" It’s the quid pro quo."
Exactly! Your words not mine!
The quid is agreeing to limit your alternatives.
The quo is increasing your admission chances.
If you don’t like the terms, don’t engage in it.
You protest a lot, nw. We all are.
There is no point in setting expectations on Early (based on some perceived advantage,) if you are NOT a quality candidate.
And don’t assume so easily, that adcoms don’t know what they want in a kid, that someone who would look unexciting in RD is magically converted in ED. They know what they like (it’s for the families to look for the same) and choose those.
Have we exhausted this topic? One side says it’s devious and the other says, then it’s not for you, but may be for someone else.
Duke, because it is a Division I college not in the Ivy League, does not necessarily have to use Early Decision to lock down its athletes. Duke (and Stanford, and Vanderbilt, etc.) can go through the “normal” (for the NCAA) process of signing national letters of intent and admitting the athletes whenever it chooses. I don’t know whether athletes are included in Duke’s ED numbers or not.
Athletes are a big component of ED and EA admissions in the Ivy League, and selective D-III colleges. Not universally.
I think Duke/NW/WF etc. are being truthful. You get an advantage by applying ED. They tell kids that to encourage them to apply ED.
Folks may differ on whether ED is a good/bad thing. But we’d all agree telling kids there’s an advantage when one does not exist would be really bad.
If there’s not any advantage, then you would hope/expect the schools to say something like this (Georgetown):
“There is no statistical advantage in applying Early Action, as both our Early Action and Regular Decision pools will have roughly the same acceptance rate. Typically, about 15 percent of the candidates deferred from Early Action are successful during the spring review.”
Or what UVA says:
“We strongly believe that there should be no strategic advantage to applying early action.”
Or what ND says:
“The easiest way to understand how Notre Dame uses REA is to describe what it is not. It is not the avenue students should take merely because Notre Dame is their first choice. Nor is it easier to gain admission through the Restrictive Early Action process.”
…Harvard. (Perhaps, but I don’t by the spin.)
Regardless of my opinion, every other Ivy school that I visited and asked about were clear that "ED in and of itself does necessarily increase the chances of admission at these schools.
In other words the Harvard quote may fit Harvard, but not others at least those with ED. Sorry ST, but I was very specific in my question to Adcoms, and when pressed about the unhooked ED applicants (i.e., everyone other than legacy, athlete, and other special cases), they were honest about the increase in chances. I give them props for not spinning, which they tend to do in their normal preso.
Perhaps true, but thems the rules of the game. But still, you don’t have to play. (Yeah, I’m naive sometimes! But not stupid, since I do read the threads on cc: ‘where should I ED, Columbia or Dartmouth?’ – two disparate colleges)
One of my kids did, and the other did not bcos she was not totally “sold” on any one school. She made the conscious decision to forego ED and the increase chances that goes with it.
YOU- as in one particular kid, one particular applicant- only get an advantage in the early round if we would have admitted you during the regular season. But by applying early, we don’t have to stick you in the purgatory pile of “maybe she’ll come, maybe she won’t”. We know you will come. And since you are a candidate who is clearly in the “we want you” pile, we will admit you. Even if you play the piccolo and we discover late in the game that we’ve got too many piccolos and not enough bassoons, or that you’re a champion debater and we’re long on debaters but short on chess masters.
This is not what goes through most family’s minds when they are debating Duke vs. Northwestern (per the examples above.) They are thinking, “my only shot at Duke is to apply early so that’s what I’m doing”. Which is usually a waste of an early application since the kid has NO shot at Duke.
Sorry to beat the dead horse but wanted to make my POV clear. I saw a lot of sad faces around town last week-- and not a single one of them was unpredictable. Kids shooting way too high and assuming that their odds were significantly better because they were applying early. Parents encouraging the hail mary pass applications. Guidance Counselors who kept showing naviance data to no avail.
Sigh. It’s not rocket science. If your GC says you don’t have a chance of getting in to XYZ college because in the last 10 years, kids with even better stats than yours routinely get rejected, don’t think that ED is going to save you because you are signaling to the college that you really, really, really want to go there.
Harvard has non-binding SCEA not binding ED. Harvard (like Gtown) says there’s no strategic advantage in applying early. I’m not sure I totally believe what Harvard says.
