DS just suggested that elite college admissions may have finally jumped the shark now that most of the top 10-15 schools are approaching 3% RD admit rates. He suggested that by the time notveryzenDD applies to school in a couple years RD probably won’t even exist for many of these schools. He had a few ultra high stat friends that shotgunned the entire Ivy League along with a couple of other top level schools and got shut out everywhere RD. Looking back now, most of them are wondering what they were thinking applying to so many schools with a sub 5% RD admit rate.
Obviously some kids are getting accepted RD but the numbers are so small that it is completely irrational for most kids to be even trying in the RD round. The amount of time and money spent on apps and essays with a known 97% failure rate is tragic.
Plenty of people still brand-chasing and think they’re special who will shotgun and keep those RD rates low.
Those who are informed understand that if you’re just a generic unhooked bright kid lacking amazing achievements/talents, ED to the correct school may be your only decent shot at an Ivy/equivalent.*
Caveat: RD may not be a total waste to those private elites known to give kids in their local city/metro/state/region a bump.
Parents and kids in our highly ranked local HS are finally starting to get the message. Applications, especially RD, were down this year and will probably be down significantly next year. The bloodbath on Ivy Day and throughout March left a mark this year in particular. The class of '16 had quite a few genuine superstars who were all left holding the bag and were not quiet about it.
I wonder what will happen to % applied vs admitted when people realize you have to do ED and have to choose ahead of time which single college to apply to
It’s the common app. I really think kids should be limited as to how many apps they can submit. 15 apps is the new 6. Read some of the Ivy and chance me threads. Kids are commonly now submitting 20 apps or more. Ridiculous. First, who pays for 20 apps? Second, no one can muster enthusiasm for 20 colleges. People really are playing the lottery, and the colleges do nothing to discourage it.
Yet as I posted, there are still MANY people on these boards and in IRL that get multiple Top 20 offers. What gives?
Especially as OP said, there were genuine superstars in the grade. Is it the school? Did other schools in the area have a different result? As much as people are posting threads like this one, there are others who say their school did fine this year. In our school the boys did fine, the girls not so much but I do not know the contents of the applications.
Our superstars are doing OK, just not top 10. Lots of Regent scholars to UCB and UCLA. Several Trustees scholars to USC too. Most of these kids do not want to go to a UC school if they can help it. They are great schools but the impacted majors and financial problems are creating a lot of trepidation.
Most of these kids got sucked into the evilness that is SCEA/REA. When their number one option fell through, the chance to apply early to many of the other great top 20-30 schools was gone and they are just another random number that probably looks like a back up app to the adcoms that see them in January.
I think these kids would have had a much different experience if they forgot about HYPS and focused on doing EA at some great schools like MIT, UM, Chicago, ND, etc… or ED to a top choice that was a little more reasonable and didn’t restrict their ability to apply more broadly in the early rounds. .
the message came through loud and clear this year that if you don’t have your reach acceptance in hand by EA/ED time, start planning for all your back ups.
@SeekingPam - i think we need to look at this in context. There are not many people that get multiple Top 20 offers, because there are not many people that get any Top 20 offers (relatively speaking). Handfuls of kids posting on a website is not many, it is simply in the face of those who frequent this site.
However, it is not unreasonable to assume that a student that is desirable to a single Top 20 school will likely be desirable to other Top 20 schools. Regardless, this is a very small minority of students in the grand scheme of US college admissions.
This year’s senior class is larger around us (Northern NJ). I do not know if this is the case nationwide. Around us, this was a particularly rough year for kids applying to selective schools, particularly students applying to competitive business and engineering programs. I have seen others mention this recently - historical data (Naviance) has almost become useless. One really needs to be very logical and programmatic in one’s application process.
@Seekingpam The kids getting multiple top 20 offers aren’t really hurting anyone or making it more competitive. My DS got 3 this year but he isn’t costing any of his friends a spot because he could only SIR once. He also wisely chose to avoid any SCEA schools. His friends that did ED also fared well. The irony is that it is the most qualified and highest achievers that got left holding the bag because they were naive enough to think they had a chance at HYPS.
