“^^^is there general agreement that ED really increases the odds of acceptance over RD when you factor in athletes, legacy, and a better pool of applicants (i.e. ED applicants have higher scores/GPA than those that don’t) who will be applying early?”
This varies widely by school. There are some schools where ED offers a definite advantage over RD even when athletes, legacies and QB are factored in. Other schools, not so much. And some don’t disclose enough info to even make a guess…
We made sure we had a financial safety and not just a safety school. We also applied to more schools. But once again we waited for acceptances before touring any.
@socaldad2002 as @milee30 said, ED to me one of the LEAST transparent numbers to investigate. It was a tough decision to go ED at DD’s chosen school, but we made an attempt by examining (1) How many Division I teams are there? If I am not mistaken, they are the only ones that can “reserve” a spot. My daughter is not an athlete, so I could be wrong. (2) Are there parameters on specific types of students? What does the school self report on the importance of these factors? For example, some schools allot a certain number of spots for legacy/first gen/ ethnicity/in state. (3) What is the difference between admission rates? What can you discern by research about the viewpoints of admissions. Using Colorado College as my example, they have a very small number of Div 1 teams, and the helpful students on CC said that the vast majority of the people they know were admitted ED. CC has a very different model (block scheduling as opposed to semester or quarter) and is very, very invested in ensuring that the students are choosing to buy in to this learning style. It was clear from multiple indicators that ED would make a difference in admission. Based on the extreme zeal of our daughter, and the lack of predictability of admittance, she elected to do it. We supported her, although I will miss the giant scholarships that she received from other EA schools! We also factored in the likely aide from the other schools in her decision-base. We knew we were not going to get need-based aide, so we reviewed https://www.kiplinger.com/article/college/T014-C000-S002-kiplinger-s-best-college-values-2018.html to get a a feel for how much merit she might be awarded. We then figured out the relative probably costs, so she would be fully informed. (We are blessed to have a scholarship fund from her grandparents, which she is allowed to use for educational purposes. The remaining funds are hers if there are any, as are the debts. D1 did a masterful job of managing her funds, so D2 has a great model).
DS (HS class of '15) was easy. One of our Big State U’s has a fantastic program in his major of interest, and he qualified for automatic admission so he knew he was accepted when he clicked “submit” on his application in mid-August. Official letter (a formality) came by mid-September. Just to humor me, he applied to our other Big State U (my alma mater) for a slightly different but extremely competitive major. Students I saw on CC who were accepted to MIT and Stanford were turned down by that university/major, so my DS had no chance. 
He did get a “general ed” university acceptance, ultimately, but would have had to finagle his way through two colleges/3 departments to achieve the classes he’d get in the specially-designed program at his auto-admit. GC (single meeting, although he did take a look at the essays as well) was fantastic – couldn’t have paid for a better conversation: why go OOS and pay three times as much for something you can get in your own backyard? Perfect. Done. Feet up the rest of senior year wondering why everyone else was so stressed out about the process.
DD (HS class of 2020) is just getting started. I know her journey will be much more stressful and challenging because she has no interest in that auto-admit Big State U (it doesn’t offer her interest area anyway) and she will probably want to go further away from home. She, unlike her brother, will not listen to any parental suggestions (about anything, really), so who knows how this will go. She did ask me as a freshman what her college budget is, so she’s clearly more focused earlier in the process than her brother was. Her HS class is half the size his was with more hands-on GCs, and they assure parents that they’ve got it covered. Hopefully that’s the case and we’ll be mostly taking her for some visits, paying application fees, and waiting for her decision when the time comes. She may or may not tell us the rest of her admission results. (HA!)
