@jonri - Your scenario of Penn and Princeton is our exact scenario. They are the two schools DD liked the most in October and likes the most in December but who knows what her options will be to determine what she likes the best in April. I am super curious to see if Penn accepts her after she didn’t participate in PEEP and didn’t go the ED route. I know it’s a first world problem, but it was tough to give up the legacy benefit. DH (and my dad) are the Penn Alums in the family. DH felt very very strongly that there is a big difference between HYPSM and Penn. I personally don’t see the big difference but I’ve never been in a hiring capacity in my career so…
Lots of good comments here already. I think Bruni’s weakest criticism is his suggestion that students aren’t ready to make a good choice in November but will be ready in April. This is inconsistent with his criticism that ED gives an unfair advantage to those students with parents and counselors “in the know.” If you’re one of those students then presumably you’re also ahead of many of your peers in terms of visiting and exploring schools. We took our D1 to visit schools in fall and spring of junior year, the summer before senior year, and October of senior year. A lot of students don’t get started until senior year, but by October our D1 had a clear first choice. Once she made that choice, then we started discussing the pros and cons of ED and decided to have her apply ED. It’s bad when kids who haven’t gotten far in the search process feel pressured to pick some ED school just because others are. Our D1 went to a competitive public high school and there weren’t many kids applying binding ED. Most of her peers were going for SCEA at HYPS.
Also, there’s no attempt by Bruni to analyze why schools utilize ED. I think there are good reasons for a school to want to use ED besides just manipulating rankings. For a small LAC, ED can help a school balance out the class in terms of athletes, internationals, geographic diversity, etc., while also helping to control the size of the class. For Pomona’s class of 2018, the school experienced an unexpected jump in yield in the RD group and ended up with a significantly bigger class than expected. That has put pressure on the housing system that will continue until that class graduates and has negatively impacted the classes behind the class of 2018 (my D is class of 2019).
And schools can utilize ED or SCEA while also admitting, supporting and graduating low income students. The Jack Cooke Kent Foundation which is quoted in the Bruni article has recognized Amherst for this, as well as other finalists Rice, Davidson, Pomona and Stanford. http://www.jkcf.org/amherst-college-gets-1-million-cooke-prize-for-admitting-supporting-and-graduating-outstanding-low-income-students/?pg=2
"@northwesty HYPS are not binding EA. You do not have to matriculate at any of those 4 if you are accepted early.
Duke and Penn are ED, which is binding. I think I see the point you are trying to make, but your comment about HYPS is incorrect."
I said HYPS, Duke, Penn etc. could all go non-binding EA. By which I meant getting rid of both ED and SCEA.
Yes I know that HYPS are REA/SCEA. SCEA is still coercive, just not quite as coercive as ED. And HYPS had to backtrack to SCEA a few years ago when they unilaterally disarmed but the big ED schools did not. HYPS obviusly don’t need to go full monty ED. Their yields will still be sky high even without making their early admission program binding – so long as they continue to ban their applicants from applying to other schools early. via SCEA.
The point is that all these schools together could dial back their coercive admissions policies. They all could disarm back to non-single choice EA (e.g. Notre Dame, Georgetown). They would all wind up with pretty much the same result at the end of the day – classes full of very smart kids who love the school they picked.
But by definition their admissions rates would go up and their yields would go down.
JHS – I agree this is a first world problem. But why do you think this fine colleges want/need to engage in coercing kids into applying ONLY to them? If they all dropped the practice, what exactly would be lost?
From the colleges’ point of view, they get two things out of ED:
- Better yield predictability.
- Tips the admit pool toward full pay, while still being need blind for individual applicant readings.
Coercive, I dunno. Enticing, sure.
Look, there’s a level of colleges that will always be concerned a kid really wants another school. If those schools can get an early commitment, why not want that? When H took away Early, it was on many minds. It’s not just yield, but the process to get there, the massive sifting, without knowing if that college is a top choice. Why not want to lock up X% of the class?
And if they aren’t pulling any fast ones, the aid is good, close enough to what the NPC showed, you’ve thought this through and feel sure, why not?
You could say, well it changes the RD odds, but that’s how it is. An RD kid isn’t applying early, may want more time to think, a chance to delay the final decision to May 1. What works for him/her isn’t necessarily the one and only way. And some of the coveted schools are so hard to get into that the odds are still low, either way.
People talk about yield awareness as a blot. Why? It’s their class to build. And it’s their work to build it. The kids don’t get to call all the shots.
Personally, I’d like to see more restriction on the total a kid can apply to. No more scattershot, aim for more informed decisions re: targets.
Look at it this way.
What would you think if employers told job applicants that they’d get easier consideration for jobs if they agreed not to apply at peer/competitor companies?
Let’s say Google/Amazon/Microsoft/Facebook did this? Or EY/KPMG/PWC/Deloitte?
Now that would probably be illegal under antitrust laws. But you’d think that any company doing that would be laughed at if they tried to take that approach in hiring the supposedly best and the brightest. What’s the matter Microsoft – you guys afraid of some friendly competition?
I think there are 2 separate questions. Should (someone) apply ED, and should the system change?
For the 1st question, obviously the answer is frequently yes. Even for some people that want financial aid.
For the 2nd question, there are definitely things about the current system which don’t seem great (though I don’t necessarily have suggestions to improve it).
