There’s “enough” and there’s “even better than enough.”
The ED school might offer a financial aid package that meets the student’s needs but requires the student to borrow a certain amount of money. It’s possible that the financial aid package at another school would be structured in a way that requires less borrowing – or even none at all. But if you apply ED, you’ll never know.
What do posters predict: more schools go ED and fill higher % (e.g. 80-90%) of their classes with ED applicants? If so, good for the schools and bad for the students as it will drive up the # of RD applications to the moon.
I think you’re just talking about the difference between ED and RD. Some how it’s not good enough to get enough in ED? Somethings not right about that. If it’s your first choice school then making it possible to go there based on an analysis of what you can afford seems reasonable. In other words, if you’re applying ED for the right reasons, if the financial aid package makes it possible to go there then you won’t mind if “you’ll never know.” If you want to shop around then apply RD and EA.
One real-life, verified example from last year that’s somewhat on point:
Applied EA to first choice (one of HYPSM), was deferred, then - because a deferral provides very little range-confirming information - applied to 15 other schools of varying levels of selectivity. Ultimately was admitted to >10 RD, including the school that originally deferred them. If they’d been admitted EA, the other 15 apps would never have been submitted, so it was as if they’d applied ED. 15 wasted apps, just pumping up the numbers in the system.
This exemplifies the problem. The avalanche of applications to the tippy-tops has caused a cascade down to the next tier, and the adcoms there have seen their jobs get harder and harder. 13,617 students applied to the Harvard class of 1989 and the admit rate was 16.1% (see here: http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/09/the-twenty-first-century-student). Now almost 3x as many apply, and the admit rate has fallen by nearly two-thirds. How many of those 13,617 Harvard applicants back in the day do you think applied to, say, Duke or Northwestern? I’m guessing a few hundred to each, tops. What about the 39,041 applicants to the Harvard class of 2020? Probably thousands to each. And this is repeated to a greater or lesser degree across HYPSM and amplified because of the Common App and the perception by students that the numbers are so large that it’s a crapshoot, impelling them to send out more and more apps. It feeds on itself.
So, if you’re the director of admissions at Duke or Northwestern, you’re getting many thousands more apps from kids who are, or think they are, competitive at the tippy-tops. You could fill your class several times over by offering admission only to applicants in this group, but literally no one might show up - and it’s getting worse every year. What do you do? You try to lock down an ever-larger portion of your class through ED. I don’t love it, but it’s hard to say that this is bad behavior.
“Applied EA to first choice (one of HYPSM), was deferred, then - because a deferral provides very little range-confirming information - applied to 15 other schools of varying levels of selectivity. Ultimately was admitted to >10 RD, including the school that originally deferred them. If they’d been admitted EA, the other 15 apps would never have been submitted, so it was as if they’d applied ED. 15 wasted apps, just pumping up the numbers in the system.”
I lied about being my last post. : )
DB – I think the exact opposite argument is stronger. Although neither of us have the data to prove our point. Here’s the counter argument:
What caused this kid to apply to 15 extra schools rather than 5 extra or 10 extra? Could the 15 apps have been caused by the extremely low admit rates the kid faced at the RD stage? Let’s say (for argument sake) that the ED affect is the difference between 10 extra apps and 15 extra apps.
At Northwestern, for example, 92% of the apps are RD and 8% are ED. 3 kids get in ED (38% ED admit rate) and so only submit one app each. 3 apps made and 42 apps avoided thanks to ED. 5 kids get deferred/denied and submit 15 apps. That’s 75 apps (including 25 extra due to the ED effect). 92 kids submit 15 apps. That’s 1,380 apps (including 460 extra due to the ED effect).
So if you take my assumptions (which no one has the data to prove or disprove), ED reduces apps by 42 and increases apps by 485. So the app “savings” of the few admitted via ED is overwhelmed by the app increase of the vast majority of applicant who go through RD. You squeeze the app balloon at the ED end and it bulges out at the RD end.