One thing I learned from DS’s experience is that they will find their place and things do work out. I had a number of parent friends with HS class of '14 kiddos, and that was a brutal year for college admissions. One friend’s daughter applied to 16 schools and ended up with nothing but two WL…the rest, even schools her GC thought would be easy-acceptances, were denials (we became aware of “yield” as a result of that). [She found an amazing gap year program involving world travel and is now a junior at her top choice, which was one of those WLs – GC inquired on her behalf about deferred admission for the following fall and got it.] I decided right then that I was not inclined to encourage either of mine to pay numerous application fees for the privilege of being turned down. Not worth it at all. I knew from my own experience that a motivated student can get a great education wherever they go, so the pressure of super-reaches, etc. is just not worth it. Plus, we make too much money to get assistance…but not enough to pay full tuition for the higher-end schools. I’m interested to see how DD’s journey goes!
Just getting started with DD20. Will have different “guidelines” for her than had for DS16 because they have different academic interests, she is more inclined to go farther away, and she is the youngest so our days of paying tuition are much more defined than they were at this point with DS16. Our guidelines include: 1) only applying to max of two reaches which means being mindful about why, 2) easy transportation between campus and home (direct flights or less than 6 hour drive preferred—having both as her brother does would be ideal), 3) affordable (willing to pay a bit more for a reach than a likely but no more than govt loans allowed above our contribution) and 4) apply to 6-10 schools with at least 1 instate likely.
DS chose his best fit which also offered his best merit. He will graduate without debt as was his goal. He is thriving there and we are very pleased. We would be happy for DD to attend there as well but she is interested in a bit bigger and better weather. Also, her academic interest is the sciences but the ultimate career goal is less firm and may require grad school so a school with lots of options to try out different career paths will serve her well.
We did learn from the process with DS16 that there is a school out there for everyone if they are willing to consider all options.
My kids are back to backs - S18 & D19. S18 had a very specific request to go to school in DC. We felt with his major Political Science or IR, going to DC was worth additional costs as the internships would be very valuable and he would be able to do several instead of just one during the summer break. We narrowed the search to GWU & AU by the spring of junior year. GTown was taken off because it would have been a reach school for him and he would have been full pay at 70K+. After visiting over Spring Break it was clear AU was his top choice and they had a really unique major (CLEG) that he fell in love with. So he applied ED as we worried that he would be waitlisted or rejected in RD due to his stats being mid-range for GTown. AU is a major yield protector. Of course, he was accepted as ED1 is 89%. I insisted he apply to a rolling admissions regional U (Drake) that sent him a priority application with no essay component required. He had that acceptance in hand in early October. I will say that AU is DISMAL at communication. They notify admissions by mail only, so the acceptances roll in based on your mail service speed. Which meant we were one of the last to receive our official acceptance. Their CRM is awful - seriously if you sell a CRM please contact them! When he was notified that he was not accepted into their Honors program (not a shock), they included a line about how they hoped he would still consider AU. This was months after we had paid our deposit. We were told he would be notified if he was accepted to the AU scholars program if he was declined for Honors. We have still heard nothing from them. Thankfully he put a request in for Univerity College LLC at the advice of the UC department. We had asked his admissions rep if we needed to register for UC and he was oh if you don’t get accepted to Honors or Scholars you can apply then. WRONG! Acceptance and placement into one of your top choices is based on when you apply. We would have completely given up his ED advantage on this if we had not checked with the actual UC department. My biggest take away is trust nothing the Admission Rep tells you. Make sure you get the answer directly from the actual department that oversees the area.
This Summer/Fall was completely nuts as S18 was having to complete the application process and we had to start researching for D19. Fortunately, D19 has a major, Biochemistry, that is offered at most colleges. We will not be using ED for her. We want the ability to compare merit scholarships as she doesn’t have a clear front-runner after her Spring Break Tour. We have one more college to tour which may have to wait until early Fall. She is looking at Southern mid-range LAC’s and plans on making all the EA deadlines. She will be applying to Kansas U as her safety. It has a 93% acceptance rate and several of her friends are applying so that makes up for the large size. We will be able to have this acceptance in hand very early in the process. Going into Christmas with acceptances is the plan! I have been watching my son’s friends be completely stressed out waiting for acceptances in the Spring and I really want to avoid this! We could not get S18 to start the essay process in the Summer, but I think D19 learned from that mistake and will be working on essays this summer. Unfortunately learning that I should have spaced my kids out at least 2 years apart to avoid becoming insane during this process will not help anyone reading this thread!
