The Plague of ‘Early Decision’

Parent Cafe
321

@northwesty I think the difference is that the November kid expressed his intention to attend if accepted and indicated this was his first choice by filing ED. The guy coming in RD might just as well felt he would apply for the heck of it and not really want to attend.

ED allows students to indicate that this school is my first choice. I know. We all know this. But it needs to be said again because we get all caught up in the acceptance bump. But again, the school is merely accepting more because they know the ED pool is only full of those kids that really, really want to come. It weeds out the window shoppers who do not want to put their money where their mouth is so to speak.

322

The process was simple and efficient back in the 1970’s when I applied to college (and the late 1960’s when older siblings did).

In our community, you mostly applied to 3-4 colleges. One was the state flagship, which was not commutable but which most kids could afford by “working their way through”. Many of the elites did not accept women (I am female) so that took a bunch of schools off the table. I had a HS friend who took a gap year (very rare at the time) so she could apply to Dartmouth the first year they accepted women- we all thought she was nuts.

But I digress. If your parents hadn’t gone to college, in my area you generally commuted from home and went to a local teacher’s or nursing college. The top math/chem girl in my HS went to nursing school- not even a BS. The one girl in my HS to get a 5 on AP chem, then AP Physics… was “tracked” to a non-BS program. If you were Af-Am you were encouraged to apply to an HBCU so you wouldn’t feel “out of place”. The Val from my HS (also female) turned down an almost full ride at one of the Seven Sisters because her parents didn’t want her to leave town. So she commuted by bus to a local college and became a school teacher.

I am not describing rural America-- this was a large city in a reasonably cosmopolitan region with a lot of educated people. But the “simple and efficient system” largely had the effect of tamping down ambition, keeping kids close to home (even when it was affordable- like my friend with the full ride- to go away to a more competitive/brand name college). Yes, there were kids applying and getting into the elites. But coming from the East Coast, I don’t think I met anyone who had attended Stanford until I got to grad school. It was pretty common in my HS for a kid’s application strategy to be Harvard, U Mass, and maybe BU/BC. Parents would say at college night, “If he can’t get into Harvard, U Mass is fine”.

And for many it was.

But I don’t think you are getting rid of the internet, the flatter world with more information, the democratization of society where HS girls don’t just pick between nursing and elementary ed, where racial and ethnic minorities are told to stick with their own so they’ll be “comfortable”. These are big social changes which aren’t going away.

As a result- HS kids may not want to apply to 3-4 colleges and take the municipal bus to the local teacher’s college or nursing school if the “wish and a prayer” college doesn’t come through.

Don’t get me started on the draft- and how so many disinterested and marginal students ended up getting grad degrees because they needed deferments. We are all still living with the consequences of that- huge increases in the number and range of marginal degree programs to help keep a generation of young men away from Viet Nam.

I’m not as troubled by the lack of efficiency as some of you are- mainly because I remember “the good old days” and for many- it wasn’t so good.

323

That’s probably just an artifact of increased use of ED by students (as a result of increased pressure to apply ED).

The colleges are going to fill X spots with ED and no more. If more qualified students apply than there are spaces to accommodate, then more will be deferred.

324

Deferral just means you get a second, fresh look. Many times, the kid is good enough (as opposed to truly compelling or having no shot at all) and they want to see who else applies from that area, maybe a better candidate, in RD. Or just how any X major wannabes they end up finding, then filter through. It means no more than still “under consideration.” On some threads, particular college deferral numbers are discussed. Some are stingy with it.

I’d like to see a de-escalation, too. But I think it starts with the Common App. Reviewing is a mess and too many kids have too little understanding of what their targets want to see. They’re meh. They sink themselves. No matter their stats and club titles. No matter if the college takes this many in early or that fewer in RD.

This talk about some conspiracy, how colleges are coercing, are pushing everyone toward ED, that they aren’t transparent enough, etc, is only looking from one’s own perspective. How hard is it for supposedly bright kids to read the websites and vet for more than stats percentiles?

