A topic that has been addressed a lot - where to apply ED, but I wanted to ask hindsight/advice about the art of how you evaluate making this decision. Say your child has 4 colleges they really like, all ED. SAT scores are in the zone for all the colleges, (maybe one is a nudge below the 50% percentile), grades fit the profiles, but how do you know your ECs are really a fit for a school? Is starting that school club enough? Is a short summer internship at a pharmaceutical comparable to being the school paper editor? You want to optimize your reach, but how to finalize who gets your ED submission?
Eg: U Chicago, Yale & MIT (MIT = EA, but if e.g. you apply binding ED to U of C you can’t apply EA to MIT) & Cornell (list is not final, just current thinking)
Stem student - maybe chem or chem eng (TBD) - or something else but stem
770 / 760 V / M
4.2 gpa (unweighted)
APs - AB Calc 5, Bio 4 - rest tba (BC calc, chem, etc.)
ECs: national art award, state writing, state art, regional board member, started school club, short (2 week) summer pharma internships, summer stem leadership program, varsity sport for 2 years, captain 1 year
Not trying to chance student (school list will probably move around a bit), but how to decide if you use your ED ticket for example at U of C vs. Yale? No legacy at Yale (or any top 10) so feel maybe ED ticket should be used somwhere else. So sort of a chance question, but on paper all schools look viable, but, sample isue: student feels legacy so impt at HYP, etc. that using ED there is not a shrewd move.
Just a point on semantics: Yale does not have ED; it has SCEA. But one cannot apply SCEA and apply early to any private school.
You can apply ED to UChicago and EA to MIT. But if accepted ED to UChicago, you need to commit to them. Ditto on the Cornell and MIT pair.
In general, the boost for applying early to Yale (or HPM) is minimal to nonexistent once you back out hooked applicants. The boost is far greater at ED colleges. As a side note, MIT does not consider legacy, and athletes do not get the same boost as at HYPS.
At the end of the day, assuming you ran the NPC and are happy with the numbers, apply early to the clear number one choice plus early to whatever other colleges are allowed. At some point between now and the application deadline, through visits, virtual tours, research on course offerings and activities, etc, a clear choice should emerge. If it’s between 2, analyze acceptance rates or flip a coin.
My opinion…the tipping point should be that the ED school is your student’s top choice. If the student has any hesitation about the choice, then maybe ED isn’t a good idea because it’s a binding acceptance.
SCEA would be different as that acceptance isn’t a binding one…and the student would have the option of applying to other colleges regular decision.
So much can change between summer before senior year and May 1 of senior year. If a student is absolutely sure about a college…or at least very comfortable with attending if accepted ED, then go for it. Otherwise…maybe not.
IMO, I don’t know how much applying ED to any of these schools is really going to move the needle that much. ED should be used for a student’s favorite school. If there isn’t a clear favorite, I don’t see the value.
I’d also suggest the student do a deeper dive into curriculum of each of the schools. See what the 4 year course of studies look like for potential majors. How much room is there for out of major electives? How would changing majors work? For example, at Cornell, students apply to a college. Chem E and chemistry are in different colleges. If engineering is on the table, Chicago isn’t ABET accredited.
Then your student needs to think about what they want beyond academics - size, location, etc. Cornell vs Chicago couldn’t be more different environments.
D20 had 2 favorites, both had very similar profiles and are located 30 minutes apart. Her: 4.0 UW, SAT 680M/780EBRW (EBRW exceeded 75th %ile at both and M was in the mid-50), 5s on all AP tests at the time of application, musical instrument with multiple awards & recognition, 1 year-round sport, non-STEM major, the usual NHS/club/volunteer experiences but nothing spectacular, needed generous FA (both met full-need, NPCs within $160 of each other). Acceptance rates for both were in the 16-20% range, so both were big reaches.
She went with the school she fell in love with first: first visit was spring of sophomore year, multiple return visits, met the VP/Dean of Admissions that first day and maintained communication with him for a year and a half before applying. He remembered her each time she saw him, remembered our HS had only sent one student there in the past 5 years, and encouraged her to apply ED. She felt like the school was the right place for her and made her application journey personal.
School #2 was also visited in the spring of her sophomore year, multiple trips back, but no meeting of the Dean of Admissions. She did have an interview with a student and received a follow up letter from the Dean detailing the interview and saying she was sorry they didn’t get the chance to meet but hoped she would consider applying there ED since they felt she would be a great addition to their community. She would have applied ED2 if the other option didn’t work out.
UChicago is not ABET, but that hardly matters if your interested in the areas that UChicago ME program offers. Outcomes have been good there with my DD doing her Masters in Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins and her friend (grad last year) is working on her engineering PhD at MIT. DD also had several job offers on the table before deciding to attend Johns Hopkins. I agree with the rest of your post about doing a deep dive into the schools, that will definitely help decide which one to ED, as it will give the OP a good idea what is a “fit”.
Thanks for the pointers. I am feeling envious of the writer who was able to visit campuses starting sophomore year. That was our plan, but with covid we just starting visiting campuses - although we did get to a few in state over the last year.
Also, yes I know all the schools I’m listed are not strictly ED (Yale, MIT) but you can only apply to one place early - even if Yale - that is it, that is where you use your Early ticket (I didn’t know one could apply ED and EA to private colleges - and pull out if accepted ED).
Since my child is most likely focused on stem how much does one weigh the strength of the school vs. their stem. This may seem odd to ask - but U of C is a terrific school but as pointed out - they are not ABET and don’t have chemical engineering degree. With a 17 year old who seems interested in stem but things could change over the 4 years, how meaningful is it to weigh U of C who has the ME program and some stem, but is an excellent all around school, vs. Yale (ok I know obviously an excellent school), vs. Cornell - another excellent school, but probably the strongest (outside of MIT) stem school in the bunch?
And my child is still weighing the other factors - location, size - but got thrown for a loop when they really liked Cornell - although they said they only wanted to be in a city / near a city at a school with about 5K undergrad - neither of which are Cornell.
I would say that students change career goals and majors, sometimes more than once, and sometimes students have to transfer to get what they want. If a school has programs that are so specific that there isn’t the ability to shift the major, I might not rush to attend there.
If ED is to be used for a clear, first choice and if the student doesn’t have one, maybe ED or REA isn’t the right way to go. I would also go so far as to say that ED and REA seldom provide the kind of bump in admissions that applicants and families are led to believe they do. Many ED applicants are recruited athletes, legacy students (some schools only consider it during ED), and other highly desirable applicants that fit the mission of the school. Treating an ED application as some sort of “ticket” (your word) that gets you a perceived advantage isn’t necessarily going to work out that way. It is better to really see what a school is looking for and spend time compiling an application that shows you understand how you fit there. It’s not easy to do!
I think the reason my D was successful in her ED acceptance was she understood the school. They had just launched a new financial aid initiative that was targeted to families like ours. My D felt like their info session was talking to her specifically and she engaged with the Dean afterward in a way that made him take notice. She made that connection and was able to reinforce it in her supplemental essays. She notified him when she submitted her application, he replied (on a Sunday!) and told her he couldn’t wait to read it. My guess is she was in the yes pile on Monday. My point is, if it clearly isn’t the top choice, that will come across in the application. You are talking about schools with “holistic” admissions and there needs to be something in the app to get attention otherwise, it may be a deferral.
You need to do a little more research on UChicago…the three areas of emphasis in Molecular Engineering are Chemical/Biological/Quantum Physics. If you were to say attend CalTech you would find that their ChemE is also not ABET accredited, or Stanford for that matter. If you want to build bridges/design airplanes then you need to go to an ABET school.