@EyeVeee, DD’s aren’t unhappy with committing to Hamilton as it’s a great school and the prefect fit for my student-athlete, but her twin is playing the what if game as she sits anxiously on the Middlebury waitlist. When she applied ED to Brown she struggled with Middlebury as well, and now feels like she should have taken that ED path - UGH
@EveVeee I think the more emphasis that is placed on ED (and predict it will be huge in 2017-18), the more selective colleges will be under considerable pressure to either provide some sort of matching Financial Aid guaranty to ED admits or otherwise take the financial bias out of the ED process.
If ED ever becomes an economically neutral option, the whole process will be turned upside down.
@pantha33m Perhaps ED schools will offer some sort of guaranteed FA review before ED deadline. I know CMU offers a more thorough FA review if you send them all the documents. Doesn’t help with merit but Need-based students might be able to take advantage of ED in that case.
I recall one of D’s friends who was really interested in Northwestern but couldn’t apply ED because of the need to compare financial offers. At that school the ED acceptance rate vastly exceeded the RD round (something like 30+ % vs. 6%) and a significant % of the class is admitted under ED. It appears that U Chicago may be headed in the same direction.
I find this troubling - partly because it requires teenagers to make the first major adult decision of their lives under pressure and it constrains choice (a lot can happen in 6 months). Second, it leads to the kind of second-guessing that @chembiodad mentions - if only I had used my ED card at School X… Third, if the applicant is chasing merit at a school that offers both merit and ED, reason suggests that the school is not going to waste its scarce merit aid on a sure thing - it will save that merit for a desirable applicant whose enrollment remains in doubt. So ED is not a great strategy for merit-seekers.
I personally would love to see a system by which the number of applications on the Common App is limited to 10 and in place of ED, a national non-binding SCEA option for common app schools. Unlikely to happen, but it would certainly ease the stress for prospective students and their families and might possibly help the schools in gauging genuine “interest.” It might make the admissions staffs’ workload a bit more manageable.
As for takeaways from this year - first, based on the many highly qualified seniors that I know - outcomes at the top 20-30 schools seemed utterly capricious to me. This, of course, fuels the strategy of throwing out many, many reach applications in the hopes that one will stick.
Second, it was a drag being the rollout class for the new SAT.
Finally, last year’s 65K is this year’s 70K. 
@Chembiodad thanks for your input. It makes me feel a little better knowing we didn’t screw up by not going ED or EA.
We were just befuddled that D #5 having better stats, GPA ,more ECs, 6 AP and 5 Regents under her belt including Trig, was passed over by the very schools sisters attended. Well not all Barnard said yes but she hates it, only applied cause I said so go figure. Even two SUNYs Bing and Stony Brook Waitlisted her while a good portion of her class who went ED got in. I thought those were going to be her safeties. I’m not one of those prestige college type parents. As a single mom the winner in our household as always been who gives the best FA and where I can afford to send them. They just happen to be great students so I guess I was lucky but it still hurt just the same.
So, is business good in general for Colleges? Or only for a select few?
I've noticed that McGill has been overwhelmed with applications. No idea if it's by non-US foreign students, US students taking advantage of the .72 dollar, or an uptick in domestic apps.
@Daisy192, agree that it’s getting so crazy that their HS’s Naviance results from three years were meaningless; it’s clear even GC’s were caught off guard. They went into the process with a wide net, which was the right move, but to think that a well rounded kid with great scores (35 ACT) and great grades would be shut out from so many schools was shocking. In the end, they did great with acceptances to Bates, Carleton, Colby, Colgate, Hamilton, Kenyon and Oberlin and waitlisted at a couple others such as Middlebury and Wesleyan, but to flat out denied Amherst, Swarthmore, Williams and at some Ivies was a surprise.
@pantha33m - I think the ED pressure increases every year…as the RD percentages fall to unreasonably low levels.
@Chembiodad - The strategy around ED is quite possibly the toughest in the whole process. Reach vs. Strong Fit (ie slight reach) vs. Fit. Too conservative and you play the “what if” on the Reach school…Too aggressive and you play the same game on the next one down the list.
We had a literally coin flip on ED1 / ED2 prioritization, knowing that 2 deferrals / rejections would likely lead to settling on a “nice” school that didn’t excite my daughter. We were lucky that ED1 worked.
@57special - McGill uptick surely includes international kids worried about US visa policies and the unknown (IMO). Why not throw in the app and see what happens over the next few months.
@Chembiodad - I agree Naviance is less and less useful. Too many unknowns in the data to trust it.
S1 is only a HS Junior, so it’s a bit early to be applying anywhere. Athletics is part of the mix with him, complicating admission matters, but McGill and other Canadian Uni’s are certainly an option, as we are dual citizens, and get a discount on tuition.
Regarding rising costs - this is what Columbia estimated for cost for my D in her senior year:
Estimated Total Cost of Year 4 $84,178
Tuition and Fees… $64,976
Room and meals… $15,318
Books and supplies… $1,402
Travel… $ 119
Personal Expenses … $2,363
@Dolemite, yikes! What the increase as compared to Year 1?
@EyeVeee, no complaints with both of them ending up at Hamilton as it’s an amazing school, but wow what a torturous process getting there.
@Chembiodad Year one:
Estimated Cost of Attendance* $ 74,834
Tuition and fees … $57,763
Room and meals… $13,618
Books and supplies… $1,246
Travel… $106
Personal Expenses… $2,101
The takeaway I saw this year at our school, is that it is even harder for an unhooked female to win the lottery of tippy-top schools than ever before. School placed about 20% of the class (but not the Val & Sal) into Ivies & Stanford. Exactly 1 was unhooked.
This whole thread is scaring the beejezus out of me. I’ve got a sophomore in college and a junior in high school with almost identical stats, and so much seems to have changed in such a short amount of time. And the rise in costs? Yowza.
We had many hooked female athletic recruits and legacies, but only 2 unhooked females into either Ivies, Stanford or Top-5 LAC’s; males did much better. That said, I don’t think both DD’s would have done as well as they did if one hadn’t been a athletic “tip” recruit even though both profiled the same.
@Chembiodad Nice to see you still had great choices. D #5 wants Nursing so with did apply to some schools that had the Direct Nursing Programs BSN. She got accepted to the CUNYs Hunter, Lehman Macaulay Honors Program and City College but they don’t have the Direct Nursing you have to maintain a 3.2 GPA which didn’t scare us but they then only select 100 into program. Lehman accepts only 60 after 2 years in their nursing program. You are so right about the GCs, ours was just as shocked as we were and she knows what schools the other siblings have attended, honestly didn’t have any answers. In the end I guess we all go through the shock of not getting into a particular school no matter how much of a genius we think our kids are. The four other siblings ran to console her who truthfully was bummed for a few days and has now moved on. She has chosen to attend Pace University Lienhard School of Nursing
at their PV campus. They gave her full scholarship in their Honors Program… We have to pay room & board. She loves the campus, I do too, only 25 minutes from home who knew?? She’s happy, we’re happy.
So are you saying that the most selective colleges practice gender discrimination to get closer to 50% of each?
Overall, it is not surprising that there are more women in college. Men are more likely to be attracted to things not needing college, like skilled or unskilled jobs that include manual labor, or military service. Men are also more likely to get into trouble with the law and end up in jail or prison.
@Daisy192, congrats that it all worked out for your DD as well!