If you have a hs kid, put the effort in the right directions, not the complaining and the finger pointing and recreating a system you think would work better for your kid. Same as in adult life, job hunting or seeking some other goal. If he’s not ready to commit or the financials don’t look good, or you need to compare, have the sense not to apply ED. You have that control. You have it and you can keep it.

If your thinking is so narrow that you only view this as numbers/chances/admit stats, you may very well be missing what that college wants to see. That sort of limit makes neither ED nor RD a likely, for many competitive colleges. No matter your stats.

325

That’s fine, @lookingforward, but I think the point being made by @northwesty and others is that certain colleges themselves are consciously doing things that make it harder for kids to differentiate.

Penn (for example) isn’t Harvard, but if you consider the selectivity/yield numbers, it looks a lot more like Harvard than it did not so very long ago because Penn’s playing the ED game so aggressively. I don’t think Penn’s become significantly more like Harvard, but it’s harder to tell the difference than it used to be. Accordingly, the kids who start this process knowing nothing about Penn or Harvard have to dig deeper to figure out the differences and determine where to aim. You have to do a lot of research and have the benefit of historical perspective to understand what’s been going on. And you have to figure out how to play the numbers game the way Penn is nudging you to play it. It’s not the kids’ (or their parents’) fault if they’re a little confused sometimes, it seems to me.

Now, I know what you’re going to say: it’s the kids who know how to look beyond stats and really understand what the colleges are looking for who will find the right fit, etc., etc., but I think some schools are doing things that have the effect of making it harder for kids to do this, and that should at least be acknowledged.

@arabrab - HYP all defer something like half of their early applicants, and, as @lookingforward says, it’s because they’re preserving their optionality with respect to a lot of kids who are clearly acceptable. Up through last year, the outlier was Stanford, which tended either to admit or deny most of its EA applicants and defer relatively few. This year, interestingly, Stanford has decided not to disclose its EA stats, which makes one wonder whether they’ve decided to change this policy, or if there’s another reason.

326

Yes, you need to know what you’re applying to. “…the kids who start this process knowing nothing about Penn or Harvard have to dig deeper.” Of course. Or you’re just spitting into the wind, with your stats from your one hs. Both hands tied behind your back.

Yes, you should be that smart, (I usually call it “informed,”) if you want Penn, Duke or whatever. Know how many can’t do a good Why Us? What break are you trying to give them? (The break of blaming it on the college?)

There are some schools that make it harder. But imo, you don’t just dial in, looking for a paragraph answer, the one true, canned explanation. How easy do you want this to be, really? For a freaking top school?

Ok. You know that’s my hard line. But I see so many top kids who blow it. Then, I see kids who just need some clear advice and their wheels get right on track. Kids of all SES.

327

HYP probably gives half the slots to students with some significant hook(legacy with history of donations, URM, athlete, and the odd Senator’s kid or future Saudi prince). For the other half of the students, it seems like it’s mostly a crapshoot, and reading the websites doesn’t change that.

328

Not a crapshoot. Why wouldn’t you want to be informed, when applying to H level? If you do read up, from them, what they say, the kids they tout, you’d know they aren’t looking for sorts who call crapshoot, then lean back. being informed is a choice.

I really don’t get this “everyone gets a medal” mentality. I’ll back off for a while, now.

329

Y’know, @lookingforward, I think it’s not quite the Jedi-mastering-the-Force exercise you represent it to be. Not as simple as @roethlisburger says, either, but still…

Looked at broadly, the elites are a lot more similar than different. They have individual wrinkles, some differences in priorities/institutional needs and varying degrees of selectivity. You need to study them closely enough to know which ones are in range, how to address them (including not telling Dartmouth you’re interested in a program that’s actually offered at Penn, for example), and how to play the game in the way they want you to play it (including the ED game), but if you’ve got the bar-clearing stats and a high-quality, differentiated story with all the ancillary pieces (e.g., recs), and you play the game by their rules, I think (based on some direct personal experience, although I would guess less than yours) various places will find reasons to take you. Like I mentioned upthread, I know someone very well who recently got into (unhooked) >10 of the most selective unis and is now enrolled at the single-letter school of their choice. I know for a fact that they hadn’t done exhaustive research on each school.

