Why does Vanderbilt not defer?

My friend was just rejected ED I and before that I had not known Vanderbilt simply accepted or rejected. This is more of a question out of curiosity than anything really though.

Not sure but seems like the right way to go. Either you are qualified or you are not.
Why string people along. Deferral means they are lukewarm, why go where you are not wanted ?

I think getting a final decision mid-December is actually the more humane choice by the admissions office. Look at the deferred applicant threads for schools like Harvard that defer the majority of candidates. It is sad to read those posts where students are unrealistic about their remaining chance for admission.

I wish more colleges did this. It just extends the torture for almost everyone deferred at other schools.

Also, it frees the student up to try ED2 somewhere because they are not holding out for that “dream” school.

All the previously mentioned reasons are right.

I think it also has something to do with how they compose the overall class profile. ED is a smaller pool, and ED students generally have slightly weaker applications overall, but this is offset by the fact that they have a 100% yield. RD is a bigger and more variable pool, but the top applicants have stronger overall applications; this is complicated by the fact that yield is not as high for these students, because you have a lot of kids shooting for the ivy leagues using Vanderbilt as a backup.

Think about it like a stock portfolio: you want to diversify. The ED students are like bonds. They’re generally a safe investment because they have pretty strong applications, and you are certain they’ll attend. The top RD students are like riskier stocks. They have better applications and are more likely to come from top prep school pipelines, but you aren’t sure they’ll attend. You need both. It seems like around a third to a half of each freshman class comes from ED; once they hit whatever number they have in the admissions office they stop “buying bonds”. Then they can use the rest of their capital trying to pull top students and steal some from the ivies. They can afford the risk because they’ve composed a large chunk of the class with solid, safe “investments”.

This all factors in with the games all top schools play with the U.S. news rankings, by trying to maximize things like average test score, GPA, yield, and so on, as well as building the “brand” of the school and selling it to the right audiences. Also in trying to build strong alumni/recruiting networks.

Vandy filled about half of the class with ED1 and ED2 last year according to their admissions blog. The ED application pool is slightly less competitive, much smaller, and agrees to attend if admitted. It is your best chance of admission, so if you don’t get admitted ED, then you wouldn’t get admitted RD. This can all be found in their admissions blogs. They try to entice top students with their generous scholarships regardless of application round.

Filling a high percentage of the class via ED improves the yield for a school. Improving the yield helps the USNWR rankings. In the past, VU has sought to admit about 40% of the class via ED rounds. I wasn’t aware that they were admitting a higher percentage as noted by @twicearound and I can’t quickly find their current stats on the website. They used to publish the Common Data Set each year which includes a section on the incoming class and their profile of testing, admission via ED & RD, etc., but I’m not finding that to be a searchable public tool on their site any longer. Anyway, I agree with the comments above that say it is just a kindness to students not selected in the ED rounds to allow them to apply elsewhere and embrace those possibilities. It doesn’t always feel that way at the time, but it’s probably the right thing.

I’m not as familiar with Vanderbilt as some of the other schools, so can you tell me on what basis you know that the students accepted ED are (excluding recruited athletes, who are in a group of their own given what they bring to the community ) weaker than those accepted RD? Most schools are unwilling to "compromise " on their ED admits and give them seats in their class, especially prior to seeing the RD pool. Why would Vandy, which is very selective as it is, take such a different approach?

I know everyone talks about yield and USNWR ratings, but at some level, isn’t it possible that the schools want to get the students who are going to create the best class? If they build the frame in the ED round, they can fill it out in RD.

I do agree that an early rejection is kinder than a long road to no although at this point in the application process it can feel pretty blunt. It’d be good if more schools did this.

I just attended an info session at Vandy today and someone asked this very question. The admissions officer said what several folks upthread said – the ED applicant pool is not as strong as the regular pool, so the thought was that if you’re not accepted in the ED pool, you wouldn’t make it in the RD pool. She also mentioned not wanting to effectively reject people twice.