The end of RD as we know it for elite schools

@NEPatsGirl, true, if you need to compare fin aid packages, maybe non-HYPSM EA is the only way to go. That leaves really only UChicago, Caltech, and the Catholics (Georgetown, ND, BC).

@PurpleTitan, the kids I know who had the most trouble didn’t listen to the GC.

Exactly which schools are filling their RD class with 3% of their RD apps? I assume some actually have some form of EA – which of the ED schools are at 3%?

^ and the Tulanes, Northeasterns and so on still offer unrestricted EA.

ED is a cynical strategy to lower the school’s admit rate, thereby enhancing its perceived selectivity.

I don’t understand how so many students view themselves as candidates for the very top schools. It is as if the horrid “Self Esteem Movement” resulted in a generation of kids with inflated egos and unrealistic expectations. The Ivy League schools were somewhat less competitive when I was a student but I would never have presumed that I would be a good candidate for one of them. I was by no means the top student in my district, for example. I presumed that those schools would be interested only in such a student. Given the many different academic levels for different courses these days, most students have high grades-Yesterday’s B student is today’s A student in less then the tippy top level classes. And, all (at least too many) “A” students seem to view Ivy league plus schools as in their future.

The students I know who get into a bunch of tippy top schools RD (like Stanford, Yale, Hopkins, Princeton, and a string of others) are not students who have been involved in every high status high school EC possible (Model UN and Math League and Mastermind and…). Rather, they tend to be students whose aptitude was apparent very early and who had already been viewed by teachers as exceptional (not simply “gifted”) way before high school. They were accelerated in various classes very early and admitted into programs designed for older kids. Many of their activities (at least in terms of general categories) were contiguous from elementary school onward (like totally into writing or focused on math, for example). Parents had to help them limit their involvements rather than urging them to add ECs for the sake of colleges. The kids were hungry to be involved with all kinds of things and that would not have been different had they not planned to attend college. That’s how they are wired. And these students were fairly easy to distinguish from the majority of high grade students who carefully chose their high school ECs to be competitive and interesting to colleges.

I was deferred, then rejected from my SCEA school (Princeton), but accepted lots of places RD (Yale, Stanford, MIT, a couple of other ivies…). It’s anecdotal, but still so is your post.

@lostaccount it is the result of the “every kid wins a trophy” philosophy. Many years ago when I applied to college I only considered area LACs. None of my classmates even considered HYP, those were places with odd cultures and it was no secret that the undergrad experience wasn’t great. A lot of parents and kids today are blindly chasing brands with no thought to fit, or reality itself, for that matter.

"A lot of parents and kids today are blindly chasing brands "
I couldnt agree more! Take the parents need for status and add it to the "self esteem every kid wins a trophyand throw in the Common app and you get way, way, way too many kids applying to Elite colleges. Too many of those same students have never NOT gotten what mommy and daddy wanted them to have- until now.

I think the first thing that ought to go is the Common App.
Its introduction helped fuel the ridiculous rise in the # of applications a student can send with just the click of a mouse.
Then all colleges ought to tell students that taking any more than 8 AP’s classes is a waste of their time.
Doing so wont impress any college admissions committee.

@GMTplus7, here are all the private universities in the USNews top 35 who do not restrict early applicants (with ED or SCEA) or otherwise play games with their admit rate (USC doesn’t have ED, but they do stuff like offer a bunch of kids guaranteed transfers so that they can bring in a smaller fall class to make their USN admit rate look lower):

MIT, UChicago, CalTech

HYPS and the Catholics have SCEA, which does allow kids to compare fin aid, but they also keep applicants from their best chance at other elite privates, and as I noted, most of the SCEA schools fill an even higher percentage of their class with early admits than the ED schools.

Make me appreciate places like MIT UChicago and CalTech even more. MIT does not even use the common app!

@menloparkmom Taking more than 8 AP courses is not a waste of time and most students don’t take a large number of AP classes just to impress colleges. For example, my D’s reasons for taking as many AP classes as she has are twofold: 1) that’s where all the top students are and 2) she will have much more flexibility in college to double or even triple major, study abroad, minor, etc. She’s not aiming at elite schools, but even if she were, for reason no 1, it would not be a waste. I graduated early from an elite school due to AP credit. Some still do offer credit for AP classes.

