<p>Jamimom:</p>
<p>Yes, I conveniently swept a lot under the rug with my "putting financial aid issues aside".</p>
<p>I wasn't really extolling the virtues of binding ED as much as I was suggesting that it is too bad the RD round doesn't have as high a degree of self-selection.</p>
<p>As it stands now, I think that a student and family has to make a fundamental strategic decision: maximize the odds of acceptance into the "perfect" school or maximize the financial rebates (either need-based or merit). Both are equally valid approaches. They require very different admissions strategies, starting with the list of schools.</p>
<p>patuxent,</p>
<p>I'm no fan of ed, however what I believe to be the worst aspect is the exact opposite of what you are saying.
Most students look at these figures, for instance dartmouth ed accepted 33% and rd accepted 18% and are led to believe that their chances are almost twice as good if they apply ed. For dartmouth this was certainly not true.
Dartmouth accepted 400 students ed. Of those 400 approximately 160 were recruited athletes and legacies. If you were a recruited athlete, you were recruited and theoretically it doesn't matter if you go ed or rd; you will be needed to fill up the athletic slots either way, but you will be strongly encouraged to go ed so the college will have some predictabilty in filling their rosters.
So, if you are the super-bright kid who's otherwise qualified for the college, of those 400 spots to be filled only 250 are even available to you, the other 150 are a predictable known quantity (which will also likely affects the avg scores of those admitted ed). This would probably be different at either larger schools like cornel, or schools that admit a greater percentage in ed like Princeton or Penn (50%).
The kid who applies ed likely believes the hype that they have a substantially better shot at being accepted, when, sadly, they probably dont. Not substantially better in any case.</p>
<p>Most of you are far more knowledgable on these matters than me, this was simply what I was able to discern from the information I had. Let me know if I misunderstood these numbers.</p>