And, as @roethlisburger says, it can also be a crapshoot if you’re unhooked (and even if you’re hooked - as, for example, when a legacy at one single-letter school doesn’t get in there but gets into another one). Every year, the Harvard Crimson does class profiles based on questionnaires they send to all the freshmen. In recent years, about 20% of the enrolled freshmen acknowledge that Harvard wasn’t their first choice. Meanwhile, since Harvard has about an 80% yield, that means that about 20% of the students Harvard admits don’t enroll. So, well over a third of the students Harvard admits every year either go somewhere else or wish they could have gone somewhere else - so are not ideal matches for Harvard. And we’re talking about Harvard, at the pinnacle of selectivity and yield, which basically has its pick of students. That tells me that this notion that everyone ends up where they should is very much overstated.

Yes, yes, I know - the plural of anecdote is not data…but I think this process is both more mechanistic and more random than you seem to believe. And no one’s suggesting “everyone gets a medal”, or should.

330

“Informed.” Not Jedi. Informed and thoughtful.

If a kid is admitted, but goes elsewhere, well again, that’s his perspective, his decision. But the college liked him, accepted him. Harvard saw the match. Different. If his intetests were leaning elsewhere, I wouldn’t suggest ED. (Of course, some kids matriculate for the aid.)

331

“But again, the school is merely accepting more because they know the ED pool is only full of those kids that really, really want to come. It weeds out the window shoppers who do not want to put their money where their mouth is so to speak.”

When 50% or more of the seats are going to ED, it is more accurate to say the ED pool is full of kids who have agreed to take the better odds of the ED deal. Many of those kids would actually like to consider more than one school, but the ED situation really discourages/penalizes kids from doing that. If a kid really likes both Duke and NW equally, he is not very wise to apply to both RD.

“Regular” decision is increasingly becoming the secondary or ancillary admissions path at these schools. If you understand the game, you really don’t want to playing RD. So you really need to make your decision (if you understand the game) on 11/1 prior to applying. Regardless of whether you are all-in on a school or not.

I think you could de-escalate the overall situation at these top ED/SCEA schools. Dial back the portion of the class admitted ED would be one simple way.

Another would be to have all these top schools use limited unrestricted non-binding EA instead – every uses EA but kids can only apply to 4 or 5 or 6 top schools EA.

Seems like the gap between ED admissions and RD admissions is getting too big and creating too much distortion and gamesmanship.

332

The gap may not be that big (depending on the school). However, the perception of an increasing gap can drive the gamesmanship in students’ application strategies, whether or not there actually is one.

All of those postings in late summer or early fall about “what school should I apply to ED?” are examples of such.

333

“Sports, at many schools, is revenue generating.”

My girls’ lemonade stand was revenue generating. HS girls soccer games are revenue generating.

But profit is another matter.

Unless you are talking about big time division 1 football or, in some cases, men’s basketball, you are talking about a cost center.

It all LOSES money outside of football and, at some schools, men’s basketball.

Everything else … EVERY SINGLE OTHER SPORT, is a financial loser.

And in D3, the football and basketball are also cost centers.

334

^but do they help with alum donations?

335

^ probably in some circumstances. again, I think it’s the big football success stories, and something comparable to it, that leads to bigger donations.

the good people at Amherst donate because they love their school; not because they won the Little 3 title.

the good people at Alabama donate because they love watching the Crimson Tide beat the living daylights out of every other division 1 program in the country.

I think it depends on the division, on the sport and on the school.

336

All this talk of backing away from ED – nothing on this thread suggests it will happen. Indeed, just the opposite appears to be the most likely outcome. So, if you are planning ahead, then the rational solution is to understand the game and expand your list of schools. There are a lot of high quality schools out there.

