<p>I’m in complete agreement with you. Especially with the money factor. If you’re a shoe-in at Harvard and would get in EA, there’s no point in applying to 10 other schools, wasting hundreds of dollars. But since you wouldn’t know early and nobody is a true “shoe -in” at Harvard, you need to apply to other schools. If anything, THAT will hurt financially disadvantaged kids more. Harvard just veils this attempt to lower admission rates and thus help their ranking as some sort of altruistic charity movement. Bogus.</p>
<p>I have a different take on this whole thing. We are a family with very high financial need, but my son nonetheless applied (binding) ED to Amherst and was most blissfully accepted… his 1st choice dream school.</p>
<p>Against all advice to never, ever apply ED when financial need is significant, he did (with my approval) apply ED nonetheless. Why? How? Because Amherst is open about its financial aid policies. They even have a calculator online that applies their specific methodology to your figures. Yes, there are caveats; your figures need to be accurate, if you have investments or other assets maybe you could be surprised. But if you’re a family that lives on wages, doesn’t own real estate beyond your primary residence, has no IRAs, 401Ks, all sorts of other acronyms I don’t understand anyway, then you can get a pretty accurate estimate of what your financial aid picture will be. I assume most lower income kids --the kids other elite schools are concerned about disadvantaging by binding ED programs-- probably mostly fit that profile.</p>
<p>So rather than completely removing the one avenue for students (of whatever income) to make a clear, committed first choice statement to one school, and perhaps getting some slight benefit from that dedication to attend, perhaps what these elite colleges should ALL do is be completely transparent about how their aid policies will apply to prospective students BEFORE they apply. Then they can make an informed choice about whether it is manageable <em>prior</em> to a binding ED agreement.</p>
<p>That would enfranchise many lower income students to apply to their dream schools if they could understand specifically what they’re committing to financially.</p>
<p>Sure some will want to compare packages --especially where merit aid is a feature-- but that’s a different issue than simply lower income students being effectively shut-out of the ED option a priori.</p>
<p>Rather than elimating binding ED, why don’t the most elite colleges put the information right out there front and center and stop being mysterious about their aid policies? THAT is the problem, not that ED itself disadvantages lower income applicants. You should be able to understand the policies, especially at the needs-based-aid-only colleges, and how they apply to your own situation.</p>
<p>Amherst’s online calculator gave us a very accurate estimation based on our pretty stratighforward, simple financial situation, almost to the dollar. If they can do it, other schools can do it too. In fact, colleges could even expand that ability to gather the necessary aid information in advance of an ED app so that it could cover somewhat more complicated scenarios as well, including all income brackets.</p>
<p>That would not only <em>not</em> disadvantage the already disadvantaged, but would give them another small boost up by allowing them to demonstrate their committment to attend. It’s not ED that’s the problem, it’s unnecessarily mysterious aid policies that’s the problem.</p>
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<p>ewho: Do you mean H & P will know that you got in EA at the other school? Is this the standard policy?</p>
<p>I dislike the whole early admissions system for several reasons:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>It promotes “gaming” the admissions system. I think students should be rewarded for real achievement and excellence and not for pursuing an angle or a statistical edge.</p></li>
<li><p>It forces applicants to submit their “first draft” application to their top choice school. Applications from a given student tend to increase in quality and polish as the season wears on. The final applications my daughter submitted were significantly better than her early ones.</p></li>
<li><p>It doubles the deadline stress. Twice as many submission deadlines and twice as many notification dates. It can significantly extend the stress and worry season.</p></li>
<li><p>If you get rejected by your early school it makes for a very long, cold, miserable winter. The gap from disappointment on December 15th to joy on April 1st is a lot to ask a teenager to suffer.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Do you think HP want to fight with YSM if there is a way HP can find out how many already on YSM’s camp? Look those on the waitlist people on the CC board, eventually I asked them to post what schools they are going to attend, see how many people were off the waitlist while they were accepted by YPSM.</p>
<p>It is almost public information if you are accepted by SCEA. The accepted kid can log in on the school’s website and see who got in.</p>
<p>As others have noted, a few posters don’t seem to understand the situation that many lower income students might be in. Coming from a family with very high financial need, I applaud the decisions to abandon ED and EA. These programs may be great for students who attend preparatory schools that aim to send many kids to top colleges, but when you attend a school with lower income levels, it’s not expected that anyone will go to a school of that sort. We didn’t have any special college resources. The top colleges for strong students were in-state public schools, and any college information was geared to those schools. I should add that this college information didn’t really start coming until senior year anyway: by the time a student is prompted to consider colleges, EA and ED deadlines are approaching too soon to create a strong application. As mentioned, some locations may make it difficult to complete the entire application. Financial aid is of course a concern–and, might I add, fee waivers for applications do exist, so the elimination of ED and EA isn’t some sleazy scheme.</p>
<p>My parents knew absolutely nothing about college, and my high school had very little experience with students applying to top tier schools. My family didn’t even know if I could attend college because they couldn’t pay for it, though they never let me know that since they wanted me to study. By the time I finally started learning about top tier schools and, through a lot of luck other students don’t have, realizing that I actually might have a chance, it was too late for me to apply early. Many, many students are in a worse position than I am, and I can imagine how some qualified students may never even consider applying to top schools, or those who do consider it end up feeling like they just don’t have the chance. Anything to help these students is fine with me: they deserve to have the same opportunities. I won’t know if the this elimination helped me get into Princeton, but I know that initiatives such as this made me feel more comfortable and confident about applying. Harvard’s initiatives stood out to me as well. It does make a difference.</p>
