@TTG: “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”
I doubt they would take a marginal candidate even in that case; most marginal accepts are hooked in some way, but if that candidate had solid stats within the 75/25 range but nothing else to recommend him other than being a guy from a small far-away state, applying ED instead of RD could be the difference between acceptance and rejection.
@momofthreeboys , While I agree that ED is a solid business strategy and can see why schools want to use it, ED disadvantages students that need to compare financial aid and/or merit scholarships and advantages the wealthy. I have no problem with EA or SCEA and very much like the Questbridge-type match system wherein students rank their choices, or I can get behind making kids show their interest in some other way, but I deeply resent the one-sidedness of the ED “advantage.”
@PurpleTitan, I just posited that the guy was from Nebraska to make him seem more exotic!
To be more specific, say that exotic Nebraska guy applies to Bowdoin. His grades/test scores are very good but maybe not quite 25% in either case for Bowdoin, but almost. However, the school can see that he is an extraordinarily talented singer/songwriter/guitarist, who performs a lot around his region. Not just good, but amazing. He applies ED. Well, Bowdoin wants to be a great community with people like this guy who make it more fun and entertaining in Maine, in February, and he’s a good student, maybe just not strong enough to get in strictly on grades/scores. Well, why not use one of the school’s few hundred ED spots on him because it wants him around.
Now say he applies RD. Bowdoin can tell he and his family are pretty savvy about the process. Well, maybe he’s applied to 14 schools (who did that in 1982?). He’s a good student and talented so he’ll probably get in a bunch of places. Unless Bowdoin is willing to accept him and give him generous aid, probably he goes elsewhere. Maybe it decides it doesn’t want to reject a higher-stat kid for a maybe. Or maybe they offer him $30k, and he goes to Amherst because it offers $40k. Now Bowdoin doesn’t have someone like him. Some singer/songwriter/guitarists, but no one like this guy. They wanted him but could not shape their class like they desired.
It just seems like it would be much harder for schools to predict today. I’m not crying for them, just looking at it from their perspective. Why not take the bird in the hand when it’s much harder to get the bird in the bush. I know one student who applied to 20 schools and was accepted to 18. So that’s 17 schools who got a no thank you from one student.
I think the current environment can be a little harder on students/families and also a challenge for schools.
@LoveTheBard, I agree and think the squeeze is on the middle class and lower-income families. Hard to pay tuition/other costs that have increased much faster than incomes but too much income to merit special consideration or qualify for extraordinary aid. For lower-income families, it puts great pressure on kids to be incredibly special or choices are very limited.
For your view of the post I quoted to be valid, you must believe certain other posters here are liars. Seems unlikely to me you have enough info to know that. As such, its being implied (in the face of evidence to the contrary). Which is why I made the statement about intellectual laziness/dishonesty.
Now in terms of the discussion here, none of it really matters as no one here is making policy in terms of college admissions.
Where I think it is relevant in a more important sense (though beyond the scope of this thread or board) is general policy discussions. Its becoming more common to see people impute invalid motives to criticism of a policy they favor. No doubt sour grapes isn’t a valid reason to criticize a given policy. And criticizing a given policy based on the race, gender, religion or political affiliation of its proponent isn’t valid either. If you prove one of those are the reason behind the criticism, you can avoid addressing the criticism itself. But today its too often the case that the invalid motive is assumed (without evidence) to avoid any discussion about the criticism itself. As a result, the level of discourse on many issues pretty much sucks.
Seems to me there are limits with respect to how many kids schools can take ED. As you move down the food chain, that percentage decreases. As you move down the food chain, you are likely getting kids every year who are rejected up the food chain. If you have a limited number of non-ED spots, you likely will miss out on some of those kids rejected from schools up the food chain. Doesn’t necessarily make sense for that trade-off for every school in the top 25 or 30.
Among the top colleges being discussed here the squeeze is not on the true middle or lower classes but rather the affluent but not wealthy. Most of the top schools give great FA for families making below 50-60k with nothing or almost nothing for families making 180- 250k which include many many non-wealthy families. However the cost thing does kick in for everyone once you leave the top schools.
@PurpleTitan Sorry. I meant 25th % for Bowdoin, so probably a 30 ACT and a 3.7 with a couple of APs, or whatever that would be for Bowdoin. And I meant an AMAZING!!! singer/songwriter/guitarist, the Ed Sheeran of the Plains. (That’s a hook as good as an Ed Sheehan hook.) And I emphasize, it’s a weekend night in MAINE, in FEBRUARY, who do you want to be hanging out with in the campus pub, or wherever around Brunswick?
