Let’s say a kid’s goal is to be accepted into two or three selective schools and have those to pick from.
Would you do more or less apps if the acceptance rate is 25% vs. 10%?
I have another suggested answer that would reduce competition/apps (principally, but not exclusively, for the elites with EA).
I propose that by national agreement under the Common App all kids are permitted to apply early if they like, to one school of their choice (“School A”) and/or a state university with rolling admission. If they get in to School A, they’re required to matriculate there (unless they got into the state school and want to go there) and no further apps are permitted. In other words, for these kids, every early app is ED (subject to a get-out-of-jail free card if the financial aid offered isn’t close to what was indicated by the school’s NPC).
The beauty of this approach is that if these kids want to have the advantage of applying early, they won’t be permitted to trophy-hunt (i.e., see how many elites they can get into, to the possible detriment of their classmates).
This of course would provoke howls of anguish from students and their parents who don’t want to make a choice in November that they’d have to make in April anyway. My response would be: (i) nothing’s stopping you from applying to as many schools as you like if you don’t apply early; (ii) this isn’t very different from the situation of an athlete seeking to be recruited and get a likely letter; and (iii) some prep schools actually already employ a similar approach to this with students who get in somewhere EA, with no obvious problems.
The net effect, though, if my proposal were adopted, would be that a few thousand kids who got in EA to HYPSM would no longer be in contention for multiple additional acceptances from these schools and others, which would provide some welcome relief for those not so lucky. If I knock out the recruited athletes accepted EA (who are subject to a variant of this system already) this would probably take close to 3,000 students out of the game after they’d been admitted to their first choice. If they would otherwise be applying RD to three additional schools each on average, 9,000 apps from students already accepted to one elite would come out of the system.
With my family, here we sit about two weeks out from the thrilling ED acceptance for my daughter to Brown University. I’ve been thinking about Bruni’s closing low blow that I’ve pasted below :
"I wonder, too, how many came to regard higher education as one big board game that’s about attaining prestige rather than acquiring knowledge."
My daughter has already spent hours (literally, many hours) on Brown’s website, reading all about all the interesting courses she is going to get to take, suggested first year courses, possible combinations of majors, with all of this research leading to family conversations and more research about how the majors will lead to different grad school options and different careers. The core of all this is ALL ABOUT the joy of acquiring knowledge.
Bruni exploits his forum to take baseless, hurtful potshots. Too bad he doesn’t seem to realize that he devalues his own core message with these gratuitous insults.
I can see how some of these proposals might benefit some kids, but would disadvantage an equal amount, because you can slice the pie into as many pieces as you want, but two facts remain unchanged by any of them:
- The number of applicants
- The number of slots
Everyone can only attend one school, so it is really musical chairs, whether 5 apps, 10 apps , or one…
This thread is highly focussed on EA/ED/SCEA at the most selective schools. For all the clever plans on how to reduce total number of applications, how do you see this playing out for non-selective schools?
Re Bruni: yes, ED admissions advantage goes to the well-off. I’m not convinced that eliminating it would lead to a real difference in the actual socioeconomic composition of the schools that use ED or EA. And that’s the only thing that really counts. If a school filled half their incoming class with full pay ED admits, and then filled the other half during RD with students who needed (and were granted) significant need-based aid, is that a failure of the system, or a good thing? Is the in-your-face nature of ED–who can choose to take advantage, who can’t–just too stark an indicator of economic inequality? Is it better to mask it all under the large umbrella of RD?
D1 and D2 both had successful ED experiences, done for all the right reasons, managed in all the right ways. Easier for them coming from high schools where ED was the exception, not the rule. It must be horrible for kids in school systems where the deadline for committing to a single school has essentially moved up from April to November.
“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.”
@desie1 I think they meant each has a different culture or personality makining then not interchangeable with one another. When people apply to all, it makes you wonder if they even know what each is really like.
I dont think they meant any of them were “better” than the others.
