Thanks for researching it. Whether or not they’re “prestigious” enough to be put on some applicants’ early application list along with their ED choices, it’s for them to decide.
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As others have pointed out, no college that gives preferential treatment to some subgroups of applicants is going to voluntarily disclose the numbers of those who receive such preferential treatment. Therefore, we’ll never know for certain. But the differences in admit rates between EA and RD at these few schools are relatively small, compared to many other schools, that their claims of not giving EA applicants preferential treatment (relative to RD applicants) are more credible.
For EDs, there seems to be another factor at play in the last few cycles. More applicants applied ED than ever before, while most “elite” colleges haven’t markedly increased the seats they set aside for ED admits, perhaps to avoid bad publicity. This reduced their ED admit rates.
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Not sure what you mean by these “few schools.”
Don’t want to over-generalize. At many state schools, including those that don’t utilize hooks, the difference between EA and RD is pretty big.
Those are the ones I mentioned previously: MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Georgetown.
Not sure which state schools you are talking about but some of them get enough competitive EA apps that they fill up many majors in that round. Purdue, UIUC, and Maryland are examples of this. And they all advantage certain types of hooked applicants.
I don’t think that’s really the case. I believe that for strong students there are individual niches that are quite predictable even aside from the hooks. For example, I understand math and science awards really well and have talked about enough on CC that over a dozen high performing STEM students have reached out to me privately for advice over the last few years. I offer them advice and only ask that they tell me their outcomes afterwards. And to a very large extent, their outcomes are predictable, even at the HYPSM level.
I suspect there are several such niches including ones for excellence in humanities, leadership, community involvement, etc. But I have no expertise in evaluating those.
Stated another way, for any selective college I believe that some percentage of the unhooked students are high probability admits. These are the students that generally get accepted to multiple colleges at that level. So when colleges talk about “they could replace the admitted class with another one just like it”, they really aren’t talking about the top students, because there are no substitutes for those top students. But once you get into the bottom half of the class, these are students that could have gone either way.
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I’ve been seeing this sentiment expressed a number of times recently. I just wanted to share this post with some facts about the number of high school seniors that might be worth serious deliberation at the highly selective/rejective universities.
Even if half of HYP’s applicants are applying to it as a “reach” (their scores are on the lower end of admitted stats), then that would take the acceptance rate up to 6% for the group of the true “matches.” If 75% of HYP’s applicants are using it as a “reach” then that still would leave an acceptance rate of 12% for the “matches.” In just about any system that lists percentages for reach/target/likely, a 12% is a “reach” or very unlikely. And if you read the linked post from the first paragraph, I think that there is a very big pool of academically qualified applicants.
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Maybe. But you can’t really tell until you back out the athletes that are nearly guaranteed admits and who applied EA. Nor can you automatically discount the fact that students use their EA/ED strategically and therefore are more likely to really be in consideration than a student that applies to a dozen schools RD and takes a flier on Stanford because, why not?
From the post you shared:
“But what about the kids with a 1600 SAT and a 4.0 UW GPA? Wouldn’t they be shoo-ins? That’s when we get to the holistic part of the review. If their accomplishments entail being in the National Honor Society and participating in debate tournaments and writes a fine essay, would the university rather accept someone with a 3.8UW and 1420 SAT who was a varsity athlete in multiple sports, worked a part-time job, and had 600 hours volunteering at the animal shelter and writes a stellar essay? It gets sticky. And that second student is probably not going to fall into any of the “fact” categories listed above as the person didn’t get a 95th percentile SAT and probably isn’t in the top 10 with that GPA.”
My answer: They would rather have the student with 4.0 and 1600 AND varsity athlete, part time job, 600 hours of volunteering, and cured cancer.
Which is why we can say that a student with 3.8 and 1480 is a reach for T10 schools, even with a strong “holistic” extras.
And which is why we would say a 4.0/1600 is a reach for T10 schools when they have weak holistics, weak rigor.
But it is fair to say that a 4.0/1600 WITH strong rigor/holistics is a match for T10 schools. Again, they almost certainly won’t get into 10/10. And they might get rejected from all 10. But if they apply to all 10, then they have a fair chance of getting into one or more.
I know one high school student who has already published two award winning books, while achieving top grades, etc. I’d be surprised if this student couldn’t get into any T10 schools.
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Or more likely, the reverse is true – Students are using ED for their dream/reach schools. So the applicant pool for ED is actually weaker than the RD pool.
If you have 4.0/1550, you probably aren’t apply ED to a school with a 40-50% acceptance rate, but you might apply to that school RD.
That’s why I strongly believe it is lower stats for ED, even if you remove all the “hooks” because that pool is weaker than the RD pool, not stronger.
Thus, even if the “real” acceptance rate for ED is the same as the RD acceptance rate, it’s a weaker pool of candidates. It’s mostly students who are reaching/high matching.
And some schools have openly discussed use “yield algorithms” – Meaning they are implicitly admitting that they aren’t just accepting the best candidates, but they are factoring in whether that student will accept the admission offer. And ED plays directly into the yield algorithm.
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All selective schools use predictive analytic models to manage to yield, as well as net revenues.
The vast majority of selective schools have a holistic admissions process, meaning the final admission decisions are based on more than just stats, which can include likelihood of enrollment, and ability to pay, in addition to the many other institutional priorities that every school juggles every cycle. These institutional priorities, as well as the profile of the ‘best’ student for any given college can also vary from year to year.
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Ability to pay – Most ranked institutions claim to be need-blind.