Mostly everything was different as they were really different kids. Both are very bright but ShawSon is extremely bright (a Harvard prof met him early in college and told me without any request by me that, “he should think about joining the faculty here”) and severely dyslexic. Even though he is a gentle and compassionate kid, he is competitive, strategic and probably even more driven than he is bright. He refused to visit schools with a 10% probability of success and told me he would do a great job on his apps and would apply to more schools. He’s a deep conceptual thinker and we were looking, at the end of the day, for a school that would a) quickly recognize his intellect; and b) would not require him to fulfill distribution requirements that had him reading 400 pages per week.
ShawD has a more concrete intelligence. She loves to absorb facts and connect them conceptually. She isn’t interested in learning for learning’s sake. She told me that the only two courses she enjoyed in HS were biology and statistics. Perhaps because she followed her hyper-competitive brother and and perhaps because her private HS was populated by kids whose parents had gone to Ivy League schools and were going to either commit suicide or kill their kids if they didn’t get into Ivies (obviously slightly facetious here), competition made her really nervous. I pointed out that as a dual US/Canadian citizen, she could go to school in Canada and a) they would tell her upfront whether she would get in and b) the cost would be a lot lower. She chose to only apply in Canada. We visited 2 US schools and 7 Canadian schools. I offered to take her to more US schools and she declined. She only applied to 2 Canadian schools got in to both and chose one. [Slight note: she then tried to switch her major from biology to nursing and couldn’t do it without reapply and ended up transferring to a school in the US and attending a five year BSN/MSN program, which as a great fit for her].
@shawbridge, D2 has chosen Colorado College, which might be an interesting one to explore. It’s not below 10% (I think in the 10 - 20% range, with the vast majority EA or ED). As you may know from being in these woods a long time, they have a block schedule where students take one class at a time for 3 hours daily - usually in the morning unless the professor has field trips, etc planned. After doing 17 days of class and the final, they have a 4 day “break” with no class or requirements before they start their next class. I think the reason that D1 got in is that she and her interviewer had a meandering esoteric conversation about the intersection of art and science. It was amazing to be in the next room and overhear D2’s perspectives. The professors are accustomed to teaching in a varied and interesting style, because they have to engage for 3 hours straight! The design class D2 observed spent hour #1 critiquing team design projects, hour two walking around the campus and discussing the psychology of how buildings are designed and how proper design affects us ergonomically and emotionally, and hour #3 discussing how a variety of displays were designed to elicit a specific response. D1 had only planned to attend for an hour, but couldn’t tear herself away. I can’t speak to the reading requirements being more or less than other schools, but I can say that deep thinking is highly valued. Instead of a meet/greet/admissions speel reception for accepted students, they skipped admissions talks and had a professor give a participatory talk on Islamic feminism as a demonstration lesson. D2 LOVED it!
@shoot4moon, Colorado College was one of the schools I thought would work well for ShawD. I offered to take her for a visit. She said she would rather visit another Canadian school (or two, I think). ShawSon attended one of the top LACs. He was noticed very quickly and they were great with him. It worked out very well…
@shawbridge, it was love at first, second, and third sight for ours… she had terrific backups but this was the clear choice. It’s really a unique spot.
Not much difference between my 2 Ds - they both wanted music and science (likely double degrees) so the path was somewhat similar. I did push my D2 to submit SAT scores even to optional test schools - particularly because they were stronger - as I figured that would help with merit. I didn’t push D2 to apply as early so she was left scrambling around - literally applying at the RD deadline at a school or two - in early January so that approach will definitely change with D3!