“I’m guessing they only take the unhooked cream of the crop since they know they will many more applicants in the RD round that will be just as good or better.”
That’s a double edged sword though, at least for Duke. Those kids getting admitted to Duke RD are also getting admitted to Stanford, SCEA or RD and in California anyway, no one is picking Duke over Stanford for any major. I know in at least one high school that Duke has had zero yield, to be fair it’s only a handful of acceptances. If you’re Duke you probably get these kids ED, as you’re not going to win too many vs Stanford, Harvard, Yale or MIT.
Even if the differentiated admission rate is deceiving (and this is more so for some schools than others, legacy for example is not equally important throughout the top 30), if your kid just happens to be in that extra 1% or 5% … it helps. But the same advice applies as to the general in this thread: don’t get married to a school, because when admit rates are in the single digits, or teens, or even 20s as in some ED rounds, for a strong pool that still means your chances are not great.
Duke explicitly says that there is a benefit to students applying ED. Even for students deferred into RD, Dukes says they take the ED application as serious demonstrated interest, and consider that in the RD round.
To get in ED unhooked at a tippy top school you do need to be cream of the crop, those schools aren’t going to lower their standards just because applicants love them. But for other highly regarded schools that are not quite top, top, I bet some kids sneak through at ED with a solid but not top app.
“To get in ED unhooked at a tippy top school you do need to be cream of the crop, those schools aren’t going to lower their standards just because applicants love them. But for other highly regarded schools that are not quite top, top, I bet some kids sneak through at ED with a solid but not top app.”
The true tippy-top (HYPSM) don’t even have to bother with ED, so it is moot.
For any school offering ED, that is how they want applicants to apply, if they are financially capable of doing so. Regardless of how much ED benefits the applicant, ED always benefits the institution.
Middlebury’s ED rate was 45% this year. I find that amazing.
@aida because it was the athletes (something like half of the students play a sport) and a good percentage of URMs and Questbridge kids and legacies. They all apply ED
Yeah @Trixy34 I hear you on that. Our D21 is noticing that even the kids who busted their butts in all honors and AP classes, barely slept for four years and had multiple ECs get rejected most of the time from their top choices. Many end up at big state schools maybe in the honors programs. She’s wondering if she should just go for a more sane high school existence since the chance of getting in elite schools is so small and probably not worth the stress.
No the Middlebury ED admission rate wasn’t 45 %, and it is misleading to say so. It was 100% for the 30 Possee scholars and 150 recruited athletes in that ED pool of 273 admittees. The remaining 93 or so were admitted, out of a group of about 474 non athletes/Possee applicants for an effective admit rate of about 19% ED compared to 14 % regular. And Of course, that still includes legacy admitted in that 19%, ED rate, so it is likely non legacy admit rate was was lower than 19%. It may have been a benefit to apply ED, but not much.
Can’t speak to the Posse scholars, but there are not 150 slotted athletes per year. Middlebury has 31 NCAA sports, is a NESCAC conference member, and about 27% of students play a varsity sport. http://athletics.middlebury.edu/information/quickfacts
Per NESCAC rules, member schools get 14 slots for football and 2 each for the other sports, for a total of 74 slots. While there can be some slight variability from year to year, and trading of slots by coaches, that 74 is generally in the neighborhood. Some schools also limit slots further, as Williams is said to limit it to 66 (source: Ephblog). Many, but not all athletes, apply in the ED round. Additionally, it is uncommon that athletic recruits will have a 100% admit rate during the admissions cycle, whether ED or RD, because things happen (bad senior year grades, disciplinary issues, etc.)
Ok, so let’s say the athletes were 74 not 150. Recruited athletes were absolutely in the ED round, regardless of what happens later to them. The point still holds that the admission rate for non Possee, non athletes was nowhere close to 45%, and was in fact closer to the RD admission rate. Those extra 75 slots you found could very easily have gone to legacies, anyway.
@homerdog I hear you! D20 and I are just starting her process. She’s got a 4.0 uw 4.5 w, 1400 SAT (will take again), started her own charity, leadership, many honors, 9 APs, and yet, getting into the top schools seems unreachable. She’s looking at friends the year above her and realizing she will most likely end up at in state U.
Applying ED/EA/REA/SCEA… offers a benefit at many highly selective colleges, but not all highly selective colleges. The degree of that benefit varies from one college to the next. I’d expect that colleges that are big on “demonstrated interest” often have a greater ED benefit than many “elite” colleges. For example, Lehigh marks level of interest at the same importance as test scores in their CDS and as discussed in the article at http://articles.philly.com/2013-04-01/news/38165511_1_admissions-placement-courses-high-school-students , goes so far as to significantly penalize students for not logging in to their online portal to check application status. Colleges that are considered “elite” rarely go this far and often say they don’t consider demonstrated interest at all in their CDS. However, there is still often a notable benefit to applying early at many “elite” colleges.
The study at https://web.stanford.edu/~jdlevin/Papers/EarlyAdmissions.pdf reviewed early decision at a list of “elite” colleges. It concludes that after controlling for SAT score, demographics, quality of ECs, and other factors, '“An early action application is associated with a 17 to 20 percentage point increase in admission probability, and an early decision application with a 31 to 37 percentage point increase.” An older study of hundreds of thousands applicants to “elite” colleges estimated an average increase in chance of admission by 25% after controlling for applicants with similar hook factors, SAT score, high school GPA, and others. However, the benefit was highly variable, with no benefit at certain schools.
In the Harvard lawsuit analysis, both the Plantiff and Harvard’s internal studies found that applying REA offered a benefit for unhooked applicants at Harvard. The degree of that benefit was smaller than traditional hooks like recruited athlete, URM, or legacy; but was still noteworthy. Specific regression coefficients are below, after controlling for hooks and various other factors. The larger the number, the bigger the associated impact on chance of admission.
Athlete: +7.85 (2500x increase in odds of admission)
Dean’s Special Interest List: +2.32 (10x increase in odds of admission)
Legacy: +1.84 (6x increase in odds of admission)
Children of Faculty/Staff: +1.70 (5x increase in odds of admission)
**Applies Early: +1.28/b
Academic Rating Increases from 3 to 2: +0.84 (2x increase in odds of admission… associated with increase from “respectable” to “excellent” grades combined with 100-200 point increase on SAT)
@roycroftmom I CAN speak to the Posse Scholars, and it’s about 50% for Posse kids. There are about 25 finalists who are paired with each school, and of them, about 20 or more decide that they like the college with which they’ve been been matched. ALL of these (all 20-25 applicants) submit ED applications. Of these, only 10 are selected.
Fact checking is always advisable before making statements.