Top EA/ED Decisions Demystified: My Theories from reading CC

Applying to College
21

<p>While it is true that Stanford is an athletic powerhouse, it might surprise one to learn that, for the entering class of 6584 students, only 126 (1.9%) were awarded athletic scholarships. However, not all sports will have athletic scholarships to award and yet their student-athletes will still sometimes receive some type of admissions tip and maybe some type of need-based financial aid. Thus, it is hard to make concrete statements about the impact of athletic recruitment for a school like Stanford, but the athletic scholarship numbers are far less than most might imagine. BTW, two other top privates also report this figure-Northwestern (101 athletic scholarships or 1.2% of the entering class) and Vanderbilt (34 athletic scholarships or 0.5% of the entering class).</p>

<p>With regard to the Ivies, the athletic impact on admissions is quite large. The Ivies are proud of their record in offering a very broad range of sports for their students to participate in and they will actively recruit for nearly all of these. While there are no explicit athletic scholarships, the classifications of student grants are frequently applied to athletic admits. Thus, the illusion of no athletic scholarships is retained, but the reality of the actual entering class is, for some sports, far more like other elite Division I privates.</p>

22

<p>About legacy applicants, I really havent seen profiles of legacy students where I've thought they would have been rejected had they not been legacy. I did look at Penn ED and it seems that legacies had a much higher acceptance rate (in my ten minute or so read through results, I didnt run any percentages, so..) but that reflects the fact that they tended to anyways have good looking profiles. I agree that its a boost - and a boost in ED too, but just not as much as people think. Particularly on Stanford and Yale boards. My hypothesis is that EA is for the best of the best, legacies or no. ED is a bit different and I too have heard people say "if you want to use your legacy card, apply early". I suppose it might be true at some places.</p>

<p>I dont know that much about athletic recruitment and all. Here's what I'm trying to move towards; okay there is very little room for unhooked candidates. But some get accepted. What is the method to that, what differentiates accepted, non athlete, non development, non URM candidates from those not accepted? If anything?</p>

<p>I think there is something; there is profile that if one can obtain, they will atleast be one of the very, very on the brink candidates for admission in EA as it is now. And that profile doesnt require URM or legacy, but a URM or Legacy still need have elements of that profile.</p>

23

<p>I agree that the legacy boost is not in the same league as a recruited athlete boost, but they are accepted at twice (at least) the rate of non legacy applicants at most top schools. I think they need to have at least the median stats but the soft factors (ECs) are looked at less rigorously. Wealthy legacies can have lower stats as they are also seen as development picks.</p>

<p>More relevant to this thread is that most legacies enter ED/EA and significantly impact admission in that pool.</p>

<p>To me what differentiates the unhooked who make it in is that they are a good deal for the college, i.e. Dartmouth and Brown will take those they know will get into HYPS. My DS made it into Dartmouth last year ED. He would have been a good candidate at HYPS, kids from his high school with his stats typically were accepted at those schools.</p>

<p>To me, the real question is: Is it a disadvantage to apply ED at top schools if you don't have a hook and you're not a super star.</p>

24

<p>^^ I think if you go Ivy, it seems safer to not apply ED. After the Stanford slaughter and Dartmouth disaster, if I were going to apply to those schools I'd have probably waited until RD.</p>

25

<p>This is an interesting thread. I've read over the previous posts, and I have one question: It sounds as though many agree that applying EA is not a boost to your application, and may even hurt it, if you are not a legacy or recruited athlete. Is this true?</p>

26

<p>^ yes, that seems to be the $64,000 question...</p>

27

<p>The ED vs. RD question is interesting. A quick cut and paste from Collegedata.com:</p>

<p>Cornell 2012 -- average unwtd GPA, wtd GPA, SAT, ACT



RD
Accepted    3.93    4.43    736     733     723     33
Denied      3.71    4.14    687     646     662     29</p>

<p>ED
Accepted    3.88    4.47    711     706     686     28
Denied      3.46    3.96    651     656     656     25

I chose Cornell due to higher sample size. The data suggests an advantage of applying ED vs RD at Cornell. It appears some RD applicants who were rejected might have made the cut during ED. What would really be interesting would be to look at aggregate statistics for all Tier 1 colleges to see what the numbers say; unfortunately, the collegedata website doesn't support that. Selection bias is a real problem with these websites as it appears rejected applicants aren't as eager to report their status as the accepted ones are. Even so an aggregate look at ED vs. RD numbers may be revealing.</p>

28

<p>Justthis, the major flaw in the above analysis is that it does not factor in the major hooks the majority in the early pool had. Cornell is also the wrong school to use for any analysis because the fact that it also incorporates the land grant schools skews the numbers.</p>

<p>What we are trying to get at in this thread can not be answered by a numerical analysis because the schools are not telling us who is an athlete, legacy, faculty kid, etc.</p>

