I have been reading about how the majority of top colleges received a significant increase in applications during the ED/EA rounds in comparison to other years.
Why is this? Is the class of 2022 just significantly larger? Perhaps was it because of the many natural disasters that caused colleges to be more flexible with the deadlines?
Not sure - but IMO, apps in general and for ED/EA rounds are increasing year over year. Whether 2022 is an outlier with unusually higher apps will be confirmed only next year (but I guess its just a trend line and 2023 may see an even higher rate of increase).
Students are applying to an ever increasing number of colleges due to the ease of using the Common App. This trend has been going on for over a decade. Also urban universities are “hot” these days. Many once regional colleges are now attracting a national student body. For example Northeastern University reported a 15% increase in applications this year for a total of 62,000 applications.
Have been reading posts from parents, not this site, that they believe the ED application is the way to go, and if they don’t like the financial aid, they can just back out. So I can see that thinking alone can lead to an increase in those ED rounds.
Would it ever get to a point where EA/ED is practically useless for advantage because such a large amount of people are applying EA/ED therefore resulting in a very little number applying RD?
@nikolateslaxi ED will always be an advantage. It is the ultimate way of “showing interest”. It also boosts the yield rate. EA has never been an advantage.
In your opinions, do you think RD rounds will also increase or decrease this year?
@TomSrOfBoston Also, I am sure the common app has helped increase the # of applications; however, I am not sure if that is the only factor. Look at universities like UT Austin, UCLA, Georgetown, and UC Berkeley. They do not use the CommonApp and have had an increase in applications.
In addition there were a lot of babies born in 2000. My dd’s graduating class has 1042.
I have the opposite question, why wouldn’t someone apply EA? All of S applications were EA. He was done with everything by November 1st. It was great.
Getting into colleges is like winning lottery. So, students are applying to about 10 colleges to increase their chances.That is also one of the reasons.
The general wisdom has been that ED offers an admissions advantage. However, I see a lot of kids on CC trying to use the supposed ED advantage to get into schools that their stats don’t seem to be a solid match for. The posts I’m thinking of are along the lines of, “The ED bump is the only way I have a shot at X, Y, or Z. Which one should I pick?”
As ED apps grow, the quality of the pool can’t stay the same. It will be interesting to see if ED acceptance rates start coming closer into agreement with RD rates as more marginal candidates jump in.
UVA reported an increase in EA applications to 21,573 from 20,419 last year out of a total of approx 37000 applications for this admissions cycle. The number of RD applications likely decreased slightly. With the other early application stats from colleges with competitive admissions, it seems pretty clear that the trend toward increasing numbers of early applications continues unabated.
^I agree that there is no reason not to apply EA (Early Action) to a college that interests you, other than if it is too late because you have discovered a college later in the fall because your criteria have become different as you learned more about yourself and colleges during the process. Everyone should apply EA if they know they want to apply to a college and the college offers it. There is no disadvantage.
Ditto with applying early to Rolling Admissions colleges.
The early decision advantage is pronounced. For example, my son’s college accepts about 35% ED but under 17% overall. That is a huge difference! IMO, the only people who should not pick a school to which to apply ED are:
Many posters suggest that students with financial need should not apply ED, even to colleges that meet full demonstrated need, because then they are “locked in” and cannot compare packages. If you ran the NPC, however, you should know roughly what you will be expected to pay. And colleges do NOT force you to attend if you are admitted ED and cannot pay. In fact, that is the only legitimate reason to withdraw from ED.
At least one college I know stated to its alumni during a recent talk about admissions that they are allowing some ED-admitted students who are worried about their financial package to apply to other schools RD and reply to them later, once they have heard from other colleges. They stated that they are lucky to be able to afford to do that for students. So apparently, at least at colleges with strong endowments and sky-high US News ratings, ED is not so very inflexible for truly financially needy students.
As far as regular round admissions go, yes, there is a vicious cycle in which students are nervous about being rejected because smaller and smaller percentages of applicants are being admitted to top colleges. Therefore, they apply to more and more colleges. This drives the admitted percentage down and continues the vicious cycle.
It is easier to say not to play along until it is you who are applying. If my son had not been accepted to his ED school, he would have applied to 20 colleges. I had suggested narrowing it down further, but he was quite accurate in his rebuttal that nothing was assured and that he wanted to have good options at the end.
As a parent of a student admitted ED, I am a big proponent of ED. While some of his friends are feeling panicky, he has peace of mind. While his friends were writing tons of application essays on top of doing their schoolwork, he was able to concentrate on schoolwork and extracurriculars. December break was much more relaxed than it would have been otherwise. In addition, we did not have to pay a lot more application fees of about $60 each. He is getting to know his fellow classmates already on GroupMe. ED admission is the best!
I do recommend, however, pairing an ED application with an EA application to a safety school. My son heard back from another college EA a week before he heard back from his ED college. It was incredibly calming to know that he would be able to go to college (a great public university), had he not been admitted to his top choice ED. It also would have taken out some of the anxiety as he waited to hear from his ED2 or RD colleges.
I have mixed feelings on ED2. For my own son, I really don’t know if he would have tried ED2 for improved odds or stuck with RD, since he would have had to write all those essays and submit all those applications anyway. At that point, you kind of want to see results from ALl the schools to which you applied with so much effort! But ED2 does provide an advantage by percentages, so it is a tough call.
Keep in mind that its a two way street. Top students are selecting top colleges too. And top students are always those most motivated and ready among peers. If a top college, no matter how selective, does not offer early option it can find itself locked out of top applicants pool. Then it becomes a cycle—the more top colleges offer the early option the more top candidates they will attract, more top students do early round more other kids will follow as they discover the advantages, until every kid who can be motivated enough to submit an application does so during the early round. I imagine we still have a long way to go before reaching that point; there are still plenty of kids out there who need to get the message and be motivated to get their apps in early.
Anyone convinced that the natural disasters might have affected the number of applicants?
A year ago one of my daughter’s friends applied to 25 universities and colleges, and most applied to about 10.
Uncertainty of admissions and uncertainty of costs were the two main reasons that I saw for this, combined with the fact that the common app makes this feasible.
@AroundHere I concur with your post. That is exactly what I was trying to say earlier. I think that’s a legitimate possibility.
This is our first go around (2 more after this). My D applied ED to a top 15 school and EA to a handful of schools. She was denied by her ED school and deferred by a safety school right after. She went into a full blown panic. We applied to 17 schools. A week later she started getting EA acceptances from some top 30 schools and a presidential scholarship from one. She is really happy with her acceptances thus far and will be happy to attend 3 of the schools she has been accepted to. We are waiting for 9 more…all top 15 schools and total crap shoots. I guess my point is that ED is a bit of a scam. Unless your kid is 100% in love, don’t do it. We did it to a school we really liked and thought it would give her a competitive advantage, but I think it was a mistake. It is really nice to have options and financial incentives. If I had to do it over again, I would not have her ED and I would have her apply to no more than 10 schools. You live and learn,
The increase in applicants (or application per student) and the decrease in admission rates are inter-related and in a feedback loop. The other reason may be due to the higher and higher CoA that students may want to compare more FA offers.