Trying to figure out why more schools don’t offer rolling admissions. I just can’t see what the benefit is of waiting til the last minute to let everyone know. Seems like most schools should have a pretty substantial pile of we’re-definitely-gonna-accept kids by mid to late january.
And then there is the whole silliness of likely letters. What is the point of sending a kid a letter saying we’re going to accept you rather than just sending an actual acceptance?
Rolling admissions also seems like it might be a competitive advantage for schools trying to attract higher stat kids. If you accept them a little earlier, it gives them time to focus on your school, visit, fall in love, talk themselves into it, all before the late decisions come out.
But my point is that they must have a pile of decisions already made. It’s hard to believe that they are sitting around til the last minute waiting to make final decisions on the whole class. Sure maybe at HYP, since they have to perfectly “craft” their class and want to make sure they pick just the right oboe player and just the right rodeo clown. But the state schools, the big privates, they can’t be picking 5000 kids all in the last week.
Well I can see no downside, D applied in Aug, accepted by September, found out we could afford it with merit being awarded in December. She got to enjoy the rest of her senior year.
From the colleges’ point of view, they want to see the entire pool of applicants before choosing the “best” admits or “best” class.
Non-holistic admissions schools like some moderately selective state schools (e.g. the CSUs in California) can just feed all of the applicants’ information into a computer program to give the admission list (and many of them issue decisions earlier than the promised April 1 deadline). Holistic reading is often done by readers assigning scores, which are then ranked later to determine the admission class.
I see no downside either. D applied to 10 schools, and I think all but 1 has rolling admissions. Some do have EA deadlines. She had 9 acceptances by Feb. 1, had merit and/or honors decisions from most by mid-month, and had her decision made soon after. Now she can focus on the rest of high school and some scholarship apps. Not as early a decision as @mommdc 's D, but close enough. Her friends who are still waiting are flipping out from the stress. I don’t know why more colleges don’t do rolling admissions.
@ucbalumnus- Your alma mater is a perfect example, and this year apparently is doing some rolling admissions. They are going to admit 10,000 plus kids total and did 2,000 early notifications. Sure they are “holistic” but Naviance tells me that 95% of the kids over a certain threshold are going to be accepted. And I find it hard to believe that UCLA, UCB, UCSB admissions departments are all sitting around weighing the various merits of each kid up until March 24th or whatever their date is. I know they let the Regent’s kids know early, but seems like it wouldn’t be that challenging to go down a little deeper and let the not quite regents level all stars know ahead of time.
The early admits were not rolling, since all applications were due 11/30. By now, all applications have had initial readings, and the top scoring ones become the Regents’ scholarship candidates.
Some tie breaking secondary procedures need to be done for at some of the other applicants, which is presumably why they are not all announced yet.
True rolling admissions (where applications are evaluated as they come in, rather than waiting until all applications are in so that they can be reviewed together) can be advantageous for earlier applicants, if the school sets the admit threshold too low early on and has to raise it later to avoid admitting too many applicants. Also, an early acceptance to an affordable school makes that school a safety, possibly allowing the applicant to drop applications to schools less desirable than that school.
Then I guess I don’t mean true rolling admissions. Michigan had that in the olden days. I applied 8/15 and got my acceptance letter the first day of my senior year:) What I mean is why wait til the last day to let everyone know. The UCs have had apps in their system for months and months now. There are plenty of kids who are not borderline in any way. I’m pretty sure there is an admission office somewhere at UCB or UCLA right now with a stack of a couple thousand apps where the kids all have 3.9/34/2300 and otherwise qualified and they are in. Why not send them out in January or Feb. and take some pressure off the kids?
@iwannabebrown Never suggested it was realistic for the Ivies. I realize they would never risk the chance that they might miss out on the prefect snowflake to fill out their perfectly crafted class so they have wait til the bitter end. They also have smaller classes. The big state Us and the big privates have a lot less randomness in acceptance and could easily start sending out notices sooner. Michigan does it and it hasn’t hurt them any.
Maybe because it would put more stress on the other kids?
It’s an interesting question. There probably isn’t any reason they couldn’t…and you make a good argument why they should— to get the kids excited about their school a little earlier than the others…
Some schools want to review the entire applicant pool before making decisions.
And agree if all schools were rolling students would be stressed to get applications out ASAP and may not spend as much time on them as they should.
The downside of rolling admissions is that this site would be a madhouse not just in mid-December and March, but all year long. As soon as one kid got his/her decision, a hundred others would be calling the school in question to ask if their decision was available yet. Stress levels would skyrocket.
Again, not suggesting that they should roll for their entire applicant pool. Just suggesting that the very vast majority of schools must have a lot of virtual auto admits based on a review of their file. Why not let those top 10-20% know right away? That kid with the 3.9/34 18 APs and decent essays and ECs is getting into all the UCs (maybe not EECS at UCB), and no amount of application review is going to change that.
The people who don’t get their decision right away don’t like waiting because they perceive it as unfair. At least with regular decision everyone’s in the same frustrated boat.
Many rolling admission schools don’t, since that’s kind of the point of rolling admissions. I’m thinking specifically of PSU since that’s where I go and about which I have seen the most kvetching about the rolling process.
ETA: Actually PSU calls it “modified rolling admissions” since they accept shoo-ins first and hold the borderline applicants until later, which is what you’re proposing.
Thanks @bodangles, that’s exactly what I was thinking. A shoo-in program. Why don’t more schools have this? I think most kids won’t kvetch too badly if they don’t make the shoo-in program if they know it’s only the top 10-15%. And it would probably help the schools a bunch with their yield.