<p>I am going to make this very simple if you are poor or ignorant that is no excuse for being stupid. If you can’t understand the basic process of applying EA/ED and understand the idea that you will still receive financial aid than you should not be accepted to these top universities. Someone said it makes college admissions a strategic game, please…life is a strategic game you figure out the odds and you take the best shot you got. Saying that a smart, driven and qualified student can just as easily get in EA as RD so its not disadvantage for those “unprepared” kids who missed deadlines. Its just nice for those kids who do understand something so simplistic as when to take SAT/ SAT II’s to get in somewhere early. Is there a chance for disappointment…sure, but as a rising senior I wouldn’t want it any other way.</p>
<p>PS. To those who think teenagers can’t handle disappointment—fyi were not that fragile.</p>
<p>Edit": coolweather I go to a private school and I had a week of exams before the SSAT IIs and had no time to prepare…don’t think going to a public school makes a difference. If you want to prepare do it over the summer, which I may do as I saved Math for later.</p>
<p>Shame on those teachers.<br>
And what about the students? They’re the topic of this thread. Shame on them for not knowing better than their teachers?</p>
<p>I have no doubts that there are many, many students who know better than their teachers, but that is better suited for another discussion.</p>
<p>If the major problem with H’s EA is the SAT IIs, then why not just eliminate the SAT II requirement?</p>
<p>Apart from the discussion about whether Ivy-qualified students ought to be able to follow application directions, from an environmental standpoint, EA/ED is a much more efficient process for admitting students. As I stated earlier in this thread, the amount of paperwork and man-hours, not to mention wasted precious fossil fuel, that that could be reduced by instituting EA/ED is astounding. This alone ought to be enough to spur the greatest colleges in the world to figure out a way to make it work for all the students they are interested in recruiting.</p>
<p>Let me try to explain this one more time. If due to environmental factors a student has no idea that he has a shot at Harvard until very late in the process, he will also not find out what the testing requirements are until very late in the process, often too late. It’s not a matter of kids being stupid. It’s a matter of them being capable of succeeding at the highest level without knowing it because they have no useful standard in their community against which they can compare themselves.</p>
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<p>These two sentences contradict one another. If applying RD does not place students at a disadvantage, then a priori there is no “best shot;” they’re all equal. Pick one stance and argue for it.</p>
<p>But why should H eliminate SATIIs? That is an important (by H’s reckoning) measure of a student’s knowledge. It has been shown that students from mediocre schools are helped by having strong scores since colleges have no way of knowing how their GPAs would compare against the likes of Exeter of Andover.</p>
<p>Whose wasted manhours? The students? They have a choice as to how many colleges to which to apply, and more and more, the colleges use the Common App.</p>
<p>The major problem with EA programs is lack of honest information FROM COLLEGES about the trade-offs of early round (EA or ED, at this level of generality) programs. Just last week I attended the Exploring Educational Excellence event in my town, and I happened to see a dad going around to the different tables with his daughter to ask each of the five colleges there how much of an advantage there was to applying early. (That college consortium includes both ED colleges and an EA college, and I heard the question asked at each kind of college.) Try this experiment: ask a college admission officer of a college that has an early program if there is an advantage to the applicant (in terms of probability of admission) in applying early. See if you get a straight answer to that question. I’m really writing against type here, because usually I’m the guy in most threads who advocates taking college admission officer statements at face value, but I don’t advocate that about statements on whether or not applying early is an advantage. For the most part, applying early is a HUGE advantage. Apply early to a nonbinding EA college if you like one of those, and apply early to an ED college if it is truly your favorite and you can afford to go there no matter what financial aid policies apply to your family’s income range. Apply early to an SCEA college if you like either of the two such colleges (currently Yale and Stanford) and don’t choose to apply early to other colleges. Don’t miss the chance to apply early. Boost your odds. </p>
<p>Harvard, Princeton, and Virginia used to play down how advantageous it was to admission chances to apply early (either with SCEA or ED), but now they have decided their former programs introduced a systematic bias into the admission process. I suppose that as their entering classes are firmed up by further waiting list movement, each of those colleges will analyze the results of this year’s experiment in having a single-deadline admission system. Similarly, “peer” colleges will be analyzing what happened to their entering classes for fall 2008 after this year’s regime change. I make no predictions about what any college will do next, but I’m glad the experiment was tried.</p>
<p>I’m very against ED. It hurts low-middle income students, and especially those who live far away from their college of choice.</p>
<p>It doesn’t not allow students to compare prices or see if college is even affordable. Also, to ED to a school, it’s virtually necessary to tour the campus. This can be a very expensive process if you don’t live in a state near the college.</p>
<p>marite, I am surprised at you. Let me give a real-life example of how environmentally onerous the RD application process is, when a u does not offer EA/ED. D’s h.s. friend told us that for her entire life, she had hoped to attend UCLA. Both of her parents went there, both of her siblings went there. But because UCLA does not offer ED/EA, and because admissions are now so competitive (55,000+ applicants this year!), she submitted applications to UCLA and 8 other colleges. Yes, most used the common app, but there were still different essays to write, teacher/GC recs to be written and mailed to each, app. and test score fees to be paid and sent, not to mention the time, expense and fossil fuels wasted via U.S. mail and visits other UC campuses, BC and SMU. Her apps and recs were printed, read, checks cashed, interviews held, not to mention everything that went into the trash once the process was over. In RD, she was admitted to UCLA. Do you see any waste here?</p>
<p>I will not be surprised to see when the results coming out that Yale will be the winner, followed by Princeton, though with poor yield but high cross-admit rate, Stanford with decent yield, and Harvard with the highest yield with all the help by taking people from the waitlist. Keep doing this for a few years, and we will see the winner down the road.</p>
<p>I see waste, yes. But it’s under one’s control. On the other side of the ledger, I see opportunities for low-income students who attend mediocre schools with no guidance to speak of to reach for top schools where they will be able to realize their full potential and receive adequate financial aid.
