<p>ID, can you re-post the graph you mention in post #10 above (or did it get removed for some reason)? Thanks.</p>
<p>The beauty of consumer choice in a free market system is that nobody stands there and tells consumers whether their choices are good or not. As far as I know, nobody is standing there with a gun to the head of prep school kids forcing them to apply early decision to an ill-considered choice.</p>
<p>In our little corner of the world, I think only 1 kid out of more than 200 in the senior class applied to and was accepted by a binding early decision school.</p>
<p>No, not with a gun.</p>
<p>Shoot. I forgot to post the link:</p>
<p>An interesting chart, thanks for posting it. Swarthmore is binding ed, no? Do you know when they began the program, and what % of a class is ed?</p>
<p>I-dad, stats from my corner of the public high school world: out of a senior class of 275, 74% applied either ED or EA. 46% of these were binding ED applications. Of these, about half were accepted and one-quarter were deferred.</p>
<p>Were all these applications well-considered? No way to know. Did the kids have a clear preference or did they just want the whole thing to be over with?</p>
<p>Swarthmore has had exactly the same binding Early Decision program for the entire period covered by that chart. </p>
<p>They accept 33% to 40% of the class early decision. That number has been stable going back many years (decades). I believe the figure is stable going back as far as the beginning of that chart, but I don't know for sure going that far back. I do, however, recall that those numbers are consistent with ED at Williams in the early 70s.</p>
<p>BTW, the number of ED acceptances fluctuates up and down from year to year. They are clearly aiming for a narrow target range, but not so rigidly that they hit an exact number regardless of the pool.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I-dad, stats from my corner of the public high school world: out of a senior class of 275, 74% applied either ED or EA.
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</p>
<p>Wow. That's an amazing number (although I don't count EA since is represents zero commitment -- it's a freebie and too many kids treat it as a such). Those percentages are hardly representative of the real market. Heck, there aren't many public high schools were 74% apply to college period.</p>
<p>Just because an elite sample may abuse a system is no reason for the "courts" to step in and halt "repression". If the kids at your school are making mistakes, shame on them. My guess is that, as a group, they have far more opportunities to be informed consumers than the average bear.</p>
<p>Just wanted to add that what was most astonishing was the number of kids who were counting on/hoping for an early acceptance, were denied or deferred, then had to scramble to crank out the rest of their apps over the holiday break. Submitting one ED application is perceived by many kids as more appealing and easier than submitting several RD applications.</p>
<p>I would like to think a large number of these kids are tired of the pressure, accept that they'll have a great experience at a true match school, and are quite happy when accepted.</p>
<p>I've been away from college adm. for a loonnng time & I admit that students and colleges probably use ED much differently now than they did back then. But I think the purpose of the ED WAS as interested dad outlines...an option for those who truly could discern a 1st choice. How it is being utilized today, I guess, is a very different matter.</p>
<p>I also don't know how schools manage the many, many more applications that students make nowadays. Back in the days I worked, it was rare for a student to apply to 5 or more schools. There was a lot more self-selection going on...at all "tiers" of colleges (this was before there were US news sanctioned "tiers"). I wish more self-selection was taking place today.</p>
<p>But also we didn't have "enrollment managers" then either; it was just deans or directors of Admission. Used to be if a school had an "enrollment manager", it meant they needed help! Now everybody has enrollment managers to plan a marketing and mailing strategy, make sense of all the floods of applicants & figure out how many to admit (that won't reflect poorly in the rankings), fund as many students as you can without ruining the fin. aid budget, and hope just enough students say Yes to you by May 1. To me, that's the main thrust of any college admissions office, no matter how high echelon they may be.</p>
<p>idad:</p>
<p>"There is no stronger expression of strong consumer preference for a school than a binding ED application."</p>
<p>True enough but not necessarily a good policy. I am of the opinion that ED is a bad policy because it leaves out the financial term of the transaction. Because of this it enables those who have no concern about the financial component of the transaction free to apply. Those who are concerned are excluded, at least if they are smart.</p>
<p>I believe that it is that reason that many would view schools with an ED policy as 'elitist' because the policy caters to the rich and privileged. That is not exactly the image that the schools want to project. For example, see the recent USNews article that uses Princeton as an example. In fairness to schools like Princeton, they do offer some of the best financial aid packages in the country.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, I agree with Byerly on this, SCEA is an in between policy that strikes more of a balance. </p>
<p>As a parent, I much prefer open EA because you can send all your applications in early and know where you are accepted before January 1. However, that would raise issues that Byerly has raised before, why don't we just change the application deadline to Nov 1 and be done with it.</p>
<p>PS I like the concept of RD yield. It makes sense and does not force the schools to accept students too early.</p>
<p>But, here's the great thing about choice in a free society. If you think ED is a bad option, don't apply ED! What I object to is the notion that the "courts" should somehow "protect" us from "ourselves" and take away a extremely good option for many, many students dating back decades. </p>