Even if you dial back my assumptions by a good bit (assume only one incremental app per ED effect), the math still says that ED is an app increaser. Or maybe you conclude ED is just app neutral. The case for ED reducing apps (to me) is MUCH more speculative once you trace the affect through the whole system. The biggest part of the equation by far is how the ED tail impacts the behavior of RD dog.
“You could fill your class several times over by offering admission only to applicants in this group, but literally no one might show up.”
Nonsense. Filling the seats is quite easy/predictable. Every school already knows how to do it. The ad coms at Duke are quite expert at managing the yield from a large number of unbound applicants. Since that is exactly how they fill the 50% of their class that does not come in through ED. Duke wouldn’t wind up with empty seats without ED. They’d just fill those seats via a higher admit and a lower yield rate. Notice that there’s never empty seats at USC, Notre Dame or Georgetown…
I think some of this discussion is about the best way to use ED, and whether it helps a little or a lot. And I think I now understand what @lookingforward is saying, and I definitely agree.
I’m more complaining about the system itself, not how to use it. My primary complaint about ED can be explained by taking an extreme hypothetical example. Say that every school had an ED program, and say that for each school, it increased your chances of admissions by a small (but non-trivial) amount.
This would make me unhappy (and not unhappy in the children-starving-in-the-world sense, but unhappy nonetheless) for 2 main reasons:
I wasn’t trying to engage directly with your theory, @northwesty, - in part because it’s, as you say, unprovable either way - but now I’m giving myself a headache trying to think through it. It seems to me that if you eliminate ED, you eliminate a source of certainty for students and partial certainty on class composition for colleges. The question is which population will react more extremely given a background of steadily increasing numbers of applications cascading down from the EA schools - the students by submitting more apps or the colleges by admitting more kids. I don’t think any of us can confidently predict the answer, but my hunch is that apps are going to rise faster than admit rates, because the cascade means that apps just keep going up, increasing student uncertainty even more.
With regard to your second point, it seems to me that the percent of classes admitted ED at the schools you cite has risen broadly in tandem with volume of applications from the cascade. That indicates (to me, anyway), that the adcoms at these schools are having to run faster and faster to stay in the same place. I don’t doubt that through careful vetting of applications for demonstrated interest and management of the waitlist, they can and do get to where they need to be on class size.
Related to this, by the way: given that these schools are able to manage class size, as you note, it could be that eliminating ED would just cause them to put more kids on the waitlist and manage it aggressively, resulting in admit rates going up to a much lesser extent than you might expect, no?
Shadow – I think the problem with ED is that it is getting to be too big of a factor at some of these schools and thereby causes a lot of distortions and unwanted/unintended secondary effects. Once you are getting 50% of your class through ED, the exception is overtaking the rule.
Back in 2000, NW got 5.4% of its apps through ED and filled 21% of its seats through ED. Overall acceptance rate was 33% and the ED accept rate was 50%. To me, that profile of ED looks pretty reasonable. ED is a nice option (which provides a modest boost) for the small number of kids who are really set on NW over all others.
In 2015, NW got 8.3% of its apps through ED and filled 47.6% of its seats through ED. Overall acceptance rate was 13% as compared to an ED accept rate of 38%. To me, that profile of ED is starting to look like two very different games being played. And there’s very strong incentives pushing kids into playing the game with the much better odds.
Would folks be OK if NW allocated 75% of its seats to ED applicants? Or just got rid of RD entirely?
I think NU is in the minority here. Most colleges are not accepting half of their class in the ED round. I think if you want to target the few schools that do it’s one thing. But I’m not convinced that ED in general (at the many, many fine colleges that don’t take 1/2 their class that way) is hurting the RD pool. At least the kids who are accepted ED (and they are strong applicants) are eliminated from the RD pool. I’m getting tired of hearing here on CC (and quite often IRL) about the kids who were accepted by their SCEA school and have 15 more apps to submit. I’ve seen them garner quite a “brag list” while decreasing admissions rates at the same time. Most have no desire to attend a college other than that EA one, and it’s rare that I’ve seen a kid switch from their SCEA college to another one.