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To me, that is a worthwhile trade-off.
There will always be schools that continue to use ED or EA because it’s to their advantage. But Harvard, Princeton and UVA had decided to forgo that advantage and level the playing field for low-income students. If students and their families want to have the security of EA or Ed, they can limit their applications to those schools.</p>
<p>I don’t disagree that the playing field should be leveled. I just disagree that eliminating EA/ED is the way to do it. If it takes more outreach by H,P etc during the students’ junior year, then do it then! Provide FA info prior to the ED/EA deadline. (The “shopping” for FA aspect has always been a little strange to me - either you can afford it or you cannot, no? Plus H & P ARE FREE to low income students!)</p>
<p>“If H doesn’t agree with this and my daughter is about to find herself in classes with kids who are seriously challenged by the rather simplistic concept that it makes sense to take an SAT subject test at the same time you take the associated AP test, well . . . then I may just decide not to write the check for $48k next month and send her to community college where I think most of the kids most certainly are capable of getting on the internet, reading about deadlines, test requirements and all those other “complex” issues for themsevles.”</p>
<p>Your daughter is going to find that she is in classes with some of the brightest young minds in this country, and she will be taught by some even brighter minds. But she will find MANY classmates who took biology in 9th or 10th grade, did well in it, and had no idea that they should have taken the SATII at the end of their freshman or sophomore year. A few of these dolts were not from disadvantaged families…but they were not in high performing urban/suburban schools…or were not home schooled by worldly and college educated parents.</p>
<p>I would still urge you, however, to write your check to Harvard. Your daughter will find enough kids just like her to make the experience worthwhile…and maybe she’ll even learn something from some of those students with a different set of life skills.</p>
<p>The shopping for FA is real and yields real dividends. Just look at posts where students mention how much more or less some top schools gave them. H does not always come on top. A friend of mine had a child who applied to H,P and MIT. Rejected at H (ergo, no FA); difference between P and MIT FA package was $7k per year. </p>
<p>If I may repeat myself, a lot of students don’t realize they may be HYP material until they take the SAT late in their junior year or in the fall of their senior year and start dreaming. By then, they are at a disadvantage over students who are re-taking the SATs, have taken a couple of SATIIs, have spent the summer working on their essays, drawn their lists, etc…</p>
<p>Hmmm . . . just visited Borders today and found approximately three entire shelves stuffed with “how to get into an ivy” type books. Looked through a few and they all certainly deal quite comprehensively with testing requirements, as well as the complexities of the dreaded EA. Most were under ten bucks. And a good many are no doubt available at the library.</p>
<p>Not gonna drink your koolaid; just kind of think initiative is important and should be a quality H and its peers should value.</p>
<p>mammall, you’re beating up a straw man. The point is not so much that these kids don’t have access to the information. It’s that they don’t realize they need the information until very late in the process, thus preventing them from applying early. They don’t realize they need the info because their environment does not lend itself to thinking about applying to top schools. As marite has continually tried to point out, many disadvantaged students do not realize they are competitive for HYP until they take the SAT or ACT, which can sometimes be as late as fall of senior year.</p>
<p>“Maybe what Harvard is trying to get are more kids who haven’t been reading the “how to get into an ivy” books?”</p>
<p>Fair enough but then why should kids too busy or distracted to bother themselves to do fifteen minutes of research on college admissions requirements be somehow “disadvantaged” when it turns out they haven’t fulfilled the basic criteria to apply? </p>
<p>I do believe that thirty years ago, perhaps twenty years ago there was a knowledge gap that kept some top students out of top schools. But I actually know a number of folks who came from lower middle class and just plain low class backgrounds who went to top selective schools even then. And you know what? They just plain had the vision, had the maturity and smarts to push themselves there.</p>
<p>Today it is simply preposterous to imagine that an intelligent kid anywhere in this country who is genuinely interested in attending this kind of school is barred from the rather small amount of “information” necessary to produce a good application.</p>