Penn 10% overall admit rate vs. 24% ED. 54% of the class admitted ED.
Brown 9% vs 20%. 38% of the class admitted ED.
Vandy 12% vs. 23%. 51% of the class admitted ED.
Duke 9% vs. 24%. 47% of the class admitted ED.
Northwestern 13% vs. 38%. 50% of the class admitted ED.
I know all the arguments that will follow about why those numbers don’t really mean what they appear to show. Just like folks argue that there’s not any big advantage given to athletes or legacies or URMs. Holistic admissions! It’s a mystery!!
But the schools admit they give these breaks and actively market them. So I’m always puzzled why folks on these boards strain to deny them. Duke’s website, for example, could not be more clear: “There is an advantage in the admissions process to applying Early Decision.”
“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.”
Totally agree. ED is one of many tools that schools use to hit budget for full and fuller payor enrollees. The biggest and most powerful one is requiring high academic stats.
Again, look at athletes and other strong hooks in ED admits. Who says athletes don’t have a ridiculous advantage?
If you don’t like Early don’t do it. I don’t get the surprise that they work to a college’s advantage. Do you have no idea what it takes to get through the review cycles for holistic? And not know if little Bobby or Susie even has a genuine interest?
However, even in this case, if the student has other (2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. choice) schools that s/he could choose if the net price were substantially lower, that would preclude applying ED to the first choice school.
The ED school needs to be the students clear first choice school, affordable, and favored over all other schools by enough so that even the lowest possible net price (e.g. full ride scholarship) at some other school would not lead the student to choose the other school.
" 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. "
But you failed to look up the percentage of the Puget Sound class that is filled up by ED, which is a key number in the math of the model. Only 19%. While PS does use ED, they are not really playing the same game as Duke is.
Cornell College gets 8% of its class through ED; Cornell University gets 42%. There’s definitely a clear model/pattern for how this works.
The percent of the class accepted ED also has something to do with the number of qualified applicants who apply. Of course the most “popular” universities are going to have the highest number of applicants.
With that I totally concur. I too have been “puzzled” why some folks on cc claim that ED has not real advantage to the unhooked. Back when I did college tours, when a question was asked directly and specifically, each adcom that I remember at least admitted: ‘the admission rates for [everyone else] in ED is a few points higher than in RD.’
Of course, a “few points”, from say, 7% to 10%, is a near 50% increase in chances. To me that is HUGE.
As noted upthread, Harvard said it. “Harvard does not offer an advantage to students who apply early. Higher Early Action acceptance rates reflect the remarkable strength of Early Action pools. For any individual student, the final decision will be the same whether the student applies Early Action or Regular Decision.”
My DD did ED and it was my suggestion…she kept comparing other schools to one in-state public that was affordable and good academically…I said why not just apply there ED instead of having to choose in May? She did, got in, and loves it.
If we’re talking about alternative systems (not sure we are), here’s what I’d say. Everyone should be able to register a top choice. And only one top choice. (Maybe it should be called “best choice.”) But it’s non-binding.
So colleges can still admit people who are high yield. They’re probably 75% yield instead of 100%, but they’re still high yield. And students aren’t obligated, so if the financial package isn’t good enough, or if they just change their mind, they don’t have to go.
And then people could say their top choice was their high match, and still apply to some reaches. So that’s why the yield wouldn’t be 100%. And there would be this pressure to fall in love with a school.
It’s hard for me to read some of these negative comments about athletes getting in ED but I certainly understand them.Some of the kids deferred or denied had outstanding grades, test scores also super impressive young adults.My kid got in at a NESCAC school as a recruited athlete with test scores in the top 6% nation wide lots of AP classes 3.62 unweighted GPA.We as a family made it our business to travel to camps at this school and my kid worked very hard on her sport.Her accomplishment was a deserved blessing it is not a recruited athlete fault that these schools take sports very seriously and will lower the academic bar 3 or 4% to strength their sports teams,but when a families child is in the top 1 or 2% and doesn’t get in it’s hard not to be pissed and they have the right to be.
Neither of my kids are remotely athletic, but I certainly don’t begrudge colleges that slightly relax standards for athletes. If athletes were able to spend more time on schoolwork, their grades and test scores would undoubtedly improve.