But what Harvard says is TOTALLY different than what Duke and NW and the other big binding ED schools say. Because Duke, NW, etc. specifically say there is an advantage.
We can debate how big the ED boost is or whether ED is a good policy or not. But it is silly to argue that there is no ED boost when the schools say there is. Just like those schools say there’s a boost for legacies. And a boost for recruited athletes.
@blossom - that doesn’t make any sense. If you would have been admitted in the regular season, what advantage are you being given?
Are people really confused about schools that say that applicants get an advantage if they apply ED? That literally means that some students who would have been rejected if they applied RD get accepted ED. Yes, there are some students who would have been accepted in either, and there are some students that would have been rejected in both - but there ARE some students that would only get accepted if they apply ED. That’s what an “advantage” means. It’s not that complicated.
Unless you think schools are trying to trick / bamboozle kids into applying ED?
@lookingforward and others - you seem to make the argument that “ED might not be for everyone - if it’s not for you, don’t use it!” People aren’t complaining that “oops, I applied ED, but I didn’t really want to”. What people are complaining about is when ED doesn’t work for them and they do “walk away”, then they don’t get the benefit that ED imparts (at those schools where it imparts a benefit). And the students that don’t use it are strongly biased towards certain socio-economic groups.
If ED doesn’t have a benefit anywhere, that I don’t think anyone on this thread would have any problem with it. But clearly most people think it does, like the students who spend their “chip” at their not-top school.
On the question of whether ED is advantageous for the applicant:
A. If the college uses level of interest, then ED is the strongest possible indication of interest.
B. Otherwise, the college wants applicants to believe that there is a significant advantage to applying ED, whether or not that is actually true at that college.
HYPS, and especially Harvard and Stanford, are in a unique position because they don’t lose a significant number of accepted applicants other than to one another. So there really is probably no advantage in applying early, or very little. The main reason why colleges give ED or SCEA applications favorable consideration is the express or implied commitment to enroll if accepted. With SCEA, it’s not really a commitment to enroll, but it’s an important indication that the college is the applicant’s top choice. Harvard essentially thinks it’s everyone’s top choice anyway, so it doesn’t have much incentive to distort its admission standards for a tiny increase in yield. Harvard believes that if it accepts you you will come. That’s accurate enough of the time so that the exceptions don’t matter.
(Of course, when Harvard thought it was taking something of a hit during the three years when it had no early admission program at all, it reinstituted early admissions. But the issue then was not so much that Harvard was losing a chance to have applicants identify Harvard as their first choice, as that Harvard thought some of the best applicants were applying early to Stanford, Yale, MIT, or maybe some ED Ivies, and then never applying to Harvard at all. Harvard and Princeton needed to be in the early market to keep their rivals from getting more than their share of top students, not because they wanted to admit marginal candidates.)
^Sometimes the advantage is getting in before they give away too many spots in ED. Great kids who they may have wanted to say “yes” to in RD get deferred bc they are out of room.
I do not believe as SuzyQ says that the lesser kids are getting in ED. HYP etc and MIT Duke let in very few “lesser” kids. When they do, it is some hooked kid, and “lesser” is only marginally lesser! Not even like “top 10%” vs “top 1%”. These are often like 1% vs 2%!
Duke ED includes athletes and they push hard in ED to take URMs so they dont have to fight HYP etc for them. The normal high stats kids just get an earlier look. Some of them will get a spot before RD who might have been deferred due to space, yes. But again, these are tiny differences.
I don’t think anyone is saying that ED is letting in “dumb” kids. I imagine that for the top schools they could have a class that’s 10 times as big of just about the same caliber of student.
Which is why ED can be a big advantage (for schools where it’s an advantage). It’s a way for you to stand out among the cream of the crop that you are a part of - and competing with.
In ED, though, you are in the creme de la crime though…hard to stand out.
Dumb isn’t even part of the equation. We are talking smart, whip smart, crazy smart and super genius!!
These schools are awash with well-qualified hi-stat kids.
ED at these schools (similar to how garden variety legacy admissions work) is not about getting a 25 ACT kid admitted. It is more about improving the chances (by a lot actually) of a 34 ACT kid by going ED over a 35 or 36 ACT kid who applies RD.
