<p>This is where individualizing all these aggregate statistics, if only we could, would be really interesting. I suspect some of the anomalous cases of students being admitted to [really great school] while being rejected by [quite fine school] are instances of the slightly less selective schools practicing “strategic admissions” to boost reported yield, or correctly judging that a particular applicant is really not all that interested in that college. But it’s hard sometimes to tease out just what is going on in apparently inconsistent decisions received by a particular applicant.</p>
<p>…“most likely it was Cornell.”
Nonsense!
They were in fact the specific Ivies I mentioned. And they don’t need to “boast,” because obviously the <em>superior</em> qualifications of this “subset” spoke for themselves. </p>
<p>We can all sit here all day & make broad statements based on specific knowledge generalized to the whole pool, but that’s not very helpful, & unfortunately can really mislead people. For example, tokenadult’s “suspicions” cannot be universalized. From my own experience & knowledge, Ivies tend to play this yield card a lot less routinely than their LAC rivals. But even that I cannot verify with statististics: it’s only what I see self-reported on CC & among associates, acquaintances.</p>
<p>In one case I know of recently, a #3 ranked student got rejected from P, Brown, some others. She got accepted to H. Her personality was a much better fit for H than for the others, & she admits doing a lame job on the alternate apps (ie. not defining her attraction for the U, and vice-versa). Some CC student posters have similarly mentioned this. (“I can see why I didn’t get admitted to ____; didn’t put that much effort into app, or didn’t explain why I wanted to go there,” etc.)</p>
<p>The “obsession” with the Ivies seems to transcend the boundaries of College Confidential with ease. The fact that more than 160,000 applications for a meager 13,000 spots were submitted to eight schools provides sufficient evidence to the fascination of a large number of students and families. </p>
<p>However, there is another fact that plays a role in the many discussions about the Ivies: there is a LOT of scholarly research available on the subject of college admissions. For instance, on the debate about the qualifications of the ED/EA versus RD pool, one can decide to follow his or her own intuitive nature, build an opinion based on anecdotal evidence or … espouse the findings of Avery and Hoxby who were granted direct access to the admission date of the schools discussed in the report.</p>
<p>The admissions statistics of eight schools do not tell the entire story, but they offer unmistakable insights about a process that seems to captivate a very large audience in the US.</p>
<p>What do you think the “fall out” to this “perfect storm” will be? do you think that GC’s will “band together” and implore students to carefully choose only about 10 schools to apply to? For example:</p>
<p>Referring to one of those documents, Xiggi,</p>
<p>"Early Action candidates averaged about 41 points higher on the SAT I…and 2.8% higher in class rank than regular applicants to those same colleges in the admissions office data. " Also, “a bit higher in the student activity rating.”</p>
<p>“By contrast, ED candidates had similar credentials to regular applicants… Across the ED schools, early applicants average 3 points lower on the SATs I & 0.4% lower on class rank…” etc.</p>
<p>First quoted paragraph substantiates my experience & examples. Second quoted paragraph, while interesting & valid, is not as significant, statistically. (41 pts. vs. 3 points; 2.8% vs. 0.4%) But even acceding to this “edge” of ED, it’s very different to talk about averages & means than to assume reasons, excuses, etc. across the entire population admitted under either round. </p>
<p>It seems that the most common reason for negative outcomes in ED and EA, both, is that too often students & their families & even their GCs, do not realistically assess the leveraging value to the college of the candidate in question. If you do not have a true, recognized hook (a very misunderstood term on CC, esp. by students), you will be challenged to be accepted ED or EA unless there is something spectacular or unusual about your app. A 2400 & a 4.0 are not in themselves ‘hooks,’ as plenty of such CC-ers have reported negative outcomes in early rounds.</p>
<p>OTOH, the high-stat students who <em>have</em> been accepted EA & ED are often those who have applied carefully, weighed their value to the college & made an educated calculation about that value. Those bright & clever students can be found in admissions data for both EA and ED. My earlier examples demonstrate such careful & successful assessment.</p>
