. Legacies, athletes,all make perfect sense. These kids aren’t “special” in that that make the same decision any kid makes - is this the college for me. A decision can be made in the fall just as easily as it can be in the spring except maybe for procrastinators or the indecisive. It’s a decision. From that applicant pool they can be selective about the characteristics they need to at least have a firm base to fulfill their “mission” for that year’s cohort or as runswimyoga says “well rounded classes”. Colleges are not going to continue to staff up admissions offices to battle “hot college” syndrome and colleges are not going to second guess whether a student is serious or simply lobbing in an app “just to see” or fishing for the best discount. Private colleges are already deeply discounting their cost and even that is going to hit a wall sooner or later.
@runswimyoga, I think this is THE takeaway from this year’s admission cycle. There are lots of obvious ways that schools benefit from the ED process, notably the ability to lock up a lot of students little dependent on financial aid, or not dependent at all. That’s been true for a long time. What is new is this point, that schools want to be able to shape their incoming classes. That’s difficult to do in RD when many of their accepted students have applied to numerous schools and often have multiple acceptances. On top of that, the high cost of higher ed makes families more conscientious shoppers. A student may want to attend a school where they have been accepted RD but have better deals at other schools. When the difference can easily be $10k, $20k, or $30k per year, the school may very well lose a student who looks like a good fit. Schools, like all institutions, inherently like stability and predictability. Stability and predictability have been diminished by the knowledge revolution in college admissions. Students/families are more sophisticated and cast a wider net. An unintended consequence is that schools can be less sure what they will get back from their RD acceptances.
Say a very competitive Top 20 LAC with a 56% female student body receives an ED app from a male from Nebraska who has something a little unique that the school thinks would benefit and enhance the school community, but scores/grades put that student at a very marginal level. They might very well accept that student and know they will have that unique something in the community.
Now, if that NE male instead applies RD to the same school, and applications are up and are strong, they might be less willing to give them a spot that means waitlisting/denying a strong student, when there is a high chance, and higher than before, that he will go elsewhere. Well, then the school has less control over whether that unique something will be part of campus life. Maybe it would have been better off to have accepted an ED applicant with some other little unique something and known they would be on campus in the fall.
Wake Forest increased its ED acceptances from 40 to 55% of the incoming class and also publicly advised that it thought this trend was a long-term one. Here’s a link, the comment is in the March 23 blog entry.
@bluebayou:
"Disagree. ED is a big plus factor, even for the unhooked. And those top ~10 colleges (however defined) tend to have the most generous fin aid. ED could be the ticket to a top 10 school at a big discount. "
There aren’t that many top 10 ED schools to begin with. If you go by USNews, only Columbia, Duke, Penn, JHU, and now UChicago.
@londondad: My understanding is that NU just doesn’t give much of a bump for legacies, period. And I wouldn’t be surprised if it was nonexistent in RD.
@suzyQ7: “ED is a plus factor, but not that big. Remember, those ED admit rates include athletes and legacies. For unhooked applicants, ED gives an edge - but I would call it a ‘big’ plus factor.”
This really depends on the school. Like legacy preference, ED edge could vary a lot even among elite peers. Also note that there are top schools where recruited athletes won’t be taking up a big chunk of the ED admit pool simply because those schools don’t value athletic ability that much. At DivIII UChicago, WashU, Emory, Tufts, mostly DivIII JHU (and maybe DivIII CMU though I have heard that they do give their athletes a bump), there would be plenty of space for non-athletes. Caltech doesn’t value athletic prowess at all and they and MIT don’t give any bump to legacy, but they are EA.