@TTG, in that case, being from Nebraska isn’t very germane (and I have my doubts that even that is a big enough “hook” for a kid with those stats at a school like Bowdoin). But if it was, they’d take him if he was from NYC as well.
OOOh just read a tweet w a link to a Buzzfeed article showing a fascinating glimpse at how Princeton admissions officers talk about race behind the scenes… info obtained through the Freedom of Info Act in conjunction w probe into allegations of racial bias at the school…
Interesting takeaways… seems like if they are going to use you as an URM candidate, you need to mention your ethnicity and cultural connections through SEVERAL aspects of your application, not just checking the box!! Also Asians need to differentiate themselves from standard premeds with similar resumes!!
Perhaps if you know that you do resemble a common stereotype (“standard premed” or whatever), that may be another reason to apply ED or EA, so that you may be among the first few that an admissions reader sees, rather than the thousandth one that the admissions reader finds uninteresting.
“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.”
You could be right, but we will never know. The other thing with NU is that they want to be loved. We did visit the campus several times and showed plenty of interest. The other rumour about NU is that it has a bit of a chip on its shoulder about playing second fiddle to Ivies in respect of admissions preference (although I’m not sure that this is really true in that NU has some unique programmes and schools that attract kids to make NU their first choice). Maybe they felt that DD was Ivy material and would not travel all the way to Chicago when she would have options on the East Coast. We will never know.
@londondad Based on how things turned out for my DD and her classmates it’s clear that the opportunity cost of applying EA to HYPS over ED at Duke, Penn, NW, etc, is really high…particularly if you are legacy at the ED school. My DD went the legacy ED path and it worked. Similar legacy candidates at her school who took their shot at HYPS were left high and dry during RD.
@londondad makes a good point about schools wanting to be loved. Accepting a good portion of your class ED, means you will have a majority of kids on campus who are absolutely thrilled to be there, vs having a lot of kids feeling like they may be at their 3rd or 4th choice. That has a positive effect on campus morale, enthusiasm, community etc. NU has said as much. So from a school perspective, that is a big benefit of having an ED program.
@londondad Our Chicago-area school sends between 10-20 kids to NU every year. Last year, everyone who got accepted went ED. I also know a student with perfect scores and a terrific resume in every way who was rejected RD. Her GC told the family that NU probably thought she would go elsewhere…and she did. Stanford.
My husband and I are alums and don’t think that helps at all as we have so many friends who kids are double legacies with strong applications and didn’t get accepted. All of the kids I know personally who were rejected were applying to Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. I think kids applying to Theater, or Music, or Medill might have different experiences.
I’m a little sad if NU still has a chip on its shoulder. When we were there 30 years ago, there were lots of east coast kids who liked to say NU was not their first choice. It WAS mine, so it was a bummer meeting those kids. My freshman roommate spent her first year with her nose to the grindstone so she could get perfect grades and transfer. Moved to Brown for sophomore year. That being said, kids in the “special” programs like theater and journalism were thrilled to be there and their enthusiasm was contagious. I think NU was such an interesting place to spend four years because it attracts the music/theater/writing kids and all students benefit from what they bring to campus.
@homerdog, your observations about NU may well be correct. My kid had two relatives go to NU but was waitlisted this admissions cycle after applying RD despite getting into Vanderbilt, UChicago and an Ivy. NU would have been a great fit, but as it was not my kid’s top choice, the admissions committee was correct to use the waitlist which we did not pursue. No disappointment here, and NU remains a possibility for our kid2 and kid3. Great school, but tough to get in.
It’s probably a local/regional issue. Stanford has the same problem with legacies in California. Both schools, of course, are seeking a broad “national” reach, so that means they have to be choosy when taking kids from their back yards. Similarly, Harvard can’t accept all the top kids in Boston or Yale, Connecticut.
My takeaway is that more than ever, college admissions is becoming a lottery. At highly competitive colleges this is even more the case. Colleges don’t deny this. Best advice: (1) plan for disappointment no matter how good you are; and (2) never write-off anyone’s chances. So many shocks this year!
^ . . . .among colleges that aspire to be nationally ranked, that is.
So my take-home is that it’s more important than ever to find safeties that you would be satisfied with (either in the US or abroad). There are a decent number of gems out there if you are willing to put in the work researching.