<p>I think it would be hard to overestimate how irrelevant Ivy (and other prestige college) admissions and education are to the vast majority of people - students and families - in the country. There are more first-years at the University of Michigan and Ohio State together than all the Ivies combined. The 50,000 or so Ivy applicants from whom the 23,000 acceptances and 13,000 matriculates come each year represent a fraction of the number of topflight students in the country, and while their graduates hold sway in certain occupations of the wealthy (I-Banking comes to mind), once you get out of small circles mostly in the northeast, they are by no means dominant in medicine, law, engineering, corporate business.</p>
<p>I think they are very, very fine schools, with great faculty and lots of resources, but it’s amazing how we can make them out to be so much more than they really are.</p>
<p>im actually compiling quite a bit of information on this subject for my honors thesis in economics. while im still gathering data at this stage (some of those lacs are pesky when it comes to publishing information), a few points:</p>
<p>swarthmores jump in applications this year, while significant, follows a six year trend of decreasing applications. fewer people applied in the class of 2009 than the class of 2003. </p>
<p>it is extremely rare for a school to experience consecutive years of strong applications growth (defined as 8% or larger). consecutive years of declining applications at top schools (my main data set is the schools that have been tier one unis or lacs since 1999) are actually quite a bit more common.</p>
<p>though my data set is far from complete, application jumps from recent moves to the commonapp as well as the dropping of testing requirements actually seem to overaccount for the current applications acceleration. in other words, the growth rate in applications appears as if it would decrease if schools stopped making it easier to apply.</p>
<p>(and yes, i should have started this a long time ago.)</p>
<p>so given all of this, should a student without a hook not apply early to his top choice?</p>
<p>some of the schools indicated (e.g. Yale) in their deferral letter that you have a better chance of being accepted if you applied early and were deferred than if you just applied regular admission.</p>
<p>According to Byerly, and I believe him, an applicant is CRAZY not to apply early somewhere if the applicant desires to get into a particular hard-to-get-into school. MIT is possibly the only elite college that genuinely doesn’t give an advantage to early applicants, but even there you could know your result earlier by applying early. Get ready over the summer before senior year, and apply early SOMEWHERE (where you want to be) would seem to be the most prudent advice.</p>
<p>I agree ED is a dumb chance to waste if you don’t need financial aid.</p>
<p>Furthermore, unlike many people, I do NOT believe the school has to be the be-all, end-all “dream” school in order to warrant an ED application. If your kid (like mine) can narrow their list down to three or four equally wonderful schools, they can just imagine being admitted to all four and PICK ONE-- exactly the choice they’d hypothetically have in April if they applied RD. Of course this presupposes focusing in early enough to do sufficient research and visits.</p>
<p>OTOH, kids also waste ED when they reach too high with ED. I think it’s nuts to expect a huge bump with ED. But yep, you do get a little nudge… so if you’d normally be teetering on the brink of acceptance, the nudge can really help.</p>
<p>Token, it is undeniable that the benefits of applying early are huge, even after discounting the “hooked” cases. I have mentioned several times that the ED admission rates at some schools must be the best kept secret in admission. The non-coed schools, for instance, have reported stratospherically high ED admission rates at above 60%, if not 75%. </p>
<p>However, despite the statistical evidence, a large number of students might have to forgo the advantage for a number of reasons, with financial aid being a very important one.</p>
<p>My son did apply to his first choice early action single choice (yale) got deferred, and then did get rejected . He did not have any type of hook, just excellent grades (at a top boarding school) excellent board scores (nothing lower than 760) and good ECs (dorm proctor, dorm rep to student council) etc. </p>
<p>So the question is would he have been more likely to have gotten in regular admission? </p>
<p>I am just curious what the stats would show.</p>
