Stanford accepted a 5 star recruit in August… so for ED/EA there must a rolling admission thing along with other DIV 1 FBS schools.
OMG. Let’s stop talking about athletics, which ain’t the topic of this thread anyway. The flyspecking is getting out of control.
I like to use data (to the extent possible) in my posts in order to make the conversation a bit more meaningful and more rigorous than off-the-cuff opinions un-tethered to any facts at all. My bad.
I’m sure that if you back out all the athletes baked into the numbers, Vanderbilt actually only admits 2% of its class via ED rather than 50%. MY apologies.
Even smaller schools that at D3 STRONGLY request that all their recruited athletes submit ED.
Bobcat, the implication was desired athletes.
@Sbballer, “accepted?” Or a Likely or NLI?
Every recruited athlete I know of (from Ivies to D3 LACs) was told to apply early, whether SCEA or ED depending on the college. Even though some of them knew in October that they would be admitted, they still needed to fill out the app and submit it in the early round. Those kids are counted in the early admissions %ages and it absolutely sways the % accepted in the data since a decent portion of those applicants are pretty much assured admission. It makes an even more significant impact in LAC admissions, where they can be a majority those admitted early. I just think that there are fewer “unhooked” kids admitted in the early round than people realize. And if you pushed all those hooked applicants into the RD pile it wouldn’t make it any easier for unhooked kids to get in RD.
This:
“What happens if Brown, Columbia, etc., the schools next to HYPS fill up their classes with more EDers, say 85%?”
This is the interesting question as it seems like we are headed there. So to summarize, it looks like it won’t be too long before the applicant is going to get two bullets for the top 20 (if she can afford them) + EA + RD schools below the top 20. The two bullets being (#1) SCEA or ED1 and (#2) ED2 (if/where available). RD becomes Powerball (to use NWs phrase) within the top 20.
Chicago’s EA move starts to look like confirmation of this endgame.
@RustyTrowel, I agree with this completely…and we are in the very midst of this bizarre “game”'of chance in our house
Also know firsthand of a recruited athlete this year to Chicago who opted for EA over ED1 and got deferral…while getting in EA at MIT…he has all the necessary academic stats and national outside academic honors for admission on his own right…this was all about yield protection for Chicago…the ante has been upped…one out of 2 isn’t too bad I guess…
@lookingforward accepted to Stanford Aug 1st, 2016… this is his mom’s twitter post making the announcement. MODERATOR’S NOTE: Link deleted. Twitter links are not allowed.
He was being recruited by SEC schools and UT… so DIV 1 FBS must have some sort of rolling Early Admission Program.
Walker Little committed in December. Sounds like he still had to run through a usual app cycle, even if a rubber stamp. This takes us off track a bit, but I don’t believe athletes are on some phantom track an not reflected in Early numbers.
If he committed in December why did he get his acceptance in August?
Walker Little was accepted by Stanford in August according to his mom’s tweet. He announced he had chosen to attend Stanford in Dec. His recruiting profile showed he had multiple offers from different DIV 1 FBS schools.
DIV 1 FBS schools must have some type of rolling early admission program… where they get a go or no go from the admission office before other applicants…and it becomes “official” when the results are released as part of the general cycle… which means that there are fewer slots for non-athletes in early admission.
Recruiting in D1 FBS Power 5 scholarship sports is a sidetrack that has nothing to do with ED. Please start another thread if you are interested in that.
D1 FBS recruiting runs on the timeline established by the NCAA. For football, the signing period for NLIs is February and March. Recruits can revocably and verbally “commit” to schools as sophs or juniors or seniors, and can (and often do) change their “commitments” at any time. Kids obtain multiple offers (which you can’t do with ED) and consider them all the way through the end of the NLI signing period (April 1). Recruiting only ends when the NLI is signed. All of that is totally inconsistent with the ED timeline.
Recruits at some point will apply and get accepted to a school, but that just happens whenever and is a perfunctory part of the process (unless the kid has academic or eligibility issues). Admission is not the driver of the decision process.
Duke and Vandy and NW and Stanford football all run on the NCAA calendar. Because that’s the calendar that UNC and Michigan and Florida and USC run on. Harvard and Williams football run on the ED calendar because that’s the calendar Yale and Amherst run on. Apples and broccoli.
@suzyQ7, what happened in December was a verbal, non-binding commitment. The same thing you see on TV with the baseball caps. If everything goes well, that turns into the actual acceptance down the road, as we see here.
@northwesty “Apples and broccoli” unless you are trying to compare Duke and Vandy and NW and Stanford early admission numbers to Harvard and Williams early admission numbers. Then, it’s all vegan. Which is why the thread got sidetracked a little.
It’s a legitimate question germane to this thread: Stanford’s numbers and Harvard’s look pretty similar, but are they? Do Stanford’s SCEA numbers include its recruited athletes that have been accepted (as of December 15, at least)? Duke’s ED numbers? Does the NLI signing date process push those admissions into the colleges’ RD numbers, for sports where the signing season is in the spring at least?
- Apples and broccoli.
- D1 Power scholarship sports schools have a MUCH LOWER percentage of their enrollment as athletes.
So whether there are/are not any Vandy athletes in the ED numbers (5% of enrollment are athletes and 50% seats filled via ED) matters MUCH MUCH MUCH LESS than if you are looking at Williams (37% of enrollment are athletes, 44% of seats filled via ED).
It is like a 7X difference for gods sake.
P.S. Yes I know every athlete is not recruited, but that’s the only data we have. Also, yes I know there’s a difference between unique athletes and two sport athletes. My numbers are unique athletes. Sheesh!!
