Ok - that’s a reasonable thought but like you I’m skeptical this makes much of a difference. It’s sort of like being interviewed for jobs - you either want to be first or last. First impression v Recency bias. If they want to make a hard pitch early on - do it with Merit $$. 
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One caveat to all this of course is that a not small number of schools which nominally have “early” application deadlines (some even calling it EA explicitly), don’t announce decisions until after the typical RD application deadlines. U Mich is one. 11/1 EA deadline, decision “by end of January” which is definitely after you need to submit your RD apps.
That wouldn’t impact yield, nor would it provide insight into the strength of your application in time to do anything about it. It’s one of the realities of this process that makes me nuts.
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One of the schools on kid’s list automatically considers accepted students for merit packages. But, the deadline to apply for financial aid is before the RD deadline so during our visit they strongly encouraged applicants to apply EA. Since most of the EA deadlines on kid’s list are close together (10/15 or 11/1), kid will have most applications submitted by Oct. 15 with the remaining 1-2 done by Nov. 1 at the latest.
I can see how early acceptances and early announcements of financial aid packages could increase a school’s yield. Once you have an acceptance, and a good offer, you start looking at other things - choosing which dorm you want or what clubs you might join - and maybe you go to an accepted student day. At that point you’ve imagined yourself as a student. For many kids, they aren’t likely to start thinking that way until they know that a school is a possibility. I’ve seen it with kids that I know - they start telling you about school X where they are likely to go, what they’ll study, dorms, parking, and all of the rest, and then they say ‘or maybe Y if I get enough aid’. Even if Y is their dream school they are still practical enough to be planning for the school they know they can attend and not invest too much mental or emotional energy in something that might not happen.
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This is one of the mysteries of the application process. Surely colleges ought to know that giving an EA acceptance in December will have a higher yield than an EA acceptance given in late January. But, apparently the schools offering this type of not-early-action don’t find the yield bump sufficient to outweigh the benefit of looking at the full applicant pool in January before releasing EA results. For all the handwringing about yield management, I wonder how much enrollment consultants getting paid the big bucks consider the process from the applicant perspective.
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Both my kids applied EA to every school that offered it with the exception of S23 who applied ED to one school. Their motivation was simply to be DONE with the application process. They had friends still plugging away well into the first semester of senior year (and beyond for rolling applications), so they were very relieved to be finished.
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Question for you or anyone who knows: do schools typically offer these in a timeframe other (i.e. earlier) than between 4/1 and 5/1?
Exactly. By late January you’re just going wait until 4/1 “just in case.”
My two cents is the vast majority of schools still basically just admit the applicants they would want, as many as they estimate they need to fill their class, and then clean things up with the waitlist if necessary.
Yield models can help them do better estimates, and they may actually have a pretty good idea of how things like high numbers admits, EA admits, legacy admits, merit offers, state of residence, or whatever will influence yield percentages. But I think most colleges still just use that information to admit roughly enough people, not to play a lot of games with whatever that would mean statistically, to reject overqualified people, or so on. There are plausibly a few exceptions, and they are popular exceptions in certain circles, but in the greater scheme I do think those cases are exceptions and not the rule.
ED is obviously a bit different, but even then, a lot of schools simply do not have enough higher-quality ED applicants to get their whole class that way. And in fact often schools still have to admit a lot of people non-ED even if they have a lot of ED admits, because their yields are quite low among the non-ED admits (which makes sense, because these people chose not to ED). And yet those slots still need to be filled.
Anyway, I am mentioning this because it basically doesn’t surprise me colleges just do whatever they want with EA that best serves their interests. Not to be cynical, but the truth is a lot of these colleges get a whole lot of applications from people who would prefer going to other colleges, and many of their admits will do just that. So I am not so sure they think they owe these applicants a lot of consideration, other than to make the deadlines clear. It ain’t personal, it is just business, and that is how both sides treat it.
