First the CV scholarship (twice) and now admissions. Why do they keep extending deadlines? Surely it’s not because they didn’t have enough applicants. Any thoughts?
No complainsies. Just fill insies. 
I’m not complaining, but we were discussing it at my house and I wondered what this group thought.
In the past, deadline extensions were usually due to CommonApp issues that often occur in the final days of the year. Assuming it’s the same this year. Also saves them headaches of students scrambling to submit an hour or two after the deadline and running into technical errors. I would imagine it helps scrape in a few extra applications as well – not that Vanderbilt “needs” more applicants, but it helps their stats.
This isn’t unique to Vanderbilt at all – doing a quick CollegeConfidential search, it appears that there have been deadline extensions to January 6th (ish) at Columbia, UPenn, Dartmouth, University of Chicago, Duke, and Northwestern, just a name a few.
Extending the deadline to 6-jan makes sense. For the 1-jan deadline, the Admissions Office would have been closed and the applications would have just sat there unread until 5 or 6-jan.
OK. That makes sense. Thanks Pancaked and GMTplus7!
The scholarship deadline was extended again to 1/10
i don’t really buy the explanation that they were waiting for their staffs to return from holiday…they’ve known for years/decades that the office wasn’t open on New Year’s Day. And there have been no widespread Common App issues this year.
My theory is that it’s a domino effect…one of the elite U extends their deadline and all of the others jump on the bandwagon…all concerned that somehow the other school will show a lower admit rate because they took in more applications…
@southern,
Now that u mention this rationale, i think you’re right.
I think its ridiculous and more importantly unfair to all those students who did manage to meet the original deadlines. D spent a good portion of her holiday break fine-tuning her essays, etc. and when I insisted that she finish them up by the 30th and submit her applications, she was reluctant, wishing she had more time for one or two of them that were due on the 1st. She did the right thing and submitted them but another week of editing might have been helpful (or not). Bet she would have preferred the ski trip her friends went on…
.
@NEPatsGirl I somewhat agree with you. It doesn’t seem fair that some students sacrifice sleep, social and high school grades for the sake of getting in top quality college and/or scholarship applications. I hope the readers keep the submitted deadline in mind and give credit where credit is due.
Eh I really don’t agree with that too much. Students submitting at later deadlines still sacrifice all the above - it’s not like this is the only application most people have to do.
Life is unfair. I’m over it.