They DO consider likelihood of enrollment – Which correlates directly to ED! (nearly 100% likelihood of enrollment)
Put another way – If you had 2 otherwise identical students – Same ECs, same rigor, same letters of recommendation… But 1 student is 3.85/1400 with nearly 100% likelihood of enrollment, and student #2 is 3.87/1420 with a 20% likelihood of enrollment – Would it be surprising if Student #1 has a higher chance for acceptance?
ED is the ultimate predictor of likelihood of enrollment. And as long as schools are managing yield, then the natural conclusion is they are willing to take lower qualifications as part of the yield management. (Otherwise, there would be no yield management… just pick the top candidates, the end. Why reject a top candidate with perfect holistics? Because of yield management).
If you said that the admitted pool for ED is likely weaker than the admitted pool for RD, I would agree with you. But the applicant pool will be stronger for ED than RD.
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Based on our HS Naviance for a handful of T25s, you are correct.
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Yes, I refer to that great post often! I love the data. However, I think if AOs reviewed the full files of all of those highly-competitive-by the numbers kids, they would deem a large chunk less competitive, due to rigor, LOR, etc. There are so many kids in our area that I know personally with mid 1500s or 35-36 and unweighted 4.0 or close–but they make very different decisions on classes to take and have very different ranks relative to the class (unweighted 4.0 can be just above average here, depending, and an unweighted 3.95 can be in the top few kids in the class). Some are highly likely to have had less than stellar LORs for various reasons. So those who know the full picture aren’t as surprised by near “shut-out” results. Nevermind all the “lower” 1450 kids with 3.9s who have done absolutely amazing things and are engaged in class and have true love of learning that also find their way into top schools when kids with higher scores do not…those who know the whole story are not surprised at all.
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It also depends on major. I would view the list for CS, Pre-med differently from generic list.
Yep.
But they know the financial aid status of most athletic recruits, as well as all QB and Posse applicants.
For the rest of the applicants, many of these colleges subscribe to CB’s Landscape, which gives them a highly accurate snapshot of the applicant’s neighborhood and HS, which allows colleges to make fairly accurate financial need estimates. This data supplements any factors related to income and relative HS performance that the schools already consider in admissions reviews and/or have as variables in their models.
Do you think that the 50%ish of full pay students at certain LACs and unis, year after year, is a coincidence?
What does “perfect holistics” mean?
There is much more that goes into the admissions decision than the likelihood to enroll. Schools have to fill an array of majors, teams, marching band, orchestra, hit net revenue targets, etc, which are critical factors in admissions as well. As always, building a class is complicated.
Obviously some schools are having success managing yield while others like CWRU and Reed, to take 2 examples, are struggling to get their yields out of the high teens. Whatever they are doing isn’t working.
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Lots of ranked colleges aren’t need-blind. I barely started to go through the alphabet and already have these on my list (source).
- Bates
- Boston U
- Bryn Mawr
- Carleton
- Case Western
- Colby
- Colgate
I don’t think we’re that far apart on this. Sure, HYP would prefer 4.0/1600 with tons of rigor and authentic ECs (the whole holistic package). So yes, these students might be a “match” in terms of the types of students that the most selective/rejective institutions are looking for. Yes, that applicant’s odds would be better than the other two you described. But, what’s the big difference? They are 4x more likely to be picked? Sounds great, except that it goes from a 3% acceptance to a 12%. Nobody is saying that HYP are impossible to get into. It’s just that chances range from unlikely to extremely unlikely. And there are times when we tell a poster that we suspect they might get into 1 or more of the schools on their list, but it could turn out that they get into none and need to have some likelier schools on their list in the event that happens.
I don’t know if a large chunk would be less competitive. Typically, when test scores and GPA are both quite high, the student could handle the coursework at these selective/rejective institutions. The admissions team probably acknowledges that and then does the deep dive into their applications and can decide if Suzie’s rigor is at a 9 while Chrissy’s rigor is a 9.5 and they prefer the 9.5. But they’ll look at their institutional priorities and buckets they need to fill and choose their candidates accordingly.
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With certain math or science awards, admission likelihood is greater than 50%, and has been for years. And while I am not current on humanities awards, historically students accepted into TASP did very well at the HYPSM level, and writers who were published in Concord Review also did very well. For leadership, I have heard anecdotally very good outcomes from those selected as President of Boys Nation and Girls Nation.
Now the HYPSMs admit plenty of students without these types of awards, but for them they are reaches that paid off. For those with these awards, they are basically matches.
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I agree institutional priorities matter, absolutely, but that is after the AOs have pulled out the less-competitive group that do not make it past the first round of review/first read. I am saying from my knowledge of over a dozen top scorers in the last few yrs who also have good grades, a decent portion would NOT be likely to make it far because they do not have rigor anywhere close to others in the top of class (honors and AP weighted same so it is easy to be near the top and skip harder courses at many schools around here), they have some personality issues that definitely would come out in LOR, or they do not have more than very superficial ECs. I think it is a false assumption that almost all top-number kids are really that competitive from an AO perspective. They just aren’t.
A separate non-numbers take on the “pool” of applicants is based on my interviewing for a T10 over a decade: less than a quarter really “wow” me. Less than 1/4 are truly not up to par. The rest fall in between. Our process is blinded to scores/app, so the interview knows none of that, but yet… it is still easy to distinguish the cream of the crop. The AOs see all of it and I am sure they can parse it out fairly well. Of course most of the applicants could handle the work, but in selecting a class the AOs are looking for more than just handling work, and the non-numbers part of a file are important. To me, this is why we on CC cannot adequately determine “Reach” vs “Match” for these highly rejective schools for the kids who have the above-the median stats for the school: so the default is to say “reach for everyone”, which is not true, just like those schools are not “matches” for all high-stat kids either.
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