I think they also might have experienced temporary help to help the admission officers. I understand that some schools (including Vanderbilt) use this resources - basically people who have experienced reviewing college applications.
And it’s not just 45,00 applications in such a short time. A lot of schools employ a workflow where applications are usually reviewed by 3 people (with one AO being the “lead”) so it’s actually closer to 50 applications a day…
This is going to be a very long and stressful week. My D23 applied EA to Viterbi for Mechanical Engineering. I wish everyone the best!
Agreed–based on earlier numbers posted in this thread, there may only be @ 4% accepted in this EA round. At least there won’t be any rejections though, which hopefully will soften the blow if there is a deferral.
That’s very helpful and so gracious for you to share your experience. Yes, my D did the same thing with her Dornsife essay and “first choice” letter. Hopefully it helps!
Good luck to her! Sounds like she has done everything she can and my fingers are crossed for her.
They also don’t accept outside recommendations (non-teacher) on the common app.
I had my non-teacher recommendation sent by email to my regional admissions counselor from my recommender. They added it to my file.
Around 43k will be deferred if the 45k applying early is correct. So ya, quite a few deferred!
And not to be gloom and doom but just keeping it real, when looking at acceptance figures, for each person the % number is immediately cut in half (50% male/female generally speaking), then cut again by school, major, and many demographic targets they want to hit.
So ya, it’s a small number this time and in March. But obviously people get in - so here’s to hoping!
To be honest, just doing acceptance and deferrals in the EA round seems odd. There has to be applicants who simply don’t meet the requirements (GPA and classes) that should be removed from the applicant pool. Simply moving them to deferral doesn’t seem to help anyone.
There will be alot of students who have tried to “throw their hat into the ring” for admittance who really have not met the minimum requirements," just because" or “just maybe”. In these cases a rejection would be better then a deferral for all involved.
Agree- giving false hopes to someone who would not be accepted really strings along applicants, better to deny in EA round.
They may not be denying them right now because they want to falsely inflate a low admittance rate for RD- trying to game the ranking system.
Why assume there is some kind of “gaming the system” behind it?
My guess is that it’s just simpler for them not to change their process too much. In the past, most decisions were not complete in January.
Because do they really have time to review all those apps again? Prob not. Will they go over the apps that have low probability to get in? Prob not. Harvard does the same thing- defers mostly everyone but most people doubt they really go over the deferred piles. Some think there are two deferred piles for Harvard- those that will go straight to rejection or waitlist during RD and then there are just a few apps that will actually be re-reviewed again. Whether this happens or not, all speculative but do they really have the time to go over all of the deferred ones on top of the RD apps? Maybe they do but we won’t know.
Thanks for keeping it real!
Do you know if acceptances for recruited athletes are also part of this EA round?
In the past, only the students who were under consideration for one of the merit scholarships heard back from USC early. Most applicants heard back in March. So their previous admission process would have been designed to rapidly pull out a couple thousand of the applicants for merit consideration, then fully consider the remainder of the applicants for March. Why should we assume differently?
I wonder then why even offer an EA round if you they are not changing their process much? Doesn’t seem much like a real EA.
Why have 45000 applicants apply early if not doing anything different and not have weeded through the applications to at least have some efficacy to the process?
I agree. I am not happy with their zero reject EA scheme from the beginning. The scheme is not good for most applicants. It is good for USC to identify the top students early and for USC to pursue them early with trustee/presidential scholarships. I believe this 95% deferred scheme will piss off many well qualified students (who would have been admitted in RD round in the past) and they will end up choosing other equally good (EA) universities instead of USC in the deferred RD round. I hope USC can come up with a better scheme next year. Just my 2 cents as a life long USC fan. Fight on.
I agree that it would be far preferable, from the applicant perspective, for USC to give real decisions to the majority of EA applicants by the EA decision date.
I just don’t think we should assume that this year’s process is an attempt to “game the system” or string along applicants intentionally. My guess is that it is probably just easier for USC to gradually evolve their process, rather than making big, rapid changes to the process. They may honestly feel that this is the best way to give full consideration to all applicants this year.
My son used the additional info section to elaborate on an activity that wouldnt show up anywhere else in the common app. My son has a very unique roll in one of his DE classes that really sets him apart and he wrote about that in the additional info section.
Also, his employer wrote him a letter of recommedation that we thought was too good not to send so it was mailed to admission and it was added to his file. Depending how Friday goes, you can still mail that in for consideraton in RD.
Oh wow! That’s a lot. Well, either way, it’s not a no- at least not yet, for those that will be deferred.
Where did you hear of this?