Athletes are needed just like the music majors. They are needed for a well rounded student body. Wanting a top athlete is no different than wanting a top student. All schools want the best they can get in every category. ED allows them to boost yield because the student has already indicated that they will attend if admitted. A no lose situation for the school.
Musicians rarely get recruited to the level of pre-read and relaxed standards. I know many athletes are fully academically competitive. But folks can try to look at the percentage of athletes in Early admits. It’s not as simple as rounding the class. Sports, at many schools, is revenue generating.
@northwesty wrote, “Totally agree. ED is one of many tools that schools use to hit budget for full and fuller payor enrollees. The biggest and most powerful one is requiring high academic stats.”
Universities could achieve the same economic distribution of students without ED. Maybe ED just gives an early shot at picking out the more advantaged kids earlier. It could eliminate some risk for universities to lock in these kids whose parents can write a check earlier on. Overall, I am not a fan as ED puts too much pressure on 17 year old kids to rush to make a decision that they might be better off making five months later when they are more mature and have better information.
At the schools where this bothers people, with a couple of exceptions, sports are not “revenue generating.” At least not unless you count alumni loyalty as reflected in giving as sports-related revenue. What they are is tradition-generating and community-generating.
Further to ED and the food chain: Goucher College, which rocks a gaudy 77% admission rate, has an ED program where the admission rate was 84% last year, and also an EA program. Granted, a very small percentage of the class was admitted ED. I knew about it because I knew a kid who applied ED to Goucher. He really liked it, and he wanted to be through with college applications. He did not need financial aid. The college worked out very, very well for him – his parents are thrilled with it.
One important point to notice: When this was being debated actively 7-8 years ago, there seemed to be a sort of community norm that colleges would not fill more than 40% of their classes ED. Lots of colleges kept their ED percentage to 25% of the class – Northwestern was like that for a long time – or 33%. Princeton got criticized for coming close to 50% some years, which was widely understood as an effort to keep its admission rate in the same range as Harvard and Yale. Now, it’s really common to be at 50%, and lots of colleges seem to be edging higher than that. That raises the stakes in the game, and generally increases the negative effects of ED. I’m not completely anti-ED, but I have lots of qualms about making it the main way kids are accepted.
Why does this keep reverting to wealthy kids? If you run the NPC, if you find aid within your ballpark, what says less advantaged kids will be rooked?
If the NPC doesn’t show enough aid, the college should come off the list. You don’t go in blind, nor expecting some miracle. And if the projected aid doesn’t come through, you can back out.
No, the NPC doesn’t work for all. But then you don’t apply early. You think, you plan to allow for various offers.
The decision to apply early is entirely within a family’s control. No one forces it on you. If a kid needs to wait until he’s “more mature and (has) better information,” then have him freaking wait.
The talk about how chances differ just clouds the issue, no surprise. Same with the talk about needing a highly selective college.
A student who is considering ED to his/her first choice college X with an affordable NPC result, but may choose his/her second choice college Y if the net price is substantially lower due to possibly getting competitive large merit scholarships, may not want to apply ED to college X, because s/he wants to compare the net prices before deciding.
But that’s merit, a fork thrown in. IF you need to keep all avenues open, that’s what you do. It’s on the family to make the right choice for them. I don’t see this as a college demanding it or bamboozling. Nor shutting out kids who apply RD.
Walk away, if it’s wrong. Don’t constantly blame the other side. And for non-wealthy kids who explore the NPC and later get that aid, Early can work.
Why does this keep reverting to wealthy kids? If you run the NPC, if you find aid within your ballpark, what says less advantaged kids will be rooked?
It doesn’t keep reverting back to wealthy kids - it reverts to wealthy kids and very low income kids. Both know the financial outcomes if they are accepted ED (wealthy = full pay @60K+ per year, very low income = EFC) its the REST (which probably represents a lot of the parents here on CC) who may qualify for some FA or don’t qualify for FA but can’t pay full. These families will not apply ED and will lose that “benefit” or “bump”.
As a parent of a senior, I can see this in action now. The slightly lower scoring top kids have been accepted ED at top 20 LACs and Universities that they would have probably been rejected or waitlisted at RD. Most of these are from the uber wealthy group that don’t need merit.