A lot of colleges offer both ED1 and ED2. I’ve noticed several posters who have gotten deferred or rejected from their ED1 choice then apply somewhere else ED2. I thought that the original justification for ED was that it gives students who are certain about their first choice a chance to get an answer early and thereby avoid needing to apply to lots of other schools. But ED2 application deadlines are usually the same as RD. So it seems to me that ED2 is more often being used in the hope that it confers an admission advantage. But schools rarely disclose the data that would tell you if there’s a difference in ED1 and ED2 admit rates, much less the percentage of hooked applicants who are in the ED2 pool. It just seems to me that ED2 is something that benefits the schools more than the applicants. Thoughts?
Yes, of course it does.
Ok it’s obvious it benefits the school more. But I also suspect that in most cases it gives the applicant little to no benefit and costs them the opportunity to compare FA offers. In ED2 the school has the advantage of already knowing what the RD pool looks like. The advantages seem all in the school’s favor for ED2.
Yes, I know a number of students who have applied elsewhere ED2 after getting deferred ED1. Yes, everything is to benefit the college. But there can be benefits to applying ED2. Let’s say you are waiting on Fall test scores and hoping they are better than previous scores. Or, you want to improve your grades as much as possible in the first part of senior year to help boost your chances. Or maybe you will be competing in something before ED2 is due, and hope to add it to your app. Or, maybe you are still researching a visiting, and it has taken until that time to be sure that the ED2 college is your top choice. These are only some of the reasons people are grateful for a chance to apply ED2.
Colleges would only do ED plans if they felt they benefited from the program.
The advantages of ED2 for the school are the same as ED1, just a bit later in the process-- basically an earlier answer or the student adn the college having have a group of solid students locked in. Colleges understand that some of the ED2 applicants were rejected at their ED1. And some students only use ED2 because they want to wait and either re-take standardized tests and/or show a strong first semester senior year. to boost their application.
I’m still not convinced that ED2 benefits an unhooked applicant in most cases. The applicant still has to apply to all his or her RD schools, so it doesn’t save any work or fees for doing the other applications. The school can see the entire RD pool when it evaluates the application. If they accept the applicant in ED2 they probably would accept the applicant in RD as well. I guess for an applicant who isn’t worried about FA and is truly certain the school is the first choice, there’s no harm. But the balance seems more heavily weighted in the school’s favor in ED2 than in ED1.
GC told us that ED2 was initially conceived as a way to finish out athletic recruiting. But likely has evolved a bit.
Definitely for the school’s benefit, not the student.
here’s an interesting thread showing statistics on ED admissions (it’s difficult to get this data, so this is a very handy thread). The comment i linked is related to ED1/ED2 at BU. See this one and the ensuing comments and look at the whole thread.
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19304915/#Comment_19304915
I agree it was originally for athletes who either weren’t ready for ED1 application or something went wrong.
@lz57c4 Thanks for the link to the thread with the ED statistics. In addition to BU, someone just added the Middlebury statistics. It’s interesting that for the few schools that separate out ED2 statistics, the ED2 acceptance rate is MUCH lower than ED1 and much more in line with the RD acceptance rate (in BU’s case the ED2 rate is actually lower than the RD rate). This supports my gut instinct that ED2 doesn’t much help the unhooked candidate.
ED2 applicant here! GW was always one of my top choices but almost all of my schools had EA/rolling so I decided to wait until I got my results back. I was accepted to Pitt and CWRU and deferred by NEU and Tulane, so I applied ED2 to GW because it was my best option at that point.
My S applied ED2. He wasn’t ready to fully commit at the ED1 deadline nor was his application ready. But at the ED 2 deadline he was ready. Your right, I would have loved to save the fees for the RD apps and I’m sure he would have loved not to write the additional essays. But he wasn’t ready. Simple as that.
I think you’re right for the most part, there was no advantage. Hard to say if ED gave him a boost for admissions. But it was nice to know in Feb that he was in at his first choice and to be done. (I will always be a little curious, though, about where else he could have been accepted)