<p>I don’t think it’s possible to make blanket assessments. We really have to look at ED on a school by school basis to figure out why it is an advantage.</p>
<p>Out of curiousity, I followed the College Confidental “action” at Swarthmore this year. 27 CC’ers applied to Swarthmore in the binding ED1 round. 22 of them were accepted. One more was deferred and later accepted in the RD round.</p>
<p>The ED acceptances were all over the board and seemed to be pretty representative of the overall student body. There were full-fare customers, full-financial aid customers, international full-pay applicants, international full scholarship applicants, high SATs, low SATs, white applicants, many minority applicants, a few legacies, mostly non-legacies. The one thing that they had in common was that they had done above-average research getting to know specifics of the school and, almost certainly, communicated an above average enthusiasm and “fit” for the school. At that type of school, I think that is really the key to why ED is such an advantage.</p>
<p>There weren’t enough College Confidential ED rejects and deferrals to identify common characteristics, although there were some marginal GPA/class rank question marks.</p>
<p>Here’s where the confusion about ED comes into play:</p>
<p>ED at many schools, is clearly much more than a “little nudge” statistically. It’s huge. But, it is only “huge” for students who were solid, plausible applicants for the school to begin with. The mistake a lot of applicants make is thinking that the statistical “nudge” will improve the chances of an applicant with marginal qualifications. That is not the case at the schools I follow closely. The “nudge” is that a solid, plausible applicant increases the odds of being accepted over other solid, plausible applicants who wait for the RD round. If you are a “walk on water” applicant for a school, you’ll probably get in ED or RD. If you are not a solid, plausible applicant, you probably have no chance whether you apply ED or RD. It’s the solid, plausible applicants in the middle who get the “nudge” from ED and that nudge comes, in part, from being enthusiastic about the school which in turn results from doing research about the school which in turn leads to building a better application that communicates a specific fit.</p>
<p>To clarify-- by “little nudge,” I meant that ED would not be enough to get an otherwise unlikely applicant admitted. You have to be at least reasonably qualified for RD admission at the school in order for ED to work for you. </p>
<p>If you are a kid who is reasonably well qualified but not a shoo in, ED can really help-- particularly at schools with RD yield problems. (I suspect women’s colleges’ large ED acceptance numbers reflect both self-selection-- like U Chicago, Reed-- & likely yield problems in RD.) Of course, uber-reaches do not usually have yield problems.</p>
<p>I agree that hooks (aka: being able to make a specific and unique contribution, whether by bringing a valued skill or by contributing to overall diversity) also help a great deal.</p>
<p>My best advice to other parents is to <em>be realistic</em> and urge your kid to shoot for a realistic reach if applying ED.</p>
<p>The profile & quality of the candidate (hooks, tips + stats), combined with the competitive pool for that college or U (both locally & generally) will determine the degree of “huge vs. nudge” for ED. One cannot look upon it as a stand-alone advantage. A woman’s college, regardless of its quality, does not have the same universal appeal among the female college applicant population as the Ivies or even the coed LAC’s have.</p>
<p>This is not about the quality of the education, merely the demand for particular colleges, since that produces a quantitative dynamic that directly affects ED results & their rates vs. RD.</p>
<p>“I don’t think it’s possible to make blanket assessments. We really have to look at ED on a school by school basis to figure out why it is an advantage.”</p>
<p>It’s just not possible to know. And it will vary school by school. We do know (from the little that is published) that ED acceptees are less likely to require financial aid. We know that at some schools, legacies have a huge advantage in the ED round, but not necessarily in the RD one. In other schools, we know of coaches willing to go to bat for candidates if they apply ED, but not RD. We know that the women’s colleges (which don’t have a large number of ED applicants), the advantage is substantial, as it allows them to sew up a portion of the class knowing that the applicants truly prefer a women’s college. </p>
<p>One thing I think is certain, though: at a certain point, the law of diminishing returns sets in, and more applications means students are less likely to get into their first choice, and schools are less likely to get the candidates they really want. More applications does not make the applicants any “better”, makes yield more uncertain, and makes it more rather than less difficult for most schools to meet their institutional priorities. It’s one of those “tragedy of the commons” things, where each school seeks an advantage by attracting (and turning down) more applicants, but the resulting “cascade effect” is that every school suffers as a result.</p>
<p>Driven, in large part, by yield. Many of the schools with very high yields have “altruistically” shifted to non-binding EA. The reality is that they had little to gain from binding ED, since their yield was already sky-high. With nothing to gain, they offer little benefit to their EA applicants.</p>
<p>Schools that have something to gain from binding ED (stabilized yield) tend to offer more in return to their early applicants.</p>
<p>College applicants interested in the numbers game should really look closely at yield and the implications. The schools with the lowest acceptance rates don’t necessarily have more applicants for each spot in the freshman class. But, because their yield is higher, they don’t have to mail as many acceptance letters to fill each spot in the freshman class. Therefore, the acceptance rate drops.</p>
