I think the trap people fall into with ED, is that they think since the acceptance rate is higher, they are more likely to be accepted with slightly lower stats. At the very very selective colleges, that is not the case for the unhooked applicant. And at small schools, where hooked kids make up a bigger percentage, it definitely is not true. A non-hooked ED app must be very strong to get in to a highly selective school. But once you move past the Ivies and the top 10 LACs and other tippy top universities, the ED bump is more real.
When schools have both EA and ED, the EA results can be hard to predict.
@minimango - how exactly do you think the natural disasters would affect the number of applicants?
We live in SW Florida, so were raked by Irene in early September. Schools were closed for a little over a week mainly because many areas didn’t get electricity back for that long. I haven’t heard anyone mention that this changed their college application plans, though. A record number of kids from our school and the others in the area still applied to college EA and ED.
Puerto Rico and a few of the Caribbean islands are a different story; they were decimated and are still not back on line. But I doubt those areas have enough applicants to materially change the number of applicants to most colleges.
But you’ve mentioned this - natural disasters impacted the number of applicants - twice so why don’t you share your theories?
@milee30 - Sure, so I actually live in an area that was impacted by one of these natural disasters too. Personally, because many colleges were flexible with ED/EA deadlines because of these unforeseen disasters, I knew many people who rightfully took advantage of the extensions even if their original plan was to apply RD and even if they weren’t affected by the hurricane.
For example, one of my friends, who is a top student and had to move out of her flooded house, decided to apply to around 20 schools (she originally planned to apply to less, but her mindset after the hurricane was: “I got fee waivers now because of my situation so I might as well see where I can get in”). She also met all the EA deadlines for the schools that had that option.
And your point that a record # of kids in you area still applied to college EA/ED strengthens my hypothesis because that just shows that schools did not lose early applicants from the main areas that were affected (which also make up some of the statistically largest geographical areas where applicants are located from).
Take Penn for example, they extended their ED deadline for 10 extra days! In an article on the Daily Pennsylvanian (http://www.thedp.com/article/2017/11/penn-ed-applicant-pool-record-high-higher-ed-ivy-league), they highlight the fact that they both extended the deadline and received a record # of ED applications.
Perhaps natural disasters did not contribute as much as I am thinking, but I think it is an important factor to consider. For some reason, “people just realized that applying ED/EA is better” is not convincing me that that is the main factor contributing to the drastic jump in early applications. Like why this year did everyone decide it was best to apply ED/EA? I would expect it to be more gradual.
Let me know your thoughts.
Hurricane Harvey kept thousands of Texas students out of school for nearly a month. Displaced many students who have been assigned to new schools and school districts, access to their records was hindered. Ability to apply may actually have slowed down the application process. Most Texas schools extended application deadlines and I know that personally many of the schools that my DD applied to extended an offer to work with her to get her applications completed. Not sure how the natural disasters experienced this year would have increased applications, most were struggling to get things done, I don’t really see a correlation to an extension of deadlines by a month opening up a big window that would allow a significant number more applicants.
I’m not understanding how you think natural disasters contributed to an increase in EA/ED/SCEA applications.
Is your point that because a few colleges extended their EA/ED deadlines by a few days, this was the cause of the increase in apps? If so, I don’t agree. There weren’t many colleges that extended deadlines and most students that were planning to apply early had their apps ready or mostly ready by the time those few colleges did extend the deadlines, so I’d guess the extensions had little to no effect, just like the natural disasters had little to no effect.
I don’t know of anybody who wasn’t planning to apply EA/ED but suddenly did because they learned they had an additional 10 days. Just anecdotal, so I’m sure there were some in other areas who made that decision. But it’s hard for me to imagine that meaningful numbers of people suddenly were motivated to apply EA/ED by a few colleges giving them a few extra days to apply.
The ever increasing number of applications is due to the following factors, IMO:
- Ease of application (Common App)
- Desire to get into one of the top ranked colleges (college rankings such as USNWR) even if you don’t think you are qualified but why not try it
- Marketing and solicitation from colleges that don’t have any intention to accept you but still want you to apply, which will make them appear more selective
- With the acceptance rates plummeting due to ever increasing number of applications, you have to apply to more colleges to increase your odds of getting in
Not many colleges release detailed information about their entire applicant pool this early in the year, but I have found Yale to be particularly transparent about the admissions process and its applicant pool. A few days ago, there was a Yale Daily News article that shared the data on the Class of 2022 applicant pool: https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2018/01/30/yale-receives-record-number-of-apps/
A few pertinent excerpts from the article:
I found this article to be interesting, because I always wondered if it was the international pool that was driving the increase in applications. According to this article, for Yale it could be the “groups that the admissions office specifically tracks” that are driving the increase: U.S. citizens and permanent residents who identify as a member of a minority racial or ethnic group (up 40%), first generation college students (up 37%), domestic students living in lower-income census tracts (up 113%).