Say, 30k applicants, 2000 slots. That’s that, regardless of how many are accepted in which phase. X.X% overall.
My sons close friend, a grade younger, applied EA to MIT and Caltech. He needed full financial aid, and still was accepted at both U’s.
“This thread is highly focussed on EA/ED/SCEA at the most selective schools. For all the clever plans on how to reduce total number of applications, how do you see this playing out for non-selective schools?”
ED/SCEA is a game that is only played by the most selective schools. The whole driver of the ED game is that it dangles the prospect of easier admissions to a selective school in exchange for limiting a student’s consideration of other schools.
As you move down the ladder, the ED game goes away and is replaced by the merit money model.
The ED model goes a long way down the food chain. There are colleges with a 50% admission rate that may admit 80% of their ED applicants.
The daughter of a friend of mine was just accepted ED to a college with a 37% acceptance rate. That’s hardly “most selective.”
Average acceptance rate at all 4 year US colleges was 65% in 2015. https://www.nacacnet.org/news–publications/publications/state-of-college-admission/
37% acceptance rate might not be the “most selective” but it’s well above average.
In the Bruni article, he cites the 2001 piece by James Fallows “The Early-Decision Racket" http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/09/the-early-decision-racket/302280/
That article references research that says the following:
This research would have been done in 2000. Anyone know if it’s still true?
@HRSMom That’s not what read what @Testingearly wrote in #80 quoted below. I’m curious to know an alum’s take on the difference between the two, HYPSM vs Penn. We outsiders likely know way less than her HD.
To the extent the early admission (particularly ED) tips the admit pool toward wealthy students, if it were eliminated, then the colleges would probably adjust their admissions criteria in other ways* to get the desired mix of high/medium/low/no financial need students to meet their financial aid budget.
- Examples of how they can do this while being need blind for individual applicants:
- Greater emphasis on test scores relative to other academic qualifications.
- Require more application items (SAT subject tests, CSS Profile, recommendations) that may not be on the radar of low SES students and counselors in low SES high schools.
- CSS Noncustodial Profile.
- Greater favoritism toward expensive extracurriculars and less toward working for pay.
- Greater legacy preference.
- Lesser consideration for first generation to college status.
No one knows except those who hold the golden conch shell: adcoms… Most studies that claim something is the same as extra points acknowledge they didn’t look at full apps or observe the decision process.
2000 is an ice age ago, in admissions terms. Back then, H had half the applications for the same number of slots as now. Even in 4 years or so, things change. And remember, colleges have shifting needs. Got enough tuba players, oops, not a help.
And any holistic process depends on the full app, anyway, not just stats and a postmark.
Uh, no.
Bingo.
With the accuracy of the NPC for many – but not all (small business, divorce) – families, ED doesn’t necessarily prejudice families needing substantial aid. If the NPC shows a predicted aid package that works for the family, then waiting for multiple acceptances in the spring may not be necessary.
I think the most important factor in ED is that families really need to be ahead of the curve in the process – to have gotten to the point of knowing whether the state flagship vs. private university vs. LAC makes the most sense for that student, to have testing completed, and to have sorted through the complexities of meets full need, gaps etc. for different schools. Families who are 1st gen, who are sending their first child to college rather than having been through it before, families in public schools where guidance focuses on getting forms submitted on time and not specific college counseling – those are the families who may not be in a position to submit ED application.
We did have one kid go ED as athletic recruit, and we started that process in spring of 10th grade so had about 18 months to work through the process. We knew merit aid was necessary to make it work for our family, and that meant there were no reaches on the list – we had projections of merit and had enough information for kid to make a decision he was excited about.
I randomly googled ED colleges and looked up the first name that popped up: University of San Francisco. USNews #107. It has a 65% acceptance rate and still has an ED program.
^^ Another one is University of Puget Sound, which offers ED (no EA) and has an admission rate for RD around 80%. It’s definitely not only the “elites” that offer ED.