<p>For example, Harvard had 13.9 applicants for each slot in the freshman class this year. Swarthmore had 13.0 applicants for each slot. Yet, Harvard’s acceptance rate was half of Swarthmore’s because their yield is expected to be nearly double. It is the yield that determines how deep a school has to go into its applicant pool to find a student for each slot in the freshman class.</p>
<p>This whole yield issue is why there are some real admissions values to be had at schools with a less popular geographic locale or with some other less popular characteristic (single-sex).</p>
<p>“This whole yield issue is why there are some real admissions values to be had at schools with a less popular geographic locale or with some other less popular characteristic (single-sex).”</p>
<p>Generally speaking true, although the yield at Wellesley and Smith has generally been about the same as Swat’s despite fewer EDs (meaning simply that some folks are really looking for a women’s college.) I’m hoping they don’t get hit by the “cascade effect” as well. (More applicants from folks who really don’t want to be there.)</p>
I also applied to Yale SCEA and was deferred, then rejected. I can’t help but feel that had I applied RD, I would have had more time to craft my application (to do more research as to how much of a ‘fit’ it would have been for me). Coupled with strong first semester grades (4.0), I think I would’ve had a better chance applying RD than I did applying EA. But then again, the RD acceptance rate was around 5-6%, so I don’t know if that would have been the case…it’s something I wonder about as well.</p>
<p>Not totally related, but just a comment: Does anybody else find that this forum is making them completely paranoid? Reading about diminishing acceptance ratings is doing enormous damage to my confidence for next year. I’m not even applying to the Ivies, and I’m still terrified!</p>
<p>The only way to get meaningful data is to conduct a proper contol experiment. I propose that we find a very exceptional student and have him submit 10 applications to each Ivy League school, then track his acceptance rate at each college.</p>
<p>There are some regional and ethnic trends that will impact college admissions. Specifically, white high school graduates decline significantly after 2008. There are also major shifts away from the northeast and middle atlantic regions to the Southeast, Southwest, and West.</p>
<p>You would have to check at the Tufts website. Search their press releases, student newpaper, and admissions sites. Those would be the places you would typically find announcements about application numbers, acceptance rates, etc.</p>
<p>Can a hook be characterized as a passion/interest which is unique among the field of applicants? For example, organizing, recruiting, and coordinating a club sport at your hs isn’t a hook per se but does indicate some leadership potential. A musician who is all state, nationally recognized awards, and invited to the white house is a hook.</p>
<p>A tip is an extra to have when evaluating similar candidates.</p>
<p>Interesting tidbit–overheard in line yesterday at an airport talking about colleges—“we get 18000 apps from kids with identical statistics. they all look the same. we only choose the ones that catch our eyes.”</p>
<p>musictoad,
I would classify the music example as a tip, not a hook. Hooks would be broader “need” or “slot” categories to the college (athlete, major donor, celebrity, under-represented ethnic group, socioeconomic/immigrant status).</p>
<p>Tips are special achievements – unusual level of accomplishment in one or more academic or e.c. areas.</p>
<p>And although much has been made of geography, I think it’s overrated, in case anyone (not you) is looking for a new scapegoat. I classify geography as a tip. I think any fine college looks for excellence first, although my understanding of the process is that they make sure they are drawing from all regions for that excellence. The Northeast continues to be strongly, strongly represented in Northeast colleges. But the volume of the applications from there is just so overwhelming that it may seem as if there’s some grand slight against that region: there isn’t. I’ll PM you with an example from this round of apps.</p>
<p>As you heard in the airport line, the culprit is the # of apps, which is a result not only of the population, but the cross-apps. This data abounds, is posted daily in major media outlets, & reposted constantly on CC. Yet many parents & students choose to disregard the data & seek a “reason” because they believe that excellence is the qualifier. Well, excellence would be the qualifier if there weren’t the “identical” profiles that you overheard mentioned. I don’t believe in “random theory” when it comes to the selection process, but as other parents have occasionally noted, there <em>has</em> to be an element of arbitrariness when you’re looking, for example, at “identical” candidates from exactly the same region, even city, even high school. Therefore there may be more ‘arbitrariness’ when a particular pocket <em>anywhere</em> in the country is “dense” with excellence.:)</p>
<p>"Interesting tidbit–overheard in line yesterday at an airport talking about colleges—“we get 18000 apps from kids with identical statistics. they all look the same. we only choose the ones that catch our eyes.”</p>
<p>evidence of the randomness of it all."</p>
<p>I would prefer to use a different term when it comes to OUR understanding of the admission process: IDLE SPECULATION. </p>
<p>None of us knows what happens behind closed doors, and none of us has access to the entire 18000 files of this example. At best we have overly generic statistics and anecdotal examples. Applying to a school that accepts about 10% of its aplicants might look as nothing but a lottery, but we know absolutely nothing about its randomness. Students who clear the board with admissions or with rejections are clear evidence that the system works better than we give it credit. Admission officers see something we never do: the strength and weaknesses of every candidate as compared to the pool. </p>
<p>Actually, we know this: if the process were entirely random, there would be MORE successful stepford-chidlren admits. It is because the process represents the outcome of the collective and subjective wisdom of humans that schools end up selecting a complementary class.</p>