ED/EA is definitely a first world problem. For what it’s worth, I think ED at schools like Northwestern, UPenn, etc. provides a big advantage to applicants. If one of these schools is one of your top choices and you are well-qualified and can afford to go, then you’d be silly not to apply ED (However, I often see a lot of students think that applying ED to Penn will help stretch them into getting an acceptance at very selective programs like M&T, which is a flawed assumption).
I also think SCEA provides some advantage, but it’s not as big as it might appear. Here’s my best guess for Yale for the class of 2020. The published stats are these
Applications Admits Admit Rate
All 31455 1972 6.3%<br>
SCEA 4662 795 17.1%
RD 29264 1177 3.8%<br>
But you have to account for the large proportion of hooked students in the SCEA round. You also have to account for the better qualifications of SCEA applicants. About 30% of the SCEA applications get rejected in December and aren’t considered again in the RD round, so about 70% of the SCEA applications are “serious”. My guess is that about 50% of the RD applications meet this standard. So you have something like this:
% Serious Apps|Athletic Admits|Legacy Admits|Questbridge|All Other Admits
SCEA 70% 162 138 51 444
RD 50% 18 46 1113
This accounts for the hooks of being a recruit, a legacy, or a questbridge scholar (there are other hooks that you could account for too if you had the data). The “adjusted” admissions rate for a well-qualified applicant who doesn’t have one of these hooks is:
# Serious Applications | All Other Admits | Adjusted Admissions Rate
SCEA 3263 444 13.6%
RD 14632 1113 7.6%
Seems like SCEA helps, but saying that it’s solely responsible for the difference between a 17.1% SCEA admit rate and a 3.8% RD admit rate greatly exaggerates the advantage.
However, Yale admits less than 2000 students a year. I think that at bigger schools that are less selective than Yale or schools with ED programs the advantage from applying early can be a lot larger. ED programs at those schools can help a student who’s a bit below average relative to the pool of admitted students.
'Do Stanford’s SCEA numbers include its recruited athletes that have been accepted ’
yes they do
Stanford is a D1 FBS school with Earlly Admission and would imagine has fairly high percentage of recruited athletes …while its freshman class is larger than HYPUofC it’s still smaller than UCLA, Berkeley, Ohio State etc.
it seems like Stanford accepts recruited athletes earlier on a separate track and cycles them as part of the early admission process… which leaves fewer spots for non-athletes in early admission.
The bottom line is that ED helps the colleges far more than it helps students. It is disadvantageous to any student who would like consider options at more than one college, whether for financial or academic reasons. For a student who has their heart set on one school and near-certainty the school will be affordable --then it becomes a mutually advantageous for both student and college … but in all other situation, the college holds all the cards, and is asking the student to forfeit the right to be dealt a full hand.
And part of the way that ED works is through building on student anxieties with the whole notion that the end goal is admission and getting them to buy into the notion that RD admissions standards are impossibly harsh. But the reality is that for the unhooked student, if they qualify for admission at an elite college in the ED round, that student probably is also exceptionally well qualified to be admitted to any number of excellent colleges in the RD round. So the anxieties are misplaced, in part because of pressures to focus on prestige and rankings of a handful of elite colleges rather than to fully explore educational options.
I think the high school counselors who advise these kids would do much better to help students with the full exploration part than to add to the pressure and hype surrounding ED.
This is a thoughtful way to approach it, @al2simon, and I would guess reasonably close to the truth. I have three issues with it, one less important, the other two more more so.
The less important issue regards legacy admits. I hear anecdotally that at Yale (and the other SCEA schools), a substantial number of those admitted originally apply SCEA and are deferred. This makes sense to me, given that Yale ultimately denies about 80% of its legacy applicants. They only feel the need to admit you early if they’d admit you even if you weren’t a legacy and they really don’t want to lose you. Otherwise, they’ll just look at you in the context of the rest of the pool, when they’re shaping the class, and decide if you’re in or out at that point (since there may also be some superstar legacies who apply RD). You’ve shown your hand and they know you’re very likely to enroll, so they’re not taking a major yield risk, especially if you’re a full payer and therefore not driven to compare financial aid offers. Your family may be annoyed if you’re deferred (particularly if they’re involved/donors), but they’ll probably forgive the school when Junior gets his admit letter. Accordingly, without any hard evidence, I’m going to guess that 50-60% of the legacies these schools admit are admitted SCEA. If true, this means that the number of unhooked admits is slightly higher in the SCEA round and slightly lower in the RD round, making the SCEA advantage a little greater.
The two more important issues have the opposite effect, though. First, I believe that not only is a greater proportion of the SCEA pool “serious applications”, but that the quality of the “serious applications” in the SCEA pool is slightly higher than those in the RD pool. In other words, I think that not only is a greater proportion of the early round made up of good applications, but those applications also include a disproportionate number of the best ones, just because if you apply early you’re likely to be better-prepared and more clued-in about the process (you probably went to a strong high school and had excellent college guidance, for example). Accordingly, as a “serious” unhooked SCEA applicant, your competition is less numerous but tougher. Second, as you acknowledge, the analysis doesn’t provide for other hooked applicants who apply early. I think if you’re hooked and otherwise a very strong candidate who applies SCEA, the school will be inclined to admit you because they don’t want to lose you. That will decrease the number of SCEA slots available for unhooked applicants.
As you say, though, this is an analysis appropriate for the SCEA schools, not the ones with ED, where the choices/issues are different.