<p>Let’s not forget how much the transfer applicants got screwed over by Harvard.</p>
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<li> Of the kids I have known in the past few years who were accepted SCEA to HYS, about 3/4 either withdrew/didn’t submit all of their other applications, or kept live applications only at one or two other colleges (guess which ones!). The rest shopped for financial aid packages, legitimately given their family circumstances, but illegitimately in that they wound up going to the SCEA college regardless of more money elsewhere. How many failed to attend the SCEA college? Two. One Harvard rather than Yale, one Harvard rather than Stanford.</li>
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<p>Unless you are engaged in a curmudgeon-like mining-for-merit operation – and unless, like curmudgeon, you are in the relatively small class of people whose financial resources are probably not assessed fairly by FAFSA and the Profile – the whole shopping-for-financial-aid rationale is overrated, I think, when it comes to Harvard, etc.</p>
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<li> Harvard and Princeton, between them, accepted about 1,200 kids early. The Princeton acceptees had to withdraw all of their other applications; let’s say the Harvard acceptees submitted an average of 2 other applications apiece. The equivalent students this year probably averaged eight or nine applications apiece (that’s conservative). So the delta on elimination of EA/ED at those two schools was probably somewhere around 8,500 applications in the system, at 40-50 colleges, but probably heavily weighted towards the usual suspects.</li>
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<p>So, are those extra 100-200 applications at Georgetown, and maybe 500-600 extra applications at Dartmouth, so much of a drag on the system that we should worry about it? I didn’t think much of Harvard’s explanation for ending its EA program, but I can’t get too excited about the negative social effects of it.</p>
<p>Sure, there were long waitlists this year, but that’s because no one had any data about how things were going to pan out. Everyone will be more accurate next year, and a lot more accurate a few years after that (except that the system will probably change again by then).</p>
<p>And the waitlists were causing pain to families? Practically everyone had the option to just say no thanks. The difference this year vs. prior years was that a substantial number of kids were actually taken off the waitlists. It’s hard to get too upset about that, either.</p>
<p>I appreciate your point No. 2, JHS, and your numbers make sense. But at the local community level, I just think it’s unfair for kids to collect 10-12 more trophies after an SCEA acceptance. With the exception of kids who genuinely needed to compare financial aid packages, I would argue that every kid who got an early nod from Y or S or M this year knew absolutely that there were some schools on the original list he or she would not attend over Y or S or M. Those kids should cull their lists. My son had classmates at his own school and friends at other high schools in the area who wanted to go to schools he dropped from his list after the SCEA acceptance. Did he help them by withdrawing his applications? Who knows. (Who know if he would even have gotten into them!) But it just didn’t feel right to him to compete with his peers simply for the sake of stroking his own ego. And in your example, try telling the kid who didn’t get into Dartmouth that the 500-600 extra applications didn’t hurt him, or try telling the kid stuck on multiple waitlists that he could just say “no thanks.” That’s not likely to make things better. Look, I know this is not a crisis of worldwide significance. But I truly dislike the greed inherent in trophy hunting.</p>
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<p>I agree with this. Our h.s. GC openly chastises students who do this.</p>
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<p>Those extra 8,500 applications likely generated an additional 51,000 documents (app., 3 recs, test scores and app. fees) that had to be produced, mailed, reviewed, processed and ultimately trashed, as well as the expenditure of approx. $510,000 in app. fees. And this is the fall-out after eliminating EA/ED for only 2 schools.</p>
<p>wjb, I agree with you completely on trophy hunting. What I was saying was that most kids I’ve seen don’t do it. Some do, sure, but really not many. In the last two years of Harvard SCEA, the five kids I saw get SCEA acceptances to Harvard or Yale generated exactly two additional applications: one Yale acceptee applied to Harvard (and ultimately went there) and one Harvard acceptee applied to Stanford (and was accepted, and didn’t go there, but he thought about it). The others were thrilled to get into their first choice, and stood pat. None of them wanted to rack up acceptances at their friends’ expense, or even to be thought to be doing that. If it weren’t for one kid, I would say that I had never seen trophy hunting. And he credibly said that he was comparing financial aid packages, and he may even have believed it. </p>
<p>Of course, I “see” trophy-hunting on CC. But I don’t think that’s the way most of the world operates. I don’t know where those kids go to school, but at most schools I’ve seen a kid who did that would get lynched. By the faculty, if not the students.</p>
<p>Of course, if one is going to take Bay’s “green” approach, then ED is preferable to EA. 70% of my extra applications come from the Princeton group, not the Harvards. But, in every other respect, EA is preferable.</p>
<p>As for the waitlists, I don’t have any trouble telling the kid stuck on them that he can say “no, thanks”. That’s what I told my kids. And they agreed. They applied to colleges they would like to attend. They were accepted at some of them, and waitlisted at others. They took the waitlist as a polite rejection, and politely rejected it back; then they got psyched about the great college they WOULD be attending. There was no agony whatsoever, except for that first disappointment, which was not avoidable.</p>
<p>It’s going to be tricky studying the effect of jettisoning EA/ED because it was coupled with a new FA package. Old timers remember the story of Evil Robot who was accepted SCEA at Yale but ended up going to Vandy because Vandy gave him a better FA package? This year, he might have gotten as good a deal from Yale (or Harvard or Princeton). In years past, in other words, some early admits still submitted more apps, especially to schools offering merit scholarships, not out of trophy hunting but out of financial need.
