interesting points, @DeepBlue86 but perhaps you’re overthinking it. The degree to which S desirability is approaching H must already be handled during RD round today. Same for all other schools that are +/-10 ranking values from their ‘peer’ institutions. I think there is probably a pretty predictable percentage of kids choosing one over the other peer. Undoubtedly the 4-choice EA idea will mean more dependence on waitlists, with its own set of unfairness and uncertainty.
One other hypothetical twist: consider a system whereby the schools could view their EA accepted students’ EA choices. Then S could assign a different expected yield to the student who applied EA S-not-H than to the student who applied EA-both. But that would probably be considered illegal and result in a whole new level of strategic choices for students. (So I am not seriously proposing this part.)
@spayurpets – there is a lot more to the resident match system than you’ve outlined. It’s a 2-state application process – the medical students first apply to a fairly long list of hospitals where they would like to do their residency-- similar to the initial college application process. (The application would include med school transcript, medical board test scores, resume, a personal statement, etc.). Then the resident will be invited to interview at some of the programs – the interview is typically a day-long process, where there is an opportunity to tour the facility, meet in a group setting with the staff, and also one-on-one interviews. After completing the interview process, the applicant will then submit a list of their preferred programs, in ranked order – as a practical matter, they can only select among the programs that invited them to interview.
Meanwhile, each hospital prepares its own ranked choice list. The student’s rank preference is the primary determinant – but the student will only be accepted to a program where there is space, and the amount of space remaining will be governed by the program’s ranking. That is, if there are 10 spaces, but 20 students who have designated that program as their top choice, then the 10 students who are ranked most highly by the hospital will get the spots, and the other 10 would be shifted to their 2nd choice, and as far down their own lists as needed until a space was found.
It is an extremely cumbersome and expensive process, because the medical students need to travel all over the place for their interviews. It works because most residency programs are taking a fairly small number of residents each year - maybe 10-20 spots-- so it is not an unwieldy number of interviews to conduct. (Each specialty program is administered separately - so the number of spots correlate to that specialty within the teaching hospital).
The system really wouldn’t transfer to undergraduate admissions because it would be difficult to scale upwards. I could see perhaps an analog working in college athletics – because there the numbers really are a closer equivalent, plus there is a metric for each sport that can be applied to the applicants. (The football coach knows what positions need to be filled and what qualities are important, and the high school athlete already has an established record of play in that sport).
But beyond that it doesn’t make sense – it is a system that works only because the applicants have already accumulated professional-level qualifications via their education, rotation, and other work history – and because each program has a relatively small number of spots to fill.
Another problem with having students rank colleges is that students often don’t know if they want to go to school A over school B if they are similar, and might rely on visiting to determine such a ranking. Personally, as someone who lives on the other side of the country from most of the schools I’m interested in, I know that I won’t be able to visit a majority of the schools that I will be applying to, and I’ll eventually conduct school visits only to schools that I am accepted into. Forcing students to rank schools in order of preference, then commit without visiting, would be unfair imo.
What I like about a match system is that it allows students to express a preference. In today’s admissions system, students get no chance to truthfully rank their preferences. As a default, ED and EA become a proxy for stating a preference, but even then, there’s gamesmanship with ED/EA and half the time it’s not even an honest statement of preference. It would be far better for an admissions system where the student preference is taken into account in the school where they end up getting acceptances to. The more I read about the medical residency match system, the more I like it. (I note, too, that the economist that came up with the idea of a blind preference algorithm for the medical residency program was awarded the Nobel prize.)
@calmom, sorry I didn’t read your reply until I had already sent my own. I’m not sure why you don’t think a match system would scale. Computers could do the kind of matching you’re talking about in less than an hour if it was working through 20 ranked preferences for 200,000 college student applications. The interview process you outline as cumbersome is not necessary to college admissions; how many schools actually use interviews today tells you how little weight schools give to that today. In fact, it would scale in a much more efficient way because of the fact that schools rely far more on scores and grades than they are willing to admit today; I bet grades and standardized tests account for something like 75% weighting in whether the applicant is accepted or denied. I would say that the medical residency match program is more difficult to pull off because certain qualities of being a good doctor are not apparent from grades and scores, and then there’s all the specialties and subspecialties to deal with. That’s why they need the interview. It would be far easier to pull off successful matches in the college context because the vast majority of college students are selected on the basis of GPA and scores.
And I call BS on those who state that students need to visit all their schools to know their preferences. Students today don’t know anything about the schools that they are applying to. They mostly go on reputation or location. The match system wouldn’t change that; it would just make it more stark because you’re going to get only one offer and your stated preferences are really going to mean something.
^ excuse me but HOW are HS students supposed to KNOW how to arrive at their “stated preferences”
if they dont visit ?
“Students today don’t know anything about the schools that they are applying to.”
and I call BS to that sweeping statement . MANY students DO a LOT of research on the colleges they apply to .
the fact is that the way newly minted Drs in the US are matched with residency programs, is not ever going to be applicable to the college application process. So can come back to a realistic discussion?
Not every high school student has important criteria that can only be determined by a visit. For example, a high school student whose only criteria are affordable net price and sufficient offerings in his/her academic areas of interest may not require a visit to determine whether a college is desirable to him/her.