<p>To those who feel this gives strong students less of a chance, I don’t think it’s fair that these students deserve a “boost” to their application simply because they grew up in an environment conducive to early applications. If you need to apply early to have a shot at getting in over someone else, that really isn’t fair for the other person, in my opinion, and you probably didn’t deserve to go as much as the other person either.</p>
<p>I live on the East Coast but in a rural area, and I can assure you that many of my students have no idea what the SAT II is. As a teacher and parent, I spent a lot of time educating students – not that we do not have excellent guidance personnel but sometimes kids need to hear it from a different soul.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how I feel about the end of EA at Harvard, Princeton or UVA. Had a student get into UVA before they ended it (she is a HS graduate of the class of 2006) and three students get in this year. My son was not planning on applying EA/EC at any of the three, however, he is finalizing his list these days. The other night it stood at 12 schools. That’s a lot of money on my teacher’s salary. I’m sure others feel the same. He plans on applying to UVA and Harvard, among others.</p>
<p>Joe Trumpet, you are right about Harvard’s initiatives, and that is of great interest to my son. As for UVA, we’re in-state, but some of the private schools that interest my son might offer better packages. We’ll see.</p>
<p>Thanks Joe Trumpet for putting it so well. I went to our high school graduation last night. Almost all students are going to local community college, local state college, or state U (the best and the brightest go to the state U). Students at our school are studying diesel mechanics, radiology tech., firefighting science and the like. It is a close community, and the kids are great and very individualistic, but academic aspirations are not high. Noone writes their college essay early, believe me. I think Harvard is actively seeking students from high schools like ours, which is truly an attempt to level the playing field. </p>
<p>Many of the kids in our town would have been capable of studying elsewhere. Few know about financial aid initiatives at private colleges. I do know some students (maybe 4 out of 80) who applied to schools early decision, but even then, they totally lacked guidance.</p>
<p>I think that everyone being in the same RD pool is much fairer, but I am repeating myself!</p>
<p>You guys have just copied right out from Karl Max’s book.</p>
<p>Harvard (and Princeton and Virginia) obtained the advice of some very thoughtful economists who have studied the college admission process for years, including writing a specific book-length study of early round admission cycles, before changing their systems. There are some definite advantages for some colleges in some echelons to having an early round, and some colleges will keep them, I suppose. But I respect the reasons Harvard, Princeton, and Virginia had, after analysis of their own early round programs, for eliminating them. </p>
<p>[University</a> of Virginia, Harvard, & Princeton Admission Presentations](<a href=“http://www.harvardprincetonuva.org/]University”>http://www.harvardprincetonuva.org/)</p>
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<p>Which of us guys? (More than one opinion has been expressed here.) Which book by Marx?</p>
<p>nice puff piece, but where is the income distribution data? Pell Grantees? % under $60k income? In other words, where is the data for the un-advantaged?</p>
<p>Oh, it’s just the social engineering patronizing mindset of it all. I hate it when people in power treat people below them in the food chain like ignorant children.</p>
<p>For those of you who have never heard of the SAT IIs (“SAT Subject Tests”), do your kids sign up for their SAT tests online? The info about the SAT IIs is right there on the same page as the regular SAT. It is easy to find and fully explained.</p>
<p>momreads,</p>
<p>UVA recommends that applicants take the SAT IIs, and isn’t UVA your in-state U?</p>
<p>Bay:</p>
<p>I think the point is that by the time students from disadvantaged schools sign up for SAT, it may well be too late to sign for the SATII. If the GCs are focused almost exclusively on in-state schools, they won’t even talk about SATIIs which are required only by the UCs and about 60 other schools, which are not state unis. If the GCs and the students only begin to focus on college applications in the fall of senior year, it may leave very little time for taking both the SAT and SATIIs.
Many low income students whose families are unfamiliar with the college admission process may not begin to think seriously about applying to reach schools until they feel confident about their performance unless encouraged by others, such as GCs.
Even in our school, which is located in a highly college-aware area but is also economically diverse, one third of students do not have computers. I imagine that in a lot of districts, signing up for the SAT is not done electronically.</p>
<p>As noted earlier, about the only students who take the regular SAT in my state are the National Merit semifinalists who take the first part of their senior year to be eligible to move on in that competition. NO ONE spends any time on the SAT website and there are no SAT prep programs offered locally. We have to drive a couple hours to a SAT test site.</p>
<p>Should have noted that the ACT test is what is taken by most students in our state who aspire to go to college.</p>
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<p>I’m not trying to be contentious, just looking for accurate information. With that in mind, didn’t you say you were a Virginia resident? A quick look at collegeboard stats reveals that 98% of UVA admittees took the SAT, 96% of W&M, and 92% of George Mason. It looks like most students in VA do take the SAT.</p>
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<p>The SAT I and SAT II are offered on the same day for every sitting except in March. A student can take as many as he likes on the same day.</p>
<p>(Edit: whoops, sorry I was confusing whatever with momreads. whatever - which state do you reside in?)</p>
<p>A student cannot take both the SAT and the SATIIs on the same day!</p>
<p>They are administered at the same time, and the SAT takes f4-5 hours these days.</p>
<p>Yes, I’m sorry I was typing too fast (I can’t multitask anymore!) A student can take all SAT II tests on the same day.</p>