With the elimination of EA/ED, all students now submit multiple apps, whether they need FA or not, whether they are trophy hunting or not.</p>
<p>“With the elimination of EA/ED, all students now submit multiple apps, whether they need FA or not, whether they are trophy hunting or not.”</p>
<p>Thank you, Marite. I have a feeling some on here would see my D as a “trophy hunter” which would be a gross mischaracterization. She thought her chances at a tip top school (HYPSM) were slim at best - thus she applied to all of them and did not visit prior to acceptance because I didn’t want to waste the travel funds and have her just feel more lousy after seeing wonderful schools when rejections arrived. She also did apply to highly ranked schools that offer merit. Once she figured out she had not made scholarship finalist at some of them, she emailed to discontinue her application. Unfortunately, acceptances came any way at the end of March at those schools so she apparently did stay in the running for admission at them despite her efforts to withdraw.</p>
<p>There were rumors at her school that she and several other very strong applicants “applied to every Ivy.” This was completely wrong; she and her peers didn’t even apply to half the Ivies. I think it’s just human nature to try to blame some one close by for bad luck when it hits. My D got a bit of this at school, as did a few others.</p>
<p>Our GC vociferously defended them and urged them to keep every single application live that they had any interest in at all. The GC would have liked D to accept Yale right away last December, but she understood why D was not ready to do that and supported her fully in waiting. Also, our GC made it very clear that the notion that quotas at these schools are enforced at the school level is preposterous - they are at the regional level, and there were plenty of other super applicants in our region beside the few at our high school. Moreover, our high school of a graduation class of just 98 kids had 2 H acceptances, 2 Dartmouth and 3 U Penn. Obviously the classmate blocking theory is a total myth.</p>
<p>One thing that might be an improvement would be for merit granting schools to be more forthcoming in their selection of scholarship finalists. We only could figure out by monitoring CC that she was not a finalist there, and the same with Wash U. Also, some of these merit-granting schools don’t formalize a finalist list at all - you have to wait until you get your acceptance packet at the end of March to find out. This is true of Chicago and Rice. Earlier and clearer communication of merit scholarships would probably prompt appliants to withdraw sooner for admission.</p>
<p>The only problem is that marite is wrong. With the elimination of EA/ED at Harvard/Princeton, all students who think they really want to go to Harvard or Princeton submit multiple applications. As before, many/most of the students admitted EA to Yale, Stanford, MIT, Cal Tech, Chicago, Georgetown, Notre Dame, etc., do NOT submit multiple applications, or severely restrict the number of additional applications they file. Even some students whose first choice would be Princeton or Harvard may apply EA elsewhere and, if admitted, apply only to Princeton and/or Harvard, not to 10 other colleges.</p>
<p>mammall, I hardly think it’s the worst sin in the world, but I believe, personally, that what your daughter was doing WAS trophy hunting. It’s hard to tell, of course, because I only have your posts for evidence, not hers, and I certainly haven’t read all of them or done a comprehensive analysis. But my impression was and remains that the likelihood that your daughter would choose to go anywhere other than Harvard, Yale, or Stanford if admitted was pretty trivial, even if she won some nifty scholarship somewhere. Of course, her GC was right that her applications didn’t per se block her classmates, and of course she has the right not to be perfect in everything she does. But, if I had been her classmate, I would have thought less of her for what she did, or maybe more accurately I might have failed to admire her as much as I might admire others with her gifts who behaved in the way I find more appropriate.</p>
<p>Very diplomatically put, JHS. </p>
<p>You know, as I think about it, my real world experience with kids accepted SCEA has been similar to yours. Most (but definitely not all) of the students we know who have been admitted early to Y or S or M (or H, when it had SCEA) have withdrawn the bulk of their pending applications. It’s the kids and parents on CC who seem to be hunting the biggest game.</p>
<p>JHS:</p>
<p>Do we know how many students admitted SCEA to H or Yale submitted other applications? I confess that I have only the case of Evil Robot to illustrate the idea that some students did in fact submit other apps because of financial consideration (I cannot believe that trophy hunting was so extensive as to seriously skew the data).