<p>That’s probably a misleading way to characterize the data, especially since every year during that entire period you cover has seen the highest numbers of applications in Swarthmore’s history and the lowest acceptance rates since the baby boom demographic bulge of the 1960’s. </p>
<p>Swarthmore had its record low acceptance rate (post 1960s) in 1998, following two years at the #1 spot in the USNEWS rankings. Since an accpeptance rate of 20% in 1998, the acceptance rate has bounced up and down in the fairly tight range (between 22% and 26%) with the fewest number of apps coming for Fall 2001 (the admissions cycle immediately following the demise of football, which got major media play in the NYTimes and elsewhere).</p>
<p>The long term acceptance rate data in graph form is here:</p>
<p>That’s why I was so surprised at Swarthmore’s application numbers this year. It is the second consecutive year of double-digit growth (11% followed by 19%). What makes it especially difficult to fathom is that Swat is currently ranked #3 in USNEWS, after a seven year run through 2003 where Swat and Amherst had a hammerlock on the top two spots, each holding the top spot three times and sharing it for another year.</p>
<p>I agree with that. By shooting for an implausible reach in Early Decision, students incur a tremendous opportunity cost. The opportunity to lock in an admission at a plausible school at a time when admissions factors work to their advantage.</p>
<p>When a student applies ED at a school that is a plausible match or even a match/reach, he maximizes the odds of being accepted and avoids many of the vagaries of the regular decision round. </p>
<p>For example, let’s take a student whose realistic reach is Dartmouth, Duke, Brown, or Williams but who is unlikely to be accepted at Harvard or Yale. By wasting the early app at Havard or Yale, the student is giving up the best shot of an acceptance to Dartmouth, Duke, Brown, or Williams. That “opportunity cost” is what can come back and bite you in April.</p>
<p>It’s just spill from larger numbers of applicants being rejected/deferred ED from first-choice Ivies, coupled with ease of application, coupled with folks feeling the need to throw in more applications. As you go down the list, you’ll find even larger increases at the Earlhams and Occidentals of the world. All it does it make it more difficult for Swarthmore (and other schools) to get the actual students they want, and would do best there. More applications is NOT a good thing.</p>
<p>Again, one has to distinguish between particular applicants in order to make definitive statements. (i.e., the difference between SBMom’s assertion of “a little nudge” and xiggi’s assertion of “a huge benefit.”) I am more on the side of SBMom than xiggi, due to differences in the applicants & their applications.</p>
<p>For super-selective schools, I think the following profile “hugely benefits” an ED applicant:
1 or 2 genuine hooks + one or 2 strong tips + very high stats (needn’t be perfect) + (and this one is most important): You are the best candidate, academically, among those applying from your high school to that college or U in the early round – or, you are equally/virtually equal to other students applying, but they lack the hooks + tips you have.
I also think that in the EA + ED rounds. hooks trump tips, for the super-selective colleges & U’s. A hook is low-income, a tip is not asking for FA.</p>
<p>For all but the upper-tier schools, I think that ED has proven to be a “huge benefit.” In agreement again with SBMom in that dep’t. And further agree that ED efforts are often inappropriately tried, because of failure to assess coolly one’s strengths versus the competition. Naturally, it’s impossible to do this for the whole pool (i.e., the “lottery” aspect). But at the very least, Know thyself, and especially, Know thy local competition, extremely well.</p>
<p>My daughter played this game. She was interested in both Harvard and Dartmouth. She applied early admission to Harvard and was deferred. She applied regular decision to Dartmouth. In February, she received a likely letter from Dartmouth. It all worked well. Not only was she accepted to Dartmouth but also Harvard. She will go to Harvard.</p>
<p>We don’t know whether ED is a benefit because it is ED, or because of the status of the applicants (legacies, developmental cases, recruited athletes, less financial need, etc.) who apply ED.</p>
<p>I guess it must be a subjective matter. Do you really believe that the rate of acceptance at schools that are always ranked among top LAC is just a little nudge? </p>
<p>Wellesley
Fresh(wo)men 591
Applicants 3912
Admitted 1476
Admit rate 41%
ED Apps 180
ED admit 123
ED Admit Rate … 68% </p>
<p>Smith
Fresh(wo)men 696
Apps 2993
Admits 1694
Rate 57%
ED Apps 192
ED Admit 156
ED Admit rate …81%</p>