If you look at the recent data posted by someone upthread, quite a number of colleges are accepting close to 50% of their classes via early admissions. NU may be in the minority, but it’s a minority that includes a large number of the universities with which it is most competitive, including the University of Chicago, Penn, Duke, and Vanderbilt. Dartmouth was at 44% last year, which is not so different.
DB – I think apps keep going up (with ED or not) so long as the Common App remains in use. And I’d bet that ED is more likely to be increasing apps than tamping them down. But we’d have to run the experiment to really know.
But there’s no doubt in my mind that no school “needs” to use ED to fill seats or enroll a good class. Many schools use ED very little or not at all and do just fine. And even the big ED schools still fill half of their seats without the ED tool.
So my bottom line is that (from the school’s perspective) ED is fundamentally is about doing two things:
Reason #1 to me is just pure BS and not legit. Duke would still be an awesome school if it dialed back ED and wound up with a 16% admit rate rather than 10%.
Reason #2 (while distasteful) I think is legit. Everybody (even Harvard) has limited resources and a budget they have to hit. But I think some schools are over-doing it with ED and creating more crazy market distortion than is good for the overall system.
Take a look at the chart in this WaPo article. The number of schools filling 40% or more of their seats via ED was a real surprise to me when I first saw it.
Davidson College 61%, Penn 54%, Emory 53%, Tufts 53%, Vandy 51%, NW 50%, Colgate 50%, Swarthmore 50%, Duke 47%, Bucknell 47%, Lehigh 46%, Holy Cross 45%, Williams 44%, Pomona 44%, Dartmouth 43%, Haverford 43%, JHop 42%, Wake 41%…
You can’t compare EA numbers and ED numbers directly, but Princeton and Yale each accepted enough applicants EA last year to fill close to 60% of their classes. I doubt they had 100% yield on those admissions, of course, but I would bet anything that their yield on those admissions was higher than their average yields, which were around 68%. If you assume an 80% yield on their SCEA admissions – which frankly sounds conservative to me – they each would have filled just under 50% of their class that way.
(I included the University of Chicago in my earlier post. Last year, it was an EA college only. But it was a safe bet it got more than 50% of its class from EA admission, because for several years it has been admitting more applicants EA than it does RD – over 60% of its total admissions.
It can help to look at the broad view, not just one student, nervous about chances, or one college. This responds to the chances complaints:
I hate to say it, but too many kids don’t really put their own best foot forward, as it is. Partly, their age, partly this rush to the top (applying to so many, hoping to hit pay dirt as high as they can, rather than a more carefully selected lower number of appropriate targets.) Partly that high school has become more competitive, for many, and the kids misunderstand the qualitative aspects of holistic.
So this idea they have to apply to more, because more kids are and their chances go down, is a false understanding, incomplete.
The real first question, repeating myself, is: am I truly what this college wants? (As opposed to, am I tops in my hs or see myself as a snowflake.) If you can’t view it that way, at least in part, chances are you aren’t making your best shot, won’t see an RD admit.
Not because there are so many others applying, but because you, yourself, didn’t present in a meaningful, competitive way- and they found their other 2000 or more kids who did.
Yes, parents help. But many of those without that are being mentored and clued in by great teachers, savvy GCs, and established community organizations. There’s a lot of ground between support from savvy parents and no support at all. And the brightest listen and process, strive, any SES.
And, the idea they have to apply ED, to better their chances, is equally off, yield considerations or not. If you aren’t the right candidate, as shown on your full app/supp, they aren’t afraid to deny. They aren’t just trying to gather 61% or 44%. They’re still trying to build the “right” class. You are either part of that or not.
So, what I see in some thinking here is the quantitative aspects, forgetting how key the full holistic review really is.
If you think about it, the British universities survive quite well in a system where an applicant can only choose one ultraprestigious institution to which to apply. If you apply to Cambridge, you can’t apply to Oxford, and vice versa. It’s not a question of early vs. late admissions, and it’s not formally binding, but it’s still reasonably equivalent. I bet their yield on admissions of British students is not meaningfully less than 100%, and when you apply to one you don’t have the option to apply to the other if the first rejects you.