I think AP classes and tests are smart.

Shotgunning to schools regardless of fit? Not so much.

I think FIT is a bunch of nonsense. There was a school that would have been perfect for K1. However, on the day we toured we had a flaky hippy dippy tour guide. K1 was really put off by the guide, we all were. While K1 ended up applying, it was not ED as it should have been. You can get a quick vibe, you cannot be certain from a visit or reading about a school on the internet. Sure the outliers yes, the Republican conservative who is applying to Wesleyan needs to understand. Sure the liberal pacifist applying to the Citadel to give some obvious examples. Someone who wants Engineering applying to Emory, since they do not have freshman engineering. For most other schools and people, one school is often as good as another. Its what you perceive you need to be happy.

Read the Rice v UT thread someone is posting. The kid is clearly saying UT is where I belong, where my heart is. Meanwhile Rice is offering more money (but it is <16,000 over 4 years I think) and is a higher ranked school. Nearly everyone who has an opinion is telling her Rice!

For what it’s worth my daughter was strongly advised by her GC to apply to anywhere from 9-12 school, divided as best as possible in the following way: 3-4 Likelys, 3-4 50/50’s, and 3-4 reach. We took that approach (although sometimes the line between each category is blurry) and my daughter had great success. She was never Ivy bound, but the school worked very hard to encourage the kids to not get stuck looking at the sam 35 school “everyone seems to want to go to”, By looking outside the best known (from where we sit in CA) she was able to find schools that she liked that fit each category. They were not necessarily school all of her friends had heard of (Franklin and Marshall, Lafayette and Gettysburg are not nearly as well known here on the west coast) but they were all great choices. In the end, she did better than we thought and she was accepted at 8 of the 12 schools she ended up applying to.

We were also advised that if she had a true preference for a school (Tulane in this case) that was a 50/50 or reach that she should consider applying EA. We were advised that some schools prefer to fill up their incoming freshman class with up to about 70% with EA kids. She did that and was successful.

However, the net price of Rice is at the very edge of that poster’s affordability, while the net price of UT is about $4,000 over that. When even a small price difference cross the affordability-or-not threshold, that complicates the situation.

Uh, @SeekingPam , I don’t consider the vibe from a visit to be that big a part of fit.

And yes, many kids can fit in well at many schools, in which case, it makes sense to apply strategically and smartly. Maybe try to minimize money spent while maximizing the chance of getting in somewhere that can help them meet their goals. Such a strategy still doesn’t call for shotgunning to all Ivies/equivalents.

@ucbalumnus and if the kid was talking about lesser schools and getting a social work degree the $4000 would matter, she is planning on engineering from a top program after being competitive and hard working enough to possibly be the Val of her grade, The extra 16k can be paid back easily with a degree in mechanical engineering.

"SeekingPam wrote:
Read the Rice v UT thread someone is posting. The kid is clearly saying UT is where I belong, where my heart is. Meanwhile Rice is offering more money (but it is <16,000 over 4 years I think) and is a higher ranked school. Nearly everyone who has an opinion is telling her Rice!

ucbalumnus wrote:
However, the net price of Rice is at the very edge of that poster’s affordability, while the net price of UT is about $4,000 over that. When even a small price difference cross the affordability-or-not threshold, that complicates the situation."

In addition, part of that poster’s motivation to select UT over Rice was that several of her friends will be going to UT, while none will be going to Rice. They cautioned against using that as a criterion.

(P. S. I need to learn how to use the quote box like ucbalumnus used. 8-| )

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/03/31/a-college-admissions-edge-for-the-wealthy-early-decision/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_college-admissions-710am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory

Look at the table about 1/4 of the way into the article.

Could you post on that thread suggesting ways that the OP could make up that $4,000 per year beyond the federal direct loans that she would have to take plus a few thousand dollars of work earnings that she would have to work for?

It may be easy to spend the extra $16,000 for those who have the money up front, but the OP and her parents do not have the money.