(Obviously, this does not necessarily mean that the medical residency matching method will work well, or at all, for high school students applying to colleges.)
Question because I couldn’t find it on the Northwestern website- does ED Northwestern allow me to apply to other schools that are EA (such as Michigan)??
@spayurpets - you acknowledged from the outset that you don’t know much about the medical resident matching system, so I took the time to explain how cumbersome it is. From your reply to me, I can now see that you don’t know very much about how competitive colleges make admission decisions either. It definitely is not all about GPA and test scores. (If it was, it would be far more predictable – but it isn’t.)
@pickpocket@GnocchiB Although I don’t doubt that HYPS are all quite good at predicting if their admits will accept their offers (and, if not, where they’ll go instead), right now it’s not really a problem for H and S, which we can estimate with good confidence based on disclosed admits and class size have ~80% overall yields (and probably ~90% yields on their early admits). That means they are essentially picking their classes, and no one school is a major problem for them. It becomes less clear at Y and P, which have ~70% overall yields (and, I’m guessing, 80-85% yields on their early admits). If I were H and S, I’d want to stay right where I was and not have to deal with the incremental uncertainty that would come with a somewhat lower yield, which could be the result if they walked away from SCEA. The closest parallel we have is when H and P unilaterally abandoned early admissions for a few years and then came back to the table when they realized they were losing too many desirable kids to Y and elsewhere.
Rather than debate hypothetical admissions systems, we might want to consider the not-out-of-the-realm-of-possibility scenario of a school (possibly a LAC like Bowdoin?) going 100% ED in the (near) future. It seems like this is more the trend than less ED or the likelihood of switching to a whole different system.
Other than the difficult task of reading all applications in a much shorter time period, would there be drawback for the school (there is obviously one for applicants) for doing this? I suppose the other issue would be not enough qualified applicants to fill a class, so you’d have to admit some sub-par students, which would drag your numbers down for your US News score, even if your yield was 100%.
Hmm, not sure there would be sufficient draw (apps) of the quality level Bowdoin (or similar) would like. A lot of you assume that if the stats are in place, the rest is just candy.
Why should they admit subpar students? It’s not about USNews, but the flavor of the community and attributes they want. Holistic.
I don’t mean to offend with this comment, but it seems to me these (obviously playful) “new paradigms” are really just wishful thinking for some to find a more efficient way into the elites.
Am I wrong?
It also reminds me of whenever I near new plans for calculating taxes; I ask “under this plan, who will pay less and who will pay more”? It’s all a zero sum game.
So I ask, about these new plans: Who will now get into elites and who now will not?
It’s unfair to “make” a kid decide on a first choice in November (purely voluntary) but it’s not unfair to force a ranking of ALL the colleges a la residency matches?
“Question because I couldn’t find it on the Northwestern website- does ED Northwestern allow me to apply to other schools that are EA (such as Michigan)??”
You need to comply with the policies of BOTH schools. So you need to see what Michigan thinks about that.
If you apply to NW ED, NW does not care if you apply somewhere else non-binding EA. NW just forbids you from applying to a second school binding ED.
But some schools won’t let you apply non-binding EA if you apply to NW binding ED – for example HYPS, Georgetown, Notre Dame. Because those schools don’t want to waste their early application efforts on kids who are bound to enroll elsewhere if they get in ED. Those are usually call restricted EA or single choice EA.
UM probably has unrestricted EA which would let you apply. But you need to check for yourself to be sure. Since each school can have slightly different rules.
"I don’t mean to offend with this comment, but it seems to me these (obviously playful) “new paradigms” are really just wishful thinking for some to find a more efficient way into the elites.
Am I wrong?"
I think the process could be made a lot more simple and efficient without really changing the odds and outcomes for in favor of any particular group of kids.
I’d like to see a system that was de-escalated, and which would be simpler, more transparent and straightforward, and which put less of a premium on gamesmanship, rigging the data for ranking purposes, and overall BS.
I also don’t like how the ED system mildly coerces kids into shotgun marriages with schools early on. Since the schools are increasingly saying you are stupid if you don’t play on the part of the field that we have strongly tilted towards those willing to ED.
It seems dumb to me that that particular item now has as much importance as it does. The kid that picks Duke on May 1 still picks Duke over all alternatives and loves Duke. Why is that kid less appealing to Duke as compared to the kid who picks Duke on November 1? Especially since the November 1 kid may not really love Duke all that much but instead is just smarter about playing the odds of the game.
I don’t have a big issue with ED/EA, but I truly don’t understand the vast percentages of students whose EA/ED decisions are deferred to the regular pool. So much better if colleges gave students an up-or-down decision, and restricted deferrals to a small percentage.
Last year Harvard had 6173 SCEA applicants, of whom 918 were admitted, 464 were denied and 4673 deferred to regular decision; the remainder either had incomplete files or withdrew applications. I can’t understand why they wouldn’t flip those numbers around and give more students a final decision in December. (I can’t even understand why they want to re-read 4673 applications.)
Anecdotal, but we’re seeing the frequency of deferrals greatly increasing over the past few years, and this is for very, very good students, not students with problem grades or disciplinary issues.