<p>My friends daughter was going to apply ED to Amherst, until she went to Dartmouth on a diversity weekend and fell in love with it. Solid "A" student, 2050 SAT, middle class URM. Would she have been better off applying ED to Amherst rather than Dartmouth?</p>
<p>Both schools take a pretty wholistic approach to admitting a class so it is going to be based on more than grades and scores.</p>
<p>Dartmouth- class of 2008 </p>
<p>1277 applied ED 384 admitted = 30%</p>
<p>overall 11,734 applied</p>
<p>2173 admitted (subtract the 384 ED) 1789</p>
<p>class size 1081</p>
<p>Amherst: from 2003 common data set</p>
<p>Overall 5631 applied
1001 admitted </p>
<p>ED:374 applied 130 admitted =34%</p>
<p>But you never know what the applicant pool will be from one year to the other. </p>
<p>My suggestion would be to apply to neither because there is no overwhelming first choice just apply RD to both and let the process play it self out. Student should choose the best school for them not the best named school or the school that they have the best chance of getting into. ED is a big commitment as you are saying without a doubt this is my first choice. IF friend is torn would mom really want to carry to guilt of D attending a school that she found not to be exactly what she thought it would be? In the end she will end up where she needs to be.</p>
<p>All good points. Will pass them on. Thanks</p>
<p>sybbie, in this case I do not agree with you. The OP said the student "fell in love with" Dartmouth. (You said "there is no overwhelming first choice.") She is also URM with decent stats. I tend not to be a big fan of ED, because I think so many students over-use it for the wrong reasons. However, for this student it could be the wise ED choice IF she doesn't still have other schools she wants to take a serious or second look at. If, or once, she has compared to her satisfaction, then in her case I would recommend it.</p>
<p>Many middle-class families still need gap fin. aid, so I don't know if that family would need it, but ED doesn't necessarily eliminate that. The student needs to investigate all the ramifications of applying ED to any college she favors, but if there are no barriers, I see her as a proper candidate in this case.</p>
<p>Issues of finances aside - I'm taking your question to have been, would she have had a better chance of an admision "boost" at Amherst than at Dartmouth?
My opinion is likely not. If you look at the stats (and I can't quote them, but I know they tend in this direction, because these are the 2 schools my daughter considered for ED) Dartmouth statistically does not show much of an admissions boost for ED, Amherst's is a little larger. But, I think that, at Dartmouth, the real admissions boost for ED will be seen by sub-groups of applicants - and this young lady might well be in one of those subgroups as a URM.</p>
<p>Everyone's comments about the impact on FA are very well taken.</p>
<p>E,</p>
<p>I looked at it this way...</p>
<p>The reason I said neither is that if the young woman had an overwhelming first choice there would be no question regarding which school she had a better shot at getting into. She would just submit her ED application to Dartmouth and liet the chips fall where they may. However, from the question posted my the OP, it seems that the choices are interchangeable: while she "may have fallen in love with Dartmouth", she is not adverse to making an ED commitment to Amherst if it means that she would have a better chance of getting in.</p>
<p>Being a solid URM candidate she would have an equal chance of being admitted to both schools. I totally understand where this young woman is coming from because my daughter was in her exact same perdicament 2 years ago loving Amherst, Dartmouth and williams. when the acceptances came in, there was a huge overlap especially amongst URM students who had been accepted to 1 ,2 or all 3 schools (some of her closets friends are students that she met and made the "rounds" with. One was deferred at Dartmouth during the ED round and admitted during the RD round). while these schools know tha ED demonstrates a commitment to attend, they also know that the URM population is being heavily courted by peer schools and most of those students apply during the RD round so the school can afford to wait to see what else comes their way (defer them now and accept them during RD when you have looked at the whole pool).</p>
<p>For Dartmouth's class of 2009..</p>
<p>While diversity numbers are also high, they have not increased over previous years. The students planning to matriculate in the fall who identified themselves as students of color made up just over 30 percent of the incoming class -- 327 students. The Class of 2009 has six fewer students of color than did the Class of 2008.</p>
<p>the numbers for the class of 2009 are not out yet. For the class of 2008 there are ;</p>
<p>79 Blacks and 72 Hispanics </p>
<p>Another article states (from the class of 2008)</p>
<p>*Based on acceptance rates alone, African American students have the best chance of getting into Dartmouth, with legacies right behind them. African Americans were accepted into the Class of 2008 at a rate of 44.6 percent, while legacies had a 35.4 percent acceptance rate. Native Americans and Latinos enjoyed acceptance rates of 34.6 and 29 percent, respectively.</p>
<p>With so much of the applicant pool enjoying these benefits, it leaves others receiving below-average acceptance rates. </p>
<p>White Americans, who make up over 60 percent of applicants, had an acceptance rate of 16.2 percent. International students had the hardest time getting into Dartmouth, accepted at a rate of only 10.2 percent.</p>