This year, there was no reason to submit more apps after being admitted SCEA to Yale because Yale increased its financial aid so significantly as to make merit scholarships elsewhere less attractive.</p>
<p>S applied to H and to S (only because the deadline for applying was the same as the date of H notification). But then, FA was not a consideration (reinforcing the idea that EA advantaged the affluent, the connected, etc…)</p>
<p>I respect several of the points made on this thread supporting reinstitution of EA. Yes, it would cut down on the number of applications some students submit, and yes, it would be more convenient and less stressful for some students to know they were “in” at Harvard, Princeton or University of Virginia by Christmas break.</p>
<p>But I whole-heartedly support the reasons Harvard, Princeton and UVA cited in dropping EA. If “green concerns” were of top import, HPUVA could select the entire freshman class from the top ranks of the nation’s private prep schools (as was largely done in generations past), negating the need for lots of wasteful and superfluous applications/teacher recommendations from the unwashed masses. And if HPUVA wanted to protect their yield percentages and lock in the “top candidates” early, they could have continued their “separate but equal” (haha) EA or ED admission cycles (populated mainly by the prep school/legacy/athletes) followed by miniscule admission rates in the RD round.</p>
<p>In dropping EA/ED, HPUVA indicated they wanted to enroll a more diverse class of highly talented students, and to do so they needed to attract applications from more than just the usual suspects. I believe they succeeded in doing so, and one of the reasons was that candidates saw their applications would be considered in one pool.</p>
<p>One piece of anecdotal evidence: Post #2 in this thread by mammall. “Well, that’s all very nice but my D’s super smart and hard working friends who were rejected by all the top Ivies say doing away with EA really hurt them badly. These aren’t rich kids, either - just middle class.”</p>
<p>As mammall has often told us, her D attends a private prep school and her family has to pay $48K for said D to attend Harvard this fall – despite Harvard’s groundbreaking financial aid initiatives. If these “hard working and super smart” friends are anything like mammall’s D, that ain’t “just middle class,” but it does represent the usual suspects.</p>
<p>Might this not be evidence that highly talented students from more diverse backgrounds were admitted rather than just the usual suspects who under the old system would have been shoo-ins?</p>
<p>One suggestion I have to tweak the new system: Drop the application fee entirely or reduce it to a token $10 per application, and go to an entirely electronic application system (including recommendations and transcripts). It would address some of Bay’s stated environmental concerns, anyway.</p>
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<p>Stanford already has gone to electronic applications. I think they have no objection to the student using a school computer or public library computer to submit the application. </p>
<p>Graduate programs already allow electronic submission of teacher recommendations, and that is coming to undergraduate college applications too.</p>
<p>Oh no. How much gas to burn on the trip to public library. No wonder the gas price is so high in CA :-)</p>
<p>We walk to our public library (and to a lot of our shopping). We have a small carbon footprint in our family.</p>
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<p>Of course we don’t know that. I only have my own, limited experience in the real world, which suggests that some do, but not so many. Actually, three different categories: People who don’t apply anywhere else, people who apply to one or two other similar colleges (e.g., a Harvard admittee who applies to Yale and Stanford), and people who apply broadly to many other colleges. In my experience, that last group is quite small.</p>
<p>For the two I knew in the last category, the stated rationale for broad applications was mainly financial aid shopping. The rationale was a little disingenuous, however, since both knew their Harvard FA package was livable, and neither seriously considered going to another (Ivy League) college that offered somewhat better FA. What they hoped was that Harvard would match a better offer; what they learned was that Harvard might match a better offer only if it came from Yale or Stanford. Which it didn’t. (In one case, there were some strong personal considerations at play, too, that might well have led the student to pick a college closer to home.) I will add that, given the changes in Harvard financial aid over the past two years, if they had taken their better financial aid offers at the time they would regret it terribly now, since Harvard is costing them far less than they expected. </p>
<p>Anyway, I don’t think what they did was either’s finest moment, although I like and admire both of them. This description doesn’t do half justice to the many nuances involved in their situations. Both were fundamentally engaging in ego gratification, but one was doing it aggressively, and the other mainly operating out of insecurity.</p>
<p>JHS:
Like you, I think that there is quite a bit of overlap among HYPS applicants.</p>
<p>My original point had been that if there were applicants who submitted other applications to HYPS after being admitted early out of financial consideration (and we don’t know how large a group that was), such consideration pretty much evaporated this past year as all aligned their FA policies and made their FA packages so generous as to compare favorably with merit scholarships at colleges down the rankings. This is why a study of the effects of abolishing EA/ED is going to be hard to conduct. Two many variables.</p>
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<p>Princeton, too, perhaps? We know a student who was accepted SCEA to Yale. When Princeton’s RD acceptance came in with a better aid package, Yale matched it.</p>