<p>Hey, take it one step further. If you philosophically object to ED, don't apply to any schools that offer it. Why would anyone apply to colleges that have what they consider to have "bad" administrative policies in the first place? There are lots of schools with what i consider to be "bad" administrative policies. I encouraged my daughter to avoid those schools. No reason that an opponent of ED couldn't do the same.</p>
<p>It is naive to think that colleges will suddenly change their target demographics based on early decision policies. They budget for X number of full-fare customers and, by god, they are going to get X number, one way or another. Take away ED and the percentage of full-fare students accepted in the RD round will skyrocket. Guess who the losers in that deal would be?</p>
<p>Harvard (no ED) and Swarthmore (ED) have pretty much the same percentage of students qualifying for financial aid. And, that percentage is so consistent over time that one can only assume it is a firm target. That percentage is clearly not determined by the presence or absence of binding ED. This whole notion that you are going to make Harvard, or Princeton, or Swarthmore "non-elitist" is absurd on the face of it. It is difficult to find more steadfastly elitist institutions than elite colleges and universities. Even the search for "diversity" is, in large part, market driven. The wealthy customer base catered to by elite schools demands it every bit as strongly as they demand modern science labs.</p>
<p>BTW, I happen to think SCEA is a "bad" policy. Because it provides little or no benefit to the college, it is largely an empty gesture. Window dressing.</p>
<p>If anything, it encourages far too many kids to apply, literally for no good reason, pinning their hopes on a wing and a prayer, rather than knuckling down to the hard work of building a realistic college list. The college gets to hand pick a few walk-on-water kids here or there and the rest of them get hit like a ton of bricks at the very time they should be most enthusiastic about finalizing their lists and completing their applications. Instead, they feel like disappointed "losers" just when they should be exuding confidence and enthusiasm on their applications.</p>
<p>I'm afraid I don't buy into your paradigm of elite education as a freemarket economy. Your comments about ED and SCEA (perhaps not EA that is not SC) are valid if you believe that access to education at these schools should follow the tenets of a freemarket economy. I don't. The diversity that seems to be lost is the diversity of the middle class and even upper middle class(regardless of ethnic or racial background). ED and SCEA benefit the poor and the wealthy who, from an economic standpoint, have equal access. Yes, this may advantageous to colleges from an economic standpoint, but is it advantageous to society? The cold hard truth is...it'a all about the money.</p>
<p>BTW, I suspect that if you eliminated binding ED, you would force every remaining so-called "need-blind" school except HYPSM to abandon that policy. Admissions at elite colleges would instantly become even more need-aware than they already are because colleges would lose their last remaining element of predictability.</p>
<p>I would urge lawmakers (and lawyers) to not base public policy on the half dozen schools in the country with yields above 50%.</p>
<p>I fail to see how the upper-middle class suffers in a system that is increasingly dominated by merit-based (read SATs) discount bidding.</p>
<p>A student with the qualifications (read SATs) to get accepted into an elite college or university, can literally name his price by simply dropping down a notch or two on the selectivity scale. I don't recall a time when families who could afford to pay if they had to, can so easily get a full-ride deal.</p>
<p>But why should they have to "merely" drop down to a less selective school if they are as qualified as the wealthy? Doesn't diversity suffer when this happens? Upper middle class here probably means incomes >$200K. The largest segment of eligible students probably have family incomes much less than this but not "poor". They can't drop down a notch or gain access to the most elite schools, especially using ED or SCEA. I would vote for EA which is NOT SC...but used in the way it was intended. Not as a method to "skim" the superstars or URM's or athletes early.</p>
<p>Sorry. The fact that anyone with a family income of greater than $200,000 a year can't qualify for need-based financial aid doesn't bother me on iota. Not while hundreds and hundreds of colleges are walking away from need-based aid programs to offer merit-aid discounts.</p>
<p>Honestly, if you make $200,000 a year, you COULD afford to send your kid to Harvard if it were a priority.... and, I dare say, with far fewer sacrifices than the Pell Grant families.</p>
<p>There seems to be this notion that "society" or the "courts" or the "legislatures" can force colleges to stop enrolling rich kids. That is naive. The whole concept of financail aid (need-based or merit-discount incentives) is based on the premise that X number of seats will be filled with full-fare customers. X isn't going to change because it is based on the availability of funds and the particular instituional priorities of the school.</p>
<p>I wish they still gave the yield numbers. You can calculate them but it is just one more extra step to get info. I don't believe not including them in the USN&WR stats took the onus off of these numbers which are very important to colleges.</p>
<p>I agree. The yield numbers are very important in evaluating admissions odds. The lower the yield, the more acceptance letters the school has to mail to fill their class. That's what people don't understand about Harvard. </p>
<p>A "normal" college has to mail 2, 3, 4, or even 5 acceptance letters to fill each spot in the freshman class. Havard has to mail 1.25 letters for each spot. It's not so much that Harvard has an extremely high number of apps for each spot in the freshman class -- it's high, but not orders of magnitude higher than other elite colleges. It's that they don't have to accept anywhere near the same percentage to fill the slots. Basically, just skim a little cream off the top of the applicant pool. Normal colleges have to dip down into their applicant pool with a rather large bucket.</p>