<p>Alexandre. It will be interesting to see when Michigan admits deferred students. Do you think it won’t be as early as February ( which they have done previously)? </p>
<p>Alexandre-the EA applicant pool did not increase suddenly, it increased over 5 years or so. “We have been over-enrolling every year for the past five years and we have to stop this,” University Provost Martha Pollack explained to the Michigan Board of Regents, last September. “I’m not happy about it.”</p>
<p>"Between 1993 and 2007, the University of Michigan operated on a “rolling admission” plan, by which applications were considered as they were received.</p>
<p>In 2008 and 2009, the program evolved into the “Michigan Way” early response initiative. If a student applied by October 31, they were guaranteed an admissions decision on or before December 20.</p>
<p>And then, the University of Michigan joined the Common Application in 2010. Early response went away, and application numbers skyrocket."</p>
<p>It’s also occurring just about everywhere else that selective and above. It’s being helped along by the Common App:</p>
<p>“NACAC’s annual conference last fall, University of Michigan Senior Associate Director of Admissions Sally Lindsley directly addressed the issue of early action and what has come to be known as “admissions creep” among professionals dealing with increasing loads of early applications from anxious students hoping to nail down an admission before the holidays.”</p>
<p>This is not a Michigan problem, it’s a systemic admissions problem, and I believe we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg.</p>
<p>Is the Regular decision supposed to be more or less competitive than Early action ?</p>
<p>I think Michigan will admit many deferred students maya. Deferred students applied EA, and applicants usually apply EA to schools they like. The trick is to make sure the University thinks the applicant is serious about attending. </p>
<p>Osserpusser, in 2012, Michigan received 19,000 EA applicants. This year, 25,000. That is what I meant when I said it increased suddenly. But you are quite right, the increase overall has been gradual. </p>
<p>“Lindsley outlined plans to curb over-enrollment which echoed what Pollack presented to the Board of Regents.
Early action admissions would be reduced from about 65% to 37.5% of the applicant pool…”</p>
<p>How would you interpret this statement?
- 37.5% of the EA applicant pool will be admitted, or
- 37.5% of the overall admission will come from the EA pool</p>
<p>Statement 2. With the majority coming from RD and EA deferreds rolled into RD come February. </p>
<p>If they admit 5K now, and 10K later- for an average of 15K admissions- that works out just about right. </p>
<p>I don’t think they are going to miss out on too many top 10 rejects. I think all this means is that they are going to pay closer attention to demonstrated interest, particularly through essays, alumni/sibling relationships, etc. to determine who will protect their yield rate. (Which makes sense IMO).</p>
<p>FWIW this has been going on here in California for a while now. Berkeley and UCLA are considered reach schools for nearly everyone, both OOS and IS. Way too many applicants worldwide for the few spots they have. Michigan may be slightly lower in some rankings, and maybe higher in others, but clearly it is on a similar worldwide pedestal. As applications from all over the planet have increased, even highly qualified applicants - and even IS students - may have to suffer increasing disappointment just as California residents have had to do.</p>
<p>Re: Michigan, who knows what went on behind closed doors this year, but I do not believe that the kids with the highest stats were necessarily deferred until they could prove their interest (i.e., prove that they were not just using Michigan as a safety). At my son’s large public school (OOS), dozens of kids applied and only two were admitted. One was my son, who had a 34 ACT, 4.0 uw, rigorous AP schedule, and deep/interesting/varied extracurriculars. The other admit was a similar student. As far as my son is concerned, he felt an instant affinity to Michigan the second we drove into Ann Arbor. We always considered Michigan to be a reach despite his qualifications.</p>
<p>I confess that I did not read my son’s application, but I have no doubt that it conveyed his sincere interest in the school as a top choice. He is still waiting for RD decisions, from both higher and lower “US News” ranked schools, but it will be hard to beat his interest in Michigan at this point. I suppose what I’m trying to say is, I suspect Michigan made decisions just as many highly-in-demand colleges do: based on a combination of intellectual ability, interesting and diverse extracurriculars, AND some sort of belief that there was a decent possibility that the accepted student would matriculate to Michigan. Whether this belief came from an overtly expressed interest, statistical trends from the student’s HS or area, legacy connections, or some other source, I have no idea.</p>
<p>I found this thread thought-provoking. The link @anxious00 shared was particularly enlightening. (Thank, btw)</p>
<p>I can’t help but wonder how applicants would feel if Michigan goes the way of UIUC? Illinois got rid of EA this year. Applicants must now wait until February for their decision.</p>
<p>…and Illinois is paying a steep price for that policy change.</p>
<p>Their app closed on December 1st and opened back up two days later. It is STILL open!</p>
<p>They have not made numbers public, but why would they extend the deadline, indefinitely apparently, if there wasn’t a severe drop in apps?</p>
<p>I don’t think Michigan would make the same mistake. </p>
<p>@prospect1 </p>
<p>2 out of 34?</p>
<p>That is actually a higher admit rate than my son’s high school (with higher # of apps). This site may not be a representative sample, but I have been hearing similar numbers from neighboring high schools. </p>
<p>Is it possible that the OOS EA admit rate is in single digits?</p>
<p>Maybe they were just super conservative with EA admits and will be more generous than usual with admitting student that were deferred in EA round.</p>
<p>@YZamyatin It will be very interesting to see the application numbers due to their (UIUC) elimination of EA versus its effect on yield rate.</p>
<p>As for Michigan and other selective schools, I found this article about chasing college rankings interesting.
<a href=“Editorial: Students lose out in university numbers game”>http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-college-admissions-20141222-story.html</a></p>
<p>“Lindsley: Early action admissions would be reduced from about 65% to 37.5% of the applicant pool…”</p>
<p>How would you interpret this statement?
- 37.5% of the EA applicant pool will be admitted, or
- 37.5% of the overall admission will come from the EA pool</p>
<p>@DeaconBlues: “Statement 2. With the majority coming from RD and EA deferreds rolled into RD come February.”</p>
<p>I agree. However, that means 65% of the overall admission were coming from the EA pool in the past couple years!</p>
<p>I think that is what has been happening / I think it was a large amount of EA based admissions! </p>
<p>I interpret it as the percentage of total admits that comes from EA pool. So if they admit 15,000 in total, 37.5% of them were originally qualified as EA applicants.</p>
<p>This doesn’t tell us anything about those who were already admitted vs deferred. They may ultimately get 37.5% from the EA pool, but I think the great majority of those were deferred and will be admitted later. I am up to 5 local Naviances and the trend is very clear, almost everyone deferred.</p>
<p>Hmmm. I thought it meant that only 37.5 of total admits were admitted in this last round. The rest now considered RD. What percentage of michigan total does NOT apply EA? At our school in the past 5 years about 90 percent applied EA. </p>
<p>Michigan has not released EA figures so we can only guess. I hope that they do give out the numbers as other school of their status do. I think that they did the right thing with their deferral this year, given their overenrollment in earlier years As a state school, they do have an obligation to serve their residents first and what’s left should go to the OOSers. </p>
<p>For years UMich was a standby school for high stat OOSers (as well as instaters, I’m sure) when applying ED or SCEA in some cases. As a state school, it often was a loop hole for restrictive EA schools. It would take the sting out of an ED, EA rejection or deferral to get accepted to a school like Michigan By waitlisting a number of those students who are applying ED in particular, they will be able to help their yield and get some more clarity on their applicant numbers. Those accepted ED should be notifying UMich that they are pulling their apps as required by ED contract. This will cut the pool down of deferred UMich candidates. </p>
<p>Will they lose some of the students that they defer? Yeah, probably. My son was so done with his early apps that had he not been accepted to his ED school, he had decided that some EA choices would do him just fine, rather than stepping up to spruce up his applications for the RD round and finish up the RD process that he at least started. He was just done, and he liked the EA schools enough to pick one of them Had Michigan been in the bunch, it could have been his first choice but then written off by a deferral. That is an advantage of EA–some kids just decide to call it a season for apps, and pick a school that accepts them EA and that’s it. I see it happen a lot. But when it comes to the numbers like what UMich has, I don’t think it’s a huge loss. </p>
<p>My guess is that the top contenders in the deferral stack will get accepted to UMich. Maybe some will even get some merit. A $10K award with the $10K differential from most top private colleges in cost, can make UMich a very attractive deal to students looking at the spread in April to make their final choices. For instaters, the financial choice is often a no brainer with that cost differential. </p>
<p>I’m sorry for those students who had hoped that an accept from UMich would have been a bit of salve on any other early deferral or denial, instead of salt, but I think this is to UMich’s benefit. They should get some control on forecasting yield so they do not continue to over enroll. How they made the decision as to who to defer and who to accept is their own business. I think it wasn’t a bad idea at all, to hold off on OOS top kids that fit past profiles of applying and going to more selective schools early, using UMich as a back up. Heck, i’d do the same Smart enrollment and stats management. </p>
<p>“I think it wasn’t a bad idea at all, to hold off on OOS top kids that fit past profiles of applying and going to more selective schools early, using UMich as a back up.”</p>
<p>Spot on cptofthehouse. I think Michigan is waiting to hear back from many of those students in January to determine who is serious about attending. There are many highly accomplished students who are very serious about attending Michigan. Many of them would choose Michigan over any other university. Those are the ones Michigan would rather accept. </p>
<p>@Alexandre I’m not sure whether that strategy - at least in January - is going to work. Those who have their ED/EA admits elsewhere, hopefully, get out of the pool before then. But those who have other applications pending or got into their safeties, which would be the majority, would still be in the pool. The easiest thing to do for these students is to send a note expressing interest to Michigan. In other words, the situation in January could be marginally better for the deferred pool, but not too much. Add to this the RD pool applicants as well. </p>
<p>I think Michigan is experimenting now, and this experiment could succeed or fail. Ultimately, they have to move to ED, or have an earlier EA acceptance date so that they can stop over-enrolling. </p>