I talked to my counselor today and she said that applying Early Decision would hurt my chances because I would be compared to people who have great stats whereas if I applied Regular Decision I would be compared to people who had not as good stats.
Is this true? I feel like applying Early Decision would help your chances because colleges are trying to protect their yield and trying to fill up their class, especially at a school like Cornelll where it seems like a lot of "overqualified" students apply just to apply when they probably won't attend there
Early decision has a higher acceptance rate that regular decision. No one knows for certain whether this is because the pool is just of higher caliber or whether it's because Cornell favors ED candidates who will definitely come.
The prevailing view in this forum is that ED gives a qualified candidate a better chance of acceptance. However, none of us are professionals, and your GC is.
Judging by the people I've met here I'd say the reverse is true - ED kids don't have as good stats as a whole. Plus, unless you had absolutely zero chance of being accepted, you will be deferred if not accepted, so you will get looked at in the RD round. If you definitely want to come here, then apply ED.
Thanks for the advice! I think I will apply ED then. It is my #1 choice by far anyway.
I consulted some of my friends who graduated last year and they essentially told me to ED if it was my #1 school.
The prevailing view in this forum is that ED gives a qualified candidate a better chance of acceptance. However, none of us are professionals, and your GC is.
....many frequent Cornell forum posters, who have a personal tie to the college (student, alumni, parent) know more about Cornell than most GC's, especially those GC's who do not have numerous students apply to Cornell each year.
Personally, I agree with the prevailing view. I can't think of a situation where a school would want to put itself in a situation ED candidates are disadvantaged.
However, when there is a specific GC recommendation against ED, I hesitate a bit. There are many potential reasons for such a recommendation (all of which may not be communicated to a student). Some of these are legitimate -- others have to do with school politics and as you suggest some may have to do with GC ignorance. A good GC knows much more about the student than any of us here and advice should not be lightly disregarded.
(aside -- a GC (who was mostly excellent) was not optimistic about my eldest D's ED chances at a school (not Cornell) because the HS hadn't had much success in a number of years. Nonetheless, we felt it was a statistical fit, so she applied, was admitted and did quite well there, so I don't suggest automatically following a GC's advice.)
ED acceptance rate is also higher because committed athletes apply early decision. I'm not sure of the exact number though, so the rate may not be that much lower without those athletes.
Could any of you offer any reasons why applying ED to Cornell would somehow hurt my chances, or be "bad" somehow?
It is my #1 school.
I can afford it.
My stats are relatively competitive, so it is not like I'm wasting my ED.
Also our school has sent a student there every 1-2 years(Washington State, public school if that helps you understand the GC at all), and last year we sent 1 to Cornell, 1 to Harvard, 1 to Stanford, and a couple other people got accepted to pretty good schools as well.
I'm comfortable saying your guidance counselor is wrong. Also, I find (on these boards and personal experience), that often guidance counselors just have no idea what they're talking about, especially if they don't have experiences with sending many students to a school. I tend to find ED students at Cornell on average have SLIGHTLY lower stats than the RD admitted students.
The rest is my own theory based on experiences applying to Cornell (and utilizing these forums), my experiences as a student, and reading these forums as alumni:
I think the advantage if ED is it better demonstrates "fit." Generally speaking, if a student feels strongly they belong at Cornell and are willing to apply ED, admissions recognizes that. I think admissions is more comfortable admitting someone with a 95 average ED who knows they want to attend Cornell because it "felt" right to the student for whatever reason (research opportunities, social life, etc.), rather than admitting a person with a 97GPA who is really unsure/on the fence about where they want to go to school. It's not that the 97 GPA person won't ultimately be a great fit, but there is a lesser chance of it.
My feeling I've previous expressed, and some others believe as well that ED increases the chances substantially for strong candidates and only weakly for weak candidates. The following numbers are arbitrary, but I'd say a student with a 60% chance RD has an 80% chance ED, whereas a student with a 30% chance RD only has a 40% chance ED.
Another reason is that it helps the college's yield (number of accepted students who attend).In addition, by having fewer spots available for RD, Cornell can reject more which lowers their admit rate. These stats are used in rankings, etc. & although we'd like to believe that colleges don't care about this, they do because being "ranked high" keeps alumni happy....& happy alumni = $...
Besides financial reasons (which aren't in play here), a good reason to apply RD vs ED/EA is for the kid who expects a great first semester GPA in a very tough courseload -- to boost his/her overall GPA. Admissions people have said this at info sessions.
Some schools have specifically had inferior results with ED apps. If your high school is on Naviance, take a look and see if that is the case. YOu can also see who from your school is getting accepted to COrnell and other school. in terms of grades and test scores.
The one thing that would make me hesiate other than needeing aid money is if the student had a down tick or weak junior year. In such cases a strong first term senior year performance with a heavy courseload could make a difference.
Our school doesn't have Naviance, but I don't think we have had poor results with ED really. I'm pretty good friends with the people who have gone to Cornell, and they said my stats were competitive.
