<p>Dear “Mom of buffalowings24” : Let me start by offering hard facts and then sharing our personal journey to Boston College.</p>
<p>Yes, it is statistically true that the early application pool at Boston College tends to be tougher than the regular decision pool. There are many reasons for this, some speculative and some bolstered by the facts. Boston College is certainly tougher on applications in the early rounds allowing the university to maintain the highest possible quality level of the full class. By locking in some very top academic candidates early, BC is effectively improving the overall class profile upwards and thereby improving academic quality and university statistics. Next, this is the pool from which the University’s Presidential Scholars are drawn. Now, it is thought by some that the Presidential Scholars are the best students from BC’s applicant pool overall and this is a mistake. Typically, many strong applicants who were waitlisted or rejected from an Ivy League of their choice will register with BC following the regular decision round and wind up increasing the class quality substantially.</p>
<p>In the BC Fact Book, there is an interesting statistic covering the twelve colleges and universities which have the greatest overlap with BC’s applications. These include in no particular order : Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Georgetown, Notre Dame, NYU, Boston University and Villanova. </p>
<p>The point here is that many BC applicants need to make the same decision regarding an early application that your son is facing.</p>
<p>In both cases, our children pursued an early application to an Ivy League and regular decision at Boston College. Our family made our early decision choices based on many factors. The most important parameter was academics and the second was prestige within the alumni network. We underestimated Boston College on both of these parameters and if we were to have the decision back, BC might well have been the early application in both cases. In both cases however, we pursued what we believed was their top choice with early decision. We did not use early decision as a vehicle to “game” the system by applying to a second, third, or fourth choice school as a safety.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, early decision/action should be reserved (in my personal view) for the one school that you absolutely will attend for sure if their admissions reviewers say “yes”. It is your top school, favorite match, number one choice. </p>
<p>Now, again turning back to our experience, Boston College was my younger student’s first choice as far back as fourteen years of age (ACT 34), but she applied early to Yale for a variety of reasons including her thinking that after my older one’s acceptance, she would be regular decision safe (what a gamble that was). My older student (ACT 33, SAT 2290) ranked Yale and Penn above Boston College and Williams. The early application went to Yale, the waitlist followed, and the decision came down to Cornell, Georgetown, Williams, and Boston College - and the final decision was BC.</p>
<p>So, in closing “Mom of buffalowings24”, our advice is simple. Sit down and honestly decide which school is your family’s number one choice - that should drive your early application decision making. Do not try to guess what the reviewer might think, statistically guess where you might rank against 20,000-30,000 other total applicants, or play the “what if” game. None of those activities results in a satisfying experience. Listen to your hearts as to which school was really the one that resonated with your son. Whether Penn, BC, or Cornell, there was hopefully one of these fine schools that took your breath away just a little bit more than the others. In the end, it is a great list and hopefully, our story helped you in your own decision making.</p>
<p>A very heartfelt good luck to you all.</p>