And even though ACT 34 kid gets a big boost statistically (say going from a 5% to 20% chance) by applying ED, he still may get rejected.
But my $0.02 is that even ACT 34 kid isn’t really being benefitted by the ED system. Since if all these schools got rid of the distortions that come from ED, then he’d have a 20% chance of getting in anyway. The system is really for the benefit of the school not the kid.
“What people are complaining about is when ED doesn’t work for them and they do “walk away”, then they don’t get the benefit that ED imparts”
Right, if you choose RD, you take that shot.
But remember, this is much more than stats, for a top holistic. More than your 32 nudging you somewhere, just because it’s Early. No fairy dust. Creme will present well all around. Not just the hs record, but the thinking that shows, the rest of the story. You need that whether ED or RD. Almost seems some forget that it’s not a rack and stack. It’s not a ticket line.
Thread’s going in circles.
Seems some are taking some colleges’ wording very literally. If you’re a great candidate, put forth the right, winning app/supp and sign that you are willing to commit, then fit the institutional needs, maybe yes. Not if you’re ho-hum, doubtful.
Everyone is entitled to their opinions on the student benefit of ED, but here are a few things I believe are facts:
- Every study ever done has shown there is a significant statistical benefit to ED
- Every book written about or by an (ex) Adcom admits it is easier to get in ED
- Many (if not most) schools admit there is a benefit to ED applicants (although not equal to the entire ED-RD difference)
- ED rounds have far fewer applicants applying for - in many cases - nearly half the slots
More evidence, anecdotal as it may be:
- I have never heard of a HS GC or private counselor say anything other than "There is a big benefit to applying ED"
- I have never seen a comparison of ED vs RD in a schools Naviance that shows anything other than a benefit of higher rates and lower accepted averages. At our HS, it is shockingly different, and I have spent a lot of time looking at that data.
- For colleges that use "Level of Applicant's Interest" in their admissions decision, what better way is there than ED?
- For those that say "the ED pool is stronger", remember that the RD pool has all the kids deferred from one elite college applying to several now -- making it, in fact, stronger at all but the very top few schools as everything cascades down. That val deferred from Penn ED was NOT in the Northwestern ED pool, but he will be there in RD, as well as Cornell, Amherst, etc.
No one is saying applying ED will get a kid into a school he is not qualified for. But if you are a kid with high stats, would you want to apply to Penn when the adcoms are looking at 5,761 other apps to fill 1,332 slots or 33,155 other apps to fill 2,329 slots?
blossom, I laughed at “Guidance Counselors who kept showing naviance data to no avail.” Those guidance counselors, I bet they have some stories to tell.
@northwesty Once you see the acceptance rates for RD versus ED, then you have to (try) to figure out the acceptance rate via ED for an “unhooked” applicant because those with hooks mostly apply ED. In other words, Brown’s ED acceptance rate via ED is 22% but a substantial number of those ED admits are athletic recruits and legacies. What is the acceptance rate “gap” between RD versus ED for the unhooked? Some schools make available sufficient data to figure this out. Brown does not, but our family’s best guess was that the ED acceptance rate for the unhooked was about 15% - yes, much greater than the RD rate (which still includes some hooked applicants) but not nearly as high as 22%.
Look at Cornell as an example. Their stats say that 22% of this year’s ED accepted students were legacies and 14% were recruits. So well over a third of the ED acceptances had strong “hooks.”
Despite that - there seems to me to be no reason to deny the higher acceptance rate for ED. If there were no benefit whatsoever in committing early to a single choice, way fewer students would apply ED. True, self-selection must play SOME role but still…
OUR conclusion was that the ED route was the very best shot my daughter would ever get to win this nearly random lottery of acceptance to an Ivy League school. She picked her dream school and applied ED. And she won. Go figure!
@mickmantle Please don’t be concerned that every mention of the recruited athlete admissions advantage is negative. I, for one, don’t feel that way. Particularly at very academically intense universities, athletes go through substantial pre-screening. And I’m also a big believer that being a successful athlete reveals significant, positive personal traits that will serve that student/athlete well in college.