Antitrust considerations aside – which is like saying “apart from the laws of gravity”; antitrust considerations would likely kill such a plan – American universities could do that. The interesting question is which ones, if any, other than HYPS might sign up. It would probably cut those institutions’ applications by about 2/3, thus increasing their admission rates considerably. What it would do to to the application numbers/yield/admission rates of institutions that were not part of that group is anyone’s guess.
JHS – even with antitrust laws, if the percentage of seats allocated early keeps increasing beyond 50% you will approach something that is pretty similar to the English model. Which is basically ED-only. If the trends continue, at some point the RD portion really doesn’t matter any more. Way too many apps for too few seats. You are playing Powerball.
A November 1 ED-only system could work just fine if it was clear. In some ways it might be preferably to the crazy hybrid system that seems to have evolved at this band of schools.
But that’s not the system we’ve had traditionally. And I’d personally vote for an unrestricted EA system over (i) the current ED/RD hybrid and (ii) an ED-only system.
I don’t disagree that no school “needs” to use ED, @northwesty, or with your point #1, but I do think that as the number of apps has exploded at the top and cascaded down, increasing in tandem the % of slots filled through ED is a way for some schools to maintain the same level of control over the composition of their classes. In a way, that’s the flip side of your point #1, and I’m not convinced it’s an entirely bad thing. Related to that, I’d add a point #3: the schools know that the more kids they admit ED, the greater the proportion of the class that has decided that a given school’s their first choice and is happy about being there, which seems like a good thing to me.
Again, if it were up to me I’d make the SCEA schools ED and thereby limit the RD cascade, or explicitly cap the number of apps anyone could submit, or abolish the Common App. That would raise RD admit rates, I’m pretty sure.
Re: @JHS’ suggestion, maybe HYPSM could have a modified ED draft system for a fixed percentage of their classes. I’m not an antitrust lawyer, but it seems to be OK for the NFL. It would be interesting to design the rules for that.
@northwesty regarding your post #231 and the chart from the WaPo article, I looked up the Pomona numbers out of curiosity. The data came from the 2015/16 CDS, which is for the Class of 2019. https://www.pomona.edu/sites/default/files/cds-2015-2016.pdf Yes Pomona admitted 44% of the class through ED, but the CDS says that number “includes Posse and Questbridge Match binding early candidates.” We already know that the 44% also includes a lot of recruited athletes. The point is just that the numbers can’t necessarily be taken at face value to decide how much the system favors wealthy candidates. ED admits included 13 QB match, 20 Posse scholars, and 136 of the more “traditional” ED admits (including recruited athletes) for a total class of 400. https://www.pomona.edu/sites/default/files/pomona-college-admissions-2015-16-profile.pdf. (The total # of ED admits in the profile is 169 vs 175 in the CDS, probably reflecting some ED admits backing out, taking a gap year, etc.) I assume that there may be similar issues with the numbers on the WaPo chart for other schools. But 136/400 is 34% instead of the 44% reported in the WaPo article. It doesn’t make sense to count the QB and Posse admits as evidence that the ED system gives an unfair advantage to the wealthy/privileged.
MIT doesn’t publish this data any more, but the year my oldest applied they limited EA admits (don’t remember the exact number but around 20% of the total class so if everyone accepted they wouldn’t overwhelm the class.) The admit rate for the EA round was about 15% back then and less than that for regular. The admit rate for students deferred from EA round was much better than those who only applied in the regular round, in fact it was 25%. I think that means that the EA pool was probably considerably stronger than the regular pool. They’ve gotten their applications together, organized teacher recommendations etc. before the last minute deadline in any event. Harvard is on record (in the past at least) for saying that their EA pool is stronger than the regular one.
The Tufts rep on this site has said a common reason for deferral is that they really like you, but have some qualms about your grades and want to see first semester senior year grades.