<p>"Roughly 40 percent of applicants are 'tagged' in some way. That means 60 percent aren't," Hernandez said. "Overall, the SAT average is not coming from the 40 percent tagged acceptances. The 60 percent have to have higher numbers to pull up the tagged applicants getting a break."</p>
<p>Breaking down statistics from the Class of 2008 applicant pool, the "tagged" applicants are not the only ones receiving a bit of an advantage. Because more male applicants apply to Dartmouth, but the goal male-to-female ratio of the admit class is 50:50, male applicants were accepted at a below-average rate of 16.8 percent, while female applicants were accepted at a rate of 20.1 percent. This difference will likely continue unless female applications catch up with their male counterparts.</p>
<p>But what does all this mean? Well, for one, that no matter how you look at it and no matter who you are, Dartmouth is one of the most selective institutions in the country.*</p>
<p>For the class of 2008:</p>
<p>This is very strong minority representation and is only slightly below last year's record level due to a small decline in minority applicants," Furstenberg said. "Unfortunately, most selective colleges seemed to be down in minority applicants this year."</p>
<p>African Americans made up 9.1 percent of acceptances, and Asian Americans 16.1 percent -- both numbers down nominally from last year. </p>
<p>Latinos held steady at 7.5 percent of acceptances and so did Native Americans and multi-racial students, with 2.9 and 1.1 percent respectively of acceptances.</p>
<p>Personally, I think that this is going to be a hard year to predict anything because you never know what the pool is going to look like from one year to the next. With the recent events of Katrina and Rita there could be a shift especially amongs student who live in the gulf states to apply to more schools in the North east. If this shift occurs (with new students applying to the class of 2010 and students that took a gap year because their school was closed this year), it could radically change admissions process if a school can fulfill both geographical, ethinic and racial diversity with the same student.</p>
<p>Sybbie has a good point about things being hard to predict this year. Dartmouth had a big increase in Southern students this year - a couple of percentage points (which doesn't sound like much but is), more to the point, they did some serious football recruiting in the South last year, which adds yet another dimension to the complexity. Does that mean they will or won't be looking for geographic diversity next year? If you are an evacuee from NOLA, and your parents intend to go back but not for 6 months, and you are living meantime in NJ - are you geographic diversity, what if they never go back?</p>
<p>Another way to look at the question is does the student have anything to lose? I would say the answer is no, except for finances - but only if Dartmouth is a clear first choice. I'm putting words onto Sybbie's screen, but I think part of her point may be if the child changed her mind so rapidly, maybe she is better off going RD, and see if her love of Dartmouth persists.</p>
<p>Is it clear that this student is a URM? I'm not positive, but I believe that Amherst invites Asian students to their diversity weekend. I'm wondering if, if that were the case, she would be considered UR by either school.</p>
<p>My answer, regardless, is that if she can decide on a preference, go ahead and do ED, but do not base it on, which school would it make a bigger difference.</p>
<p>Garland has a point because Dartmouth also invites asian students to its Destination Dartmouth (or whatever the new name is this admissions cycle) program for minority students. They also invite white students who are low income and are from areas where they are trying to increase their geographic diversity.</p>
<p>"Would she have been better off applying ED to Amherst rather than Dartmouth?"</p>
<p>She would be better off applying to the school she loves. (none of the numbers tell you ANYTHING about URM admissions - ED or RD. I suspect she is very likely to be admitted at both - RD. If there is no clear frontrunner, why not apply RD and compare financial aid offers?)</p>
<p>She is Latina, and is at Amherst on a diversity weekend right now. I don't know if she will fall back in love. She is a very easy going young lady, and I think she will be fine wherever she winds up. I don't know what their financial aid situation is, it may be a factor.</p>
<p>For us one of the benefits of applying RD (even though Dartmouth was daughter's first choice) was the ability to compare packages.</p>
<p>The best packages were in this order:</p>
<p>WIlliams
Dartmouth
Amherst (2 loans, higher EFC, higher student contribution, less grant money)
Our ability to use the Williams package to ask for a financial review of the Dartmouth package reduced our EFC, reduced her loans and increased her scholarship aid by over $4000. She was able to get a similar package her second year at Dartmouth. If money is going to be an issue, hedge your bets and compare packages</p>
<p>I found out that they have been saving for years for their daughter's education, so they have a got a good amount socked away. The problem is that this is going to raise their EFC. When viewed with some other modest assets that they have, the calculater spits out a EFC as high as the tuition. Is financial aid even viable in that situation? What if there are no packages to compare?</p>