29

<p>There's no way to generalize about whether or not you would be better off EA / ED or RD for a unhooked, but strong candidate. First of all because I think YSM etc look for slightly different things, but also because we're not seeing the essays of accepted versus non. This fear of 'hasty rejections', namely from stanford, where a kid who is in position to get into an Ivy or so is flat out rejected and not even deferred raises the question of would the kid be better served applying RD. I do not think so, because my theory is this - eliminate the riffraff of RD, and your looking at a same strength pool as in EA. It is 'harder' to get in EA/ED, but I think if you were neither accepted nor deferred EA/ED, that particular place just doesnt want you, and wouldnt the same application in RD. </p>

<p>Students who get in, from what I can tell, have some sort of hook anyway, RD or no, they have something thats in demand and in short supply. Perhaps a student with math accomplishments and literature accomplishments - that is not a hook, but it is a something. To get in, you need something in demand but in short supply - URM or Legacy isnt a hook, but it can suffice as a portion of that something. Unhooked students, if they have a plan for how to show something that is in demand but not supply by the EA time, might as well apply. </p>

<p>Here's my hypothesis. For the very tip top applicants; EA/ED is a godsend. The combined affect of your dedication and maybe commitment to a school + having really top applications can really seal the deal. But for applicants who are 'great', but not extraordinary (I mean in their application, not as a person - applicant here means a piece of paper, not 'who you are') - applicants who are in the boat where 'I'll apply to all ivies, should get one or two, MAYBE Stanford' probably wont be served in Stanford's EA as well as they would have been served in RD. Because of the slaughter effect; Stanford cherry picks a few and slaughters the rest basically. At Yale, completely different story; because they defer 47%, chances are if you were at all close you will be reconsidered for RD, so why not. Each college's ED/EA is different, and you have to individually decide if EA or RD is best. </p>

<p>Again, it would be interesting to compare the admission rates of Yale legacies applying to Yale (2007 was 30% I believe) versus the admission rates of PRINCETON legacies applying to Yale. That would be the best judge of how much legacy helps, because you're isolating other variables. Of course, since generally universities need a fair amount of pestering to reveal any pertinent information about race or legacy admission rates to the public...</p>

30

<p>


</p>

<p>I would try dividing 129 by the actual number of entering freshman, which isn't Stanford's overall undergraduate enrollment.</p>

31

<p>Here are the collegedata numbers for Stanford</p>

<p>



            N   UW  W   M   CR  W   ACT
ED  Accepted    10  3.95    4.61    749 753 755 33
ED  Denied      20  3.94    4.37    727 717 707 32
(Legacies 2, accepted 2; Athlete 1, accepted 0)</p>

<p>RD  Accepted    15  3.96    4.39    730 724 718 32
RD  Denied      53  3.85    4.31    736 689 698 31
(Legacies 3, accepted 1; Athlete 2, accepted 0)

</p>

<p>What's interesting is that the ED Denied pool has nearly identical stats compared to the RD Acceptance pool. I'd say if your SATs are closer to 2100 than 2400 then I'd go RD for Stanford, it appears the competition is a little bit weaker. The ED Legacies must be good ones because they don't seem to be watering down the ED Acceptance pool, while the RD Legacies must be the weaker ones -- which is why they apply RD to begin with, they have other irons in the fire for safety.</p>

32

<p>Again, the 17% of every class that are recruited athletes mostly come in ED/EA. That makes the above meaningless.</p>

33

<p>hmom5 >> *Again, the 17% of every class that are recruited athletes mostly come in ED/EA. That makes the above meaningless. *</p>

<p>I think you're mixing apples and oranges. The 17% figure you're quoting applies to the entire class. The collegedata numbers quoted above are but a small sample. Since none of the self-reported "athletes" were accepted, it is likely none of the 17% recruited true athletes participated at collegedata. This means the collegedata participants are all non-athletes. Therefore, if a person is applying as a non-athlete, the data subset has some use and is not meaningless.</p>

34

<p>You're right, I didn't read your whole post. My point is that no numerical analysis can answer the key questions this thread has explored: Is ED an advantage or disadvantage for the unhooked. Until colleges release data on stats of recruited athletes and legacies, all we can do is speculate.</p>

35

<p>[ *] Intended Major: Completely did not have any affect on admission. </p>

<p>does the intented major really hav NO affect whatsoever?!</p>

<p>ouch...i was hoping my intented major would play in my favor...counselors and teachers hav told me it could certainly help applyin for an unpopular or 'dying' major.</p>

<p>any takes?</p>

36

<p>
[quote]
Oh about major awards, I just saw so many Siemens, USAMO people rejected. A hook, the way I see it, is something that makes you unable to be denied. 4.0 2300 USAMO people get rejected; my guess is that they lacked excellent essays, recs, and ECs. Which means that major awards are more of a garnish; they cant be the main dish of the application.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Where exactly did you see these rejections? Could you link us to a couple?</p>

37

<p>Nice thread, but the abundance of metaphors and analogies is a little unnecessary.</p>

38

<p>
[quote]
Summer Activities: Absolutely necessary; I have found few profiles of any admit/d/r that wastes their summer. Many summer study session at X type deals did not lead to acceptance at X place, but we knew that.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Can someone please make this clearer to me?</p>

39

<p>Do something productive with your summer, but know that EPGY won't get you into Stanford, Summer@Brown won't get you into Brown and so on.</p>