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I think we can pretty easily reason that schools get higher yield for EA. Once you start getting those acceptances and senioritis kicks in, you might not even go through with the rest of your RD applications. So it is in the college’s best interest to encourage EA over RD. Every school we visited (except Lawrence) went along with the “apply EA for best results!” narrative. I have seen multiple people on social media recommending RD for enhanced chances at T20. All opinion and conjecture of course, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing more data come out aboit this.
As far as knowing who is applying where, kids talk, counselors counsel multiple students and can help with strategy based on what they know about who else is applying.
Depends on the school. Purdue releases EA acceptances in mid January and starts admitted student days in February.
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I note the CDS promotes reporting of ED statistics, but not EA.
Rather a gap, in my view, but it helps explain why there is a lot of “Who knows?” about EA issues.
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They don’t want to give acceptances to students who get admitted ED. That hurts yield.
With that said, it’s really unfortunate that so many EA decisions don’t come out before RD apps are due. That’s changed the nature of application strategy for sure. (as well has increased total number of apps)
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The CDS does ask for early action stats in question C22 (ED is C21). Most schools don’t choose to fill out field out. CDS is optional of course, most schools do it, but many schools don’t complete all fields.
Does C22 actually have the same section about the number of applicants and admits under EA as C21 has for ED?
It is possible colleges are just deleting that, but I have never seen it personally.
Like, here is a Chicago CDS, and they have both ED and EA:
C21 has those lines, but Chicago left them blank (Chicago is notoriously tight-lipped about ED stats, so that is how I knew to look this one up in particular).
But C22 doesn’t even have those lines for Chicago to leave blank. Again, maybe they deleted them from C22, but then why not also from C21?
Again, I really don’t know, but it was things like that which caused me to believe those lines don’t even exist for C22/Early Action.
You are right, there are no lines for the number of EA apps/admits/matriculants. It’s not in the master CDS either, which you can see here: https://commondataset.org/
Agreed, Chicago is a bad example because they just recently starting completing a CDS, and they are notoriously opaque about acceptance rate by round of admission (they have EDI, EDII, EA, and RD).
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In theory, if someone applied earlier, there’s a more excitement - so I agree. get an earlier acceptance and you might decide those last applications - ehhhh - I’m burned out, no need to bother.
So totally agree with what you said.
For what it is worth, I think that is basically a “fair deal”. Like I know this is a big decision, but I also think it is usually one of those situations where the applicant could make a lot of colleges work with enough enthusiasm, and so it is independently a good goal just for the applicant to end up really excited about wherever they do enroll.
So even if the only benefit to the EA admit is the opposite side of the coin for the college, namely that the EA admit may get more excited about enrolling at that college–great! That to me is real value, even if it is subjective in nature.
My S23 had UCF on his original safety school list. When he looked at the application, it was more onerous than the applications for some of the more competitive schools. Since it had rolling applications, he decided to punt and not work on it unless his ED and some of his EA decisions were disappointing. In the end, he was very glad he didn’t spend the time (or money!)
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I wish everyone realized this instead of - I must go to this or that school - it’s always been the dream and my life will be in tatters if I have to go anywhere else
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Yeah, some kids very unnecessarily feel disappointed, or worse like failures, when in fact they are big success stories.
On the plus side, many of these colleges seem to be really, really good at ramping up the positive feelings once they admit you. It is almost like that is their job . . . .
So I think at least most kids quickly get enthusiastic about where they are going, and where they are not going quickly fades into irrelevance. I just really feel for the kids still desperately hoping that waitlist school or whatever comes through, because usually it is so unnecessary to think like that.
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Curious of others - did kids apply to a mix of EA and RD - even though the RD had EA dates as well? Could just be my individual circumstance but assumption was that if you’re applying EA to a school you’re likely applying EA to every school that does EA. S23 applied to 12 schools all EA except 1 or 2 that didn’t offer it.
This is why I have difficulty with the concept that EA would drive a change in yield.
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