- the extra advantages it gives to full-pay kids (and it’s not exclusively helpful to full pay kids, but it helps them more than others)
- the somewhat implicit promotion of the idea that kids should have a dream school, that is above all others. Personally, I think it’s much healthier for kids to realize that they can do well in many different schools. Obviously some kids apply ED, and would be perfectly happy to go there, but understand that they might not get in and other places are good too. But I could just imagine if DD wanted to apply ED somewhere, I would be asking her “are you sure this is your top choice, above all others?” Which would be pushing her to think of it that way in her mind.
“Personally, I’d like to see more restriction on the total a kid can apply to. No more scattershot, aim for more informed decisions re: targets.”
One reason why kids have to apply to a large number of schools is that the acceptance rates are so very low these days. Which is caused, in part, by the heavy use of ED and SCEA.
At today’s low accept rates, a kid may need to apply to 10 very selective schools in order to get admitted to one or two. In the olden days, five apps would get you two admits.
If Duke’s accept rate was 20-25% (which is where it probably would go if it abandoned ED) rather than 10%, kids would likely do fewer apps.
“One reason why kids have to apply to a large number of schools is that the acceptance rates are so very low these days. Which is caused, in part, by the heavy use of ED and SCEA.”
^I don’t understand this comment.
If more schools participated in ED and SCEA, wouldn’t that decrease the number of apps that each student submitted thereby increasing the acceptance rates across the board? My S17 submitted one application. I know of other students who also applied ED who only submitted one app as well.
@Testingearly I wonder what big difference did he see, being an alum, a hiring manger, or both?
“At today’s low accept rates, a kid may need to apply to 10 very selective schools in order to get admitted to one or two.”
Why 10 very selective? Because he “has to” go to a very selective? And you add less competitive matches and safeties on top of that?
Regardless of ED, the app numbers for RD at some schools are crazy because so many kids are applying to so many. And my view is that many are not appying with a high understanding of their real, full match. Nor how to express it. Even on CC, posters stop at “check the CDS,” see where your stats fall.
As a Penn alum, I really surprised at the comment about a big difference between HYPSM and Penn. Literally 100% of my Penn friends have been very successful. I don’t know what an HYPSM undergrad degree would have done for us over the Penn degree. But everyone is entitled to their opinion.
I believe that both ED and SCEA are fair. You know what you are signing up for if you apply early, you might get in, you might not. It is the SAME thing in RD, so stop blaming the system. Rather than blaming the system, revise your application to the fullest extent, and know that college admissions IS a gamble, but it is worth the shot.
I got in SCEA to Princeton, but I was ready to apply to 15 other colleges during RD just in case. I knew from the start that this was a huge gamble, and I was prepared for a deferral. When you apply early, you have a higher chance of being admitted. No one is forcing students to apply early, so if you don’t get in, its not the system’s fault. You took that decision of applying to a highly selective college early, so own your decision and hope for the best during RD.
Good luck to everyone applying RD to top institutions!!
^^ It’s not that Bruni is calling the system itself unfair—who gets in and who doesn’t, even though all evidence shows that kids from lower income brackets are at a natural disadvantage in the entire college process—he’s saying that the financial commitment that comes with ED favors kids who can afford to gamble with whatever aid money they’ll be given.
In general that is probably true, but Bruni takes the coward’s way out and doesn’t name names of those colleges that particuarly benefit financially. (cough, cough, NYU is in the backyard of the NYT…) Instead, he leads with the “Ivy League” and ends with Williams, all of which refute his point in that those colleges offer the most generous need-based aid out there (along with a few others like Stanford, MIT, Amherst…). Thus, a low-low income student is better off with SCEA/ED in that it increases his/her chances at the best need-based aid possible.
As I posted up-thread, my S was a successful ED applicant and our out-of-pocket costs to attend one of the Ancient Eight was lower than it would have been at our state public flagship. Win-win.
The schools at which Early Decision is most needed for an advantage in a crazily competitive admissions process are also committed to meeting students’ full financial need. So they do not disadvantage the financially neediest students. They provide an advantage for students who research the admissions process. It seems to be equivalent to the previous free Disney Fastpass model, in which anyone who did thorough research before their vacation would be able to avoid the longest lines, at no additional cost. The info on Fastpass was available right on the park’s maps, and the information on Early Decision is available right on colleges’ websites and on free sites like this one.
“If more schools participated in ED and SCEA, wouldn’t that decrease the number of apps that each student submitted thereby increasing the acceptance rates across the board? My S17 submitted one application. I know of other students who also applied ED who only submitted one app as well.”
ED increases the number of apps.
Five kids aspire to go to Brown or a school like Brown. Without ED, Brown’s acceptance rate would be 20-25% rather than 9%. Without ED, the accept rates of all the other Brown-like schools would also be much higher. So each of the five kids feels OK doing only five apps. Total apps are 25.
With ED, one of the five kids gets in (since Brown has an ED accept rate of 20%). The four kids who don’t get in ED then feel the need to do 10 RD apps due to the extremely low accept rates they face at the RD stage. Total apps are 41.
Do you have some research to support your theory, nw, or is this just pure speculation?
If you got rid of ED, acceptance rates would necessarily rise.
Number of apps should decrease as accept rate increases.
Not sure that this makes sense to me…
Not sure that I undersntand this conclusion, either. If HYPSM et al, accept the same students, yes, their yield and rate would rise. But in the aggreate?