337

@ucbalumnus @northwesty For a sense of the “gap” between ED/EA and RD, here’s one of the data charts we came up with from last year’s stats to try to quantify it: http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19670029/#Comment_19670029

I calculated this by dividing the ED/EA acceptance rate by the RD acceptance rate and then expressing it as a ratio. E.g. if a school had an ED rate of 30%, and a RD rate of 10%, it had a ratio of 3:1. I think this helps respond to the question of whether there is an advantage to applying ED/EA over RD.

[quote]

Ratio of Early Acceptance Rate to Regular Decision Acceptance Rate (Class of 2020)

Georgetown EA 0.8:1
MIT EA 1.1:1
Georgia Tech EA 1.4:1
George Washington EA 1.4:1
Harvey Mudd ED1/ED2 1.4:1
Scripps ED1/ED2 2:1
Notre Dame EA 2.2:1
Cornell ED 2.2:1
Skidmore ED1/ED2 2.4:1
Pomona ED1/ED2 2.5:1
Stanford REA 2.6:1
Duke ED 2.7:1
Tufts ED1/ED2 2.7:1
Brown ED 2.8:1
Middlebury ED1/ED2 2.8:1
Dartmouth ED 2.8:1
Bowdoin ED1/ED2 2.8:1
Williams ED 2.8:1
Johns Hopkins ED 3:1
Amherst ED 3.2:1
Penn ED 3.3:1
Yale SCEA 3.9:1
Northwestern ED 4.2:1
Princeton SCEA 4.2:1
Harvard SCEA 4.4:1

This was another interesting chart from last year’s Admissions statistics thread and is another data point in the early vs. regular admissions debate.

Early Admissions as % of Total Target Class (Class of 2020)

60% and above:
University of North Carolina EA 175% (4000)
Georgia Tech EA 158% (2800)
University of Virginia EA 142% (3675)
University of Georgia EA 141% (5300)
Boston College EA 117% (2300)
Notre Dame EA 80% (2010)
Princeton SCEA 60% (1308)

50% to 59%
MIT EA 58% (1120)
Yale SCEA 58% (1360)
Bowdoin ED1/ED2 57% (500)
Georgetown EA 56% (1580)
Harvard SCEA 55% (1675)
Middlebury ED1/ED2 55% (685)
Northwestern ED 55% (1925)
Penn ED 55% (2445)
Tufts ED1/ED2 50% (1325)
Vanderbilt ED1/ED2 50% (1600)

40% to 49%
Duke ED 48% (1705)
Scripps ED1/ED2 46% (245)
Williams ED 45% (550)
Johns Hopkins ED 45% (1300)
Pitzer ED1/ED2 44% (265)
Brown ED 43% (1550)
Pomona ED1/ED2 43% (415)
Dartmouth ED 42% (1175)
Cornell ED 41% (3275)
Stanford REA 41% (1800)
Davidson ED 40% (415)

30% to 39%
Amherst ED1/ED2 38% (472)
Harvey Mudd ED1/ED2 35% (200)
George Washington ED 33% (2474)
Boston University ED1/ED2 30% (3500)

338

While perhaps a gross proxy at the larger schools, the ratio is highly inflated by the number of recruited athletes, which at smaller schools (Wiliams, Amherst & even Dartmouth), is a chunk of the ED admits.

339

Re: #336

However, raw admission rates without the context of the strength of applicants (including, but not limited to, the presence of special applicants like recruited athletes) cannot be used to make a firm conclusion. Perhaps there is a hint of something there, but it is not proof (or disproof). And the colleges won’t release enough information for outsiders to be able to make any firm conclusions.

340

You can flyspeck those raw numbers many different ways – athletes, legacies, etc. etc. etc. But it really isn’t that complicated.

Most often applying EA/REA/SCEA is not an advantage. Most often applying ED is an advantage (to varying degrees). Because that is what the schools say about themselves.

EA Harvard, Yale, Princeton, ND and Georgetown specifically say there’s zero (or negative) advantage to apply early.

ED Duke, NW, Emory and Wake specifically say there is an advantage to apply early.

Some ED schools say things that are more vague. If you are unsure, ask the school and they will tell you. If they give breaks at the early stage, they have every incentive to tell you that.