agree with @1NJParent and would add, that many schools the number of International applicants continues to rise as well
I was at a college counseling presentation yesterday and one of the HS counselors said she has a Common App account so she can show kids how to use it. There’s no information in the account other than her name and email address, yet she gets emails from colleges every week saying “We’re impressed by your record and we know you’re exactly the kind of student we want at our college. Because you’re so stellar we’ll even waive the fee! Apply today!” 8-| I wonder if her husband and 3 kids would have a problem with her going back to school for a second BA?
Agree that Yale’s release clearly demonstrates the impact of the commitment that schools which are need blind and meet 100% of demonstrated need are making to reach more highly qualified applicants - it’s a great thing IMHO
I still don’t think any of us have really answered the gravamen of the original poster’s question, which is why such an increase this year? We have all put forward good reasons for the steady increases each and every year, but if there indeed was a significant bump THIS year, why is that relative to a general trend line?
@booboobear has is actually been established that there was a significant increase this year?
If early round applications are any indication, the answer is likely yes. However, I’m not sure if it’s due to people applying to more colleges or there’re more applicants. Birth rate in year 2000 is somewhat higher.
Might be a baby boomlet effect. More kids born in 2000, so more kids applying this year. And at many schools, the odds of EA/ED applicants are much higher rates of acceptance: http://time.com/money/4535515/college-official-acceptance-rate-misleading/
“ED admission is the best!”
ED admission is not the best, it’s not even good. It totally tilts the advantage to the college by locking in as was noted, it’s basically done to improve yield and acceptance rate for rankings. Let’s say you have a 100 applicants for EA, 30 get in, 20 get rejected , 50 get deferred. For those 70, it’s not a good feeling get all, esp for the ones that got rejected. So yes, for the 30 that got in, good however you could have had that same feeling with EA.
Next, ED is biased towards high income as they’re full pay and it’s biased against school districts where the GCs don’t know what’s needed for their students to apply ED, making sure all tests are done by jr year, working on the essays in the summer, getting the recommendations lined up. If you’re good get enough to get into a top college ED wouldn’t you wonder if you could have gotten in to the schools that have SCEA and EA - the MITs and Cal Tech’s of the world for STEM, Stanford, Harvard for other majors?
Here’s the thing - there is no difference between EA and ED for the applicant right? Both guarantee a spot in the class and financial aid if you’re eligible. What does the student get from ED, nothing? You get peace of mind with both, you can stop applying to colleges as well or withdraw all your apps with both. So all the advantages are the same (including social media groups), but there is one big disadvantage with ED.
All the benefits you cited for ED can be had with EA, that’s my point.
@theloniusmonk i wouldn’t necessarily say early decision is biased towards kids who are full pay… plenty of schools are need-blind and meet full need, such as dartmouth, grinnell, davidson, hamilton, etc., so a lower income student is benefitted too.
Even if the schools are need-blind and meet full need, each of them define “need” differently. Each of them will offer the same applicant very different financial package in many cases. So if you apply ED, you lose the ability to compare financially, not to mention the ability to choose another college for other reasons.
thread drift into the old ED/EA argument…
“If a top college, no matter how selective, does not offer early option it can find itself locked out of top applicants pool.”
That will never happen unless HYPSM and Cal Tech switch to ED. As long as those colleges are offering EA or SCEA, the top colleges, at least those six, will not get locked out. Given Stanford’s yield is 88% I think, you have to assume that 88% of the applicants to Stanford are not applying ED anywhere, and those are best of the best. Similar with STEM, if you’re applying to MIT, you’re not applying ED anywhere. The better applicant you are, the less you need ED.
“Agree that Yale’s release clearly demonstrates the impact of the commitment that schools which are need blind and meet 100% of demonstrated need are making to reach more highly qualified applicants - it’s a great thing IMHO”
I wouldn’t read too much into that apart from marketing fluff - Yale will still have 50% of its class as full-pay, subsidizing the other 50% who are not full pay. Second, if you own a business it wouldn’t be too hard to show you’re low income when you’re not. Let’s see the final numbers in terms of % of students at Yale on Pell grants if the percent of Yale families with incomes over $250K declines this year.