I know a Feb freshman at Midd whose stats were well above average. Actually, my wife was a Feb freshman at Midd too. Her stats thirty+ years ago were average but she had a sibling who had attended. Midd is known for semesters abroad and they look to fill open beds. My wife lived in a Junior dorm her first semester there for that reason.
It doesn’t imply anything on the colleges’ part. YOU think it does.
Lots of reasons an Educ major might get in. These decisions aren’t just about stats and your impressions of a kid’s worth. Or your insistence it’s about gaming.
@lookingforward Just like waitlisted candidates are less preferred to those initially admitted, spring admits are less preferred to those admitted for fall. That’s a fact. In fact, they are less preferred than waitlisted students. So what’s the explanation for that? Rankings. No other explanation. Or they would be waitlisted.
WL can have many reasons. The best is they really want the kid but something like geo diversity or getting balance in majors affected a last minute decision. They want him/her enough to keep them on deck, to see who doesn’t matriculate.
Can’t assume there’s something lesser about WL kids.
Of course, there are kids they have no intention of ever taking from the WL. (A different topic.) That doesn’t speak to the kids they do want lined up. They cannot take every great kid first pass.
There are few absolute facts. It’s not like they have one set of expectations for ED/RD and are willing to take the dregs in Spring.
In addition to what lookingforward explained, retention and graduation rates are important. While one of the best predictors of college graduation success is $ https://www.americaspromise.org/news/pbs-newshour-biggest-predictor-college-success-family-income, the students they admit have to have the chops to handle the academic rigor to be successful.
If they were accepting students for Feb to “game” admissions stats, they would likely be doing less to draw attention to these students. Midd has special February convocation, the Feb graduation on skis, etc. My feeling is that, as you wrote, they’re staggering admissions for different technical reasons, and they created the entire Feb cohort culture to compensate for the inconvenience of having to wait until February to start. Since their acceptance rates include the Feb admits, I would guess that they include the Feb admits in the rest of the stats.
I don’t know whether there is a similar culture for spring admits at other colleges.
In fact, https://www.middlebury.edu/college/admissions/apply/feb
"Q. Does indicating a preference for Feb increase the likelihood of admission?
A. No. The admissions committee strives for consistency in its assessment standards and a student’s preference is simply another piece of information for use by the admissions staff.
Q. Is being admitted as a Feb like being on the waiting list?
A. No. Febs receive full admission at the time of their notification. They simply begin their Middlebury experience in February rather than September."
Look at line B22 of Tulane’s CDS (or of any other school) as an example.
Very clear that Tulane’s spring scholars are off the cds usnwr books. Only kids that start in the fall are in the data set. Draw your own conclusions.
Clearly some admit buckets are more preferred by the school than others. An EA admit with big merit is a very strong target for the school. Defers and waitlisted and spring admits less strong obviously.
It’s simple. Announce the Spring kids’ stats as a separate item or at least include them in the total admit profile for that year’s class. There is a reason they omit the data from that class.
If the spring numbers helped the college in higher GPA and test scores you would immediately see them show up in the class profile.
The common data set is 34 pages long, they even include transfer applicant information, but there is no mention of the 100’s of Spring enrolled students. Very odd…almost like they don’t even exist.
As a note, Northeastern has a good portion of people graduate in Fall due to the co-op program so the spring local start program actually fills a good deal of spots that most schools don’t have open. As a result it’s also one of the larger programs.
One pattern I’ve noticed personally is that high GPA but low SAT/ACT kids tend to be more common in the NU.in cohort. I think we can all agree this is advantageous for rankings reporting, but it’s worth noting that it doesn’t mean they are less desirable from an educational/success metric, only from a ranking perspective.
@itsgettingreal17 I totally agree, let’s not get coy. There are likely very legitimate reasons why an institution would want to admit a portion of students for a Spring Cohort. For example, they may have seen something in that kids credentials that made admissions think they would benefit from an “experiential learning” program to start their experience (and let’s face it, generate some more tuition revenue?). It could have been a blip in their junior year, a disconnect between their GPA and ACT, a personal journey conveyed in their essays…WHO KNOWS. The bottom line is we’re talking about a relatively SMALL number of kids (100/1825 = ~5.5% ) and it is generally equivalent to the amount of kids who would likely be lost to their current retention rates at most.
Is it self-serving to not report those kids? Of course…
Is it statistically relevant? Likely not
@sharkbites That depends, it’s ~500 students or 14% of the class at USC. Students have the option of starting their college experience abroad. They say their Spring average GPA is 3.75, compared to the 3.83~ Fall average.
Spring starts are about money, pure and simple. Empty seats happen because kids drop out, go abroad, or take medical leaves. An empty seat means no revenue. An empty seat means one less alumni to potentially donate to the endowment later on. Colleges - even tippy tops - want to avoid that whenever they can.
So they accept a handful of spring admits.
IF those admits are somehow less qualified (and I don’t believe they necessarily are) then withholding their stats is merely a perk to the college, not the primary reason for making these kids wait.
@PetraMC Fair point, and USC has it’s own unique set of issues in the current environment. From what I understand, they’re known fairly well for marketing a “Spring Scholars” program so it’s likely larger in numbers. I think SMU has a pretty large cohort as well. I think the programs larger than 5-10% (or the equivalent of roughly the retention rate to my earlier point) are more the exception than the rule.
As @Groundwork2022 mentions, it’s a money play that serves the institution’s future needs, whether it be empty beds or classrooms, development prospects in children of alum, or taking a few calculated risks on kids that don’t fit into the USNWR package.
Either way, any savvy buyer knows what’s under the hood of the car to think that any school will market its garage over the front porch is a bit naive.
It is also about money, but that doesn’t minimize the fact that it’s about the stats. The schools are able to admit more full pay students with lower stats that who won’t hurt their stats/rankings. It’s very calculated, not a byproduct.
“@sharkbites That depends, it’s ~500 students or 14% of the class at USC. Students have the option of starting their college experience abroad. They say their Spring average GPA is 3.75, compared to the 3.83~ Fall average.”
There’s multiple reasons school’s do this, but mostly it is just good business. Keep as many seats full as you can for the highest average net tuition revenue. The rankings effect is certainly part of it, since having higher USNWR rankings leads to more demand for a seat in the school.
Notice that many schools that do size-able spring admits also tend to do a lot of transfers. USC enrolls 3,400 fall frosh each year who are fully on the books for ranking purposes. But then graduates 5,700 undergrads each spring. Like spring admits, it is easier to get admitted as a transfer than as a fall frosh. And transfers tend to be more likely to be full pays. Growing the class is baked into the model.
Since USC is in CA, their class size numbers would also reflect the CA tradition of kids moving up from CCs and lower tier Cal State schools. But you see the same pattern of growing the class size at a lot of the peer schools.