Ideally yes. But these are 17 year old kids with a ton of ECs fall sports etc. Same reason why some kids burn out after a certain amount of apps.
D24 applied to a couple of additional reach EA schools while D26 literally applied to 3 schools - Brown ED, Case Western and UConn. And she was deferred at Case Western so that wouldve been a mad scramble for sure because she didnt prepare for any other schools.
I dont think it’s uncommon that kids arent always super prepared and organized on college apps because theyre trying to juggle a million other things.
Maybe not uncommon to not send other other apps if applying ED, but really not recommended. Many HSs can’t even turn around sending out app supporting documents at that point…some HSs have internal deadlines in Nov/early December for all apps.
I know people on CC tend to be talking about the minority of HS students who do have decent college counseling, but I hope there aren’t any counselors out there advising students to wait until after ED results to build their lists and get more apps in.
I get counselors only advise and can’t make students send in apps, but still. Unless one is applying to only non-selective schools, it would be difficult to complete well thought out apps/essays in such a short time frame.
ETA: I will continue to call out the fact that most HS students don’t have adequate college counseling. Many people read CC and never post and it’s important we don’t have students and parents think that ‘oh, our counselor will work over holiday break to help us with our apps.’ That is not going to happen for most HS seniors.
Not to divert from the platitudes here, but I’ve been curious about this aspect of counselors sending supporting docs. From what I can tell, D26s counselor seems to have everything loaded into Naviance and when D26 adds a school or maybe when she hits apply, it automatically sends. There’s been almost no delay in her portal seeing all the docs there.
Maybe this is no longer a platitude that you have to get everything in super early because school counselors have to manually send out all supporting docs for each school? Or more likely just school dependent, I suppose.
Definitely school dependent. There are still many HSs that don’t have Scoir/Naviance/Powerschool to interface with common app. Even with these systems, there are always issues that need a counselors attention. Many RD apps will need mid year reports too. My kids’ HS that had dedicated college counselors and used Naviance, had a Dec 1 deadline for all transcript requests for college apps. I assume exceptions were made, but that’s indicative of the necessary administrative effort.
Bigger picture, I was reacting to posts where students were getting help from their counselors over break…sounded like maybe building school lists, brainstorming/editing essays and/or other types of support. That’s not an option for most HS seniors.
I doubt counselors are recommending waiting until the last minute but it’s just the reality.
From my experience, many kids want to go to a couple of schools (especially if they apply ED) but their parents/counselors are recommending they apply to more, just in case. We just let the kids drive the bus because they wanted to be responsible for the entire process and they were both guaranteed auto admit at UConn (although neither wanted to attend but it was a safety).
The reality is many top kids load up on AP’s their senior year because they want to demonstrate rigor. Theey play fall sports. They are in clubs/after school activities. They volunteer. And of course they want to hang out with their friends because they’re seniors.
The last thing they want to do is spend time applying to BC/BU/Babson etc etc because they need to hedge their bets.
And most top performing kids dont want to apply to multiple safeties either. Find a safety you love? Some kids do. I know @ECCA2026 ‘s daughter has one on the top of her list. That’s fantastic. But many kids dont.
Doctors recommend we eat 4 servings of vegetables a day. Most adults dont do that even though we all know that’s what you should do. This is just reality.
Application burnout is real. By the end, many kids hate, hate this process.
I get it and don’t disagree. I was a college counselor. My point remains that help from a HS counselor after ED decisions/before many RD deadlines is not an option for most HS students.
Same. In fact there was a counselor meeting with parents shortly before ED decisions started coming out talking about what to expect and how to handle decisions. One of the slides was a list of good schools that are underapplied to by students from the school. The obvious subtext was that they knew a bunch of students who did not get in ED would be adding schools and they were trying to steer them toward including some good options where kids have success from her high school. It was a long list, and many of D26s schools were on it.
Kids went to a decent public HS of about 500 per class (4 years). There were maybe 5 counselors for all the students, and I think they had their hands full with just getting kids to graduate. They were little help to us (or any kid that aspired to a selective school), but we were fortunate enough that we could hire a private counselor for the older child. The fact though was the minimal college guidance was sufficient for 90% of the students as most college bound kids went into the state school or community college system. The ones that were shooting private generally came from homes with means to hire private counselors. Both kids had all apps at least 90% done by EA/REA decision dates. We had a timeline/work schedule for each kid as far as each app component for each college was concerned. Yes, they are 17 year old’s, but what better time to get them to practice priority time management.
And yet— even in my supposedly “East Coast College crazed “ region, there are LOADS of seniors for whom U Conn, URI, U Mass are PERFECTLY FINE options, are affordable, and they will get in.
So an application to Smith/Holy Cross to keep Mom/Dad happy as alums. Another to Wesleyan, Bowdoin or Bates because the Euro History teacher went there and he’s really cool. Add two or three more because you feel like you should– Conn College or Brandeis if you gravitate towards smallish, or BU, Northeastern if you want the option for large, urban and lively. But then then you’re done.
If your kid is suffering from