Yield is a real factor and all of the schools have to admit more than they plan to enroll. It would take a lot of noise out of the system if kids applied to fewer schools but it wouldn’t make it any easier to get into the top 10.
The most qualified and highest achieving kids who overestimate how desirable they are to HYPS and most likely are not looking at best fit (likely validation or bragging rights instead).
It’s hard for me to imagine that only one of HYPS is the best fit for all those kids when likely all the Ivies/equivalents/near-Ivies will provide them with the opportunities that they are looking for.
Plus, the vast majority of the rest of the country doesn’t even get the option to attend universities as renown as Cal (or UCLA or even UCSD) at in-state prices.
Given all that, I really can’t feel sorry for them.
“I think these kids would have had a much different experience if they forgot about HYPS and focused on doing EA at some great schools like MIT, UM, Chicago, ND, etc… or ED to a top choice that was a little more reasonable and didn’t restrict their ability to apply more broadly in the early rounds.”
My guess is that widespread adoption of that strategy will just push UM, Chicago (if it’s not already there), ND, etc admissions into the same scenario we’re now seeing at HYPS. MIT will always naturally scare lots of students away, for one reason or another, LOL! (And I say that with affection.) Reports are that Chicago’s RD rate this year was around 3%.
In other, not un-related news, Princeton has a (gradual) plan to expand its undergrad population. And Harvard has been actively combatting its own tendency to admit such a high percentage of each class SCEA. Or at least that’s what my alumni magazines/emails have said.
But, yeah, something’s got to give. To some extent, it’s a collective action problem (and/or anti-trust issue IIRC). Otherwise, it seems like a single-round rank ordering system with preference-matching might be a solution. Bruni says Canada did that when he applied to school. I think Questbridge has a similar program. And isn’t that how med school residencies work as well (albeit on a very different scale)?
Excluding Internationals, there aren’t more kids applying to college, there are just more kids applying to a latger number of colleges. If you consider that colleges will keep the % of Internationals, fairly constant, this means that as admit rates drop, yield should also drop, meaning more wl movement. On another thread I saw that the U Chicago wl is already moving an it is well before May. Of course, waiting out the wl is not fun, but that is part of the reality of these lowering acceptance rates.
I made the prediction a while back in another thread that eventually, at the elites with ED, only 25% of the class will come from RD, with 70% through ED and the other 5% through WL.
@PurpleTitan Not sure I agree with you. I think the Ivies and some other elites (ie; G’town) make a point of capping ED as they know in some cases it puts kids from lower income brackets at a disadvantage. And since they will have good yield no matter what, ED is not as important to them in that regard.
This trend will hollow out the income distribution of the enrolled students. ED is attractive only for wealthy fullpays and fullride poor kids. Those who need to compare FA pkgs cannot play.
^ This is true. ED could become the way that upper income families secure a spot…if they can figure out which top tier school is their preference – and most likely admit.
The fullride poor kids will be at a disadvantage if there is a discrepancy between net price calc and actual financial aid packages. It also seems to feed too much into the “dream school” mentality, when low income kids – like all students – will have a hard time figuring out which schools are likely admits. I tell our kids it is like playing a full game as opposed to shooting a single basketball thrown from halfway across the court. In some cases it may be worth it…but know the possible outcomes.
Once again, it’ll be the middle class families/students that get screwed as well as anyone that can’t get a real read on the NPC due to divorce, small business owners, etc. The majority of us have to see a financial package to make a choice.
@wisteria100, perhaps that’s what they say.
Brown and Columbia did not raise the percentage of their class filled with ED between the classes of 2012-2019.
Dartmouth, UPenn, and Cornell did. UPenn fills over half their class with ED now.
But yeah, perhaps it will be the SCEA/EA schools who will go that high. Princeton, Yale, and MIT already fill roughly 60% of their class with early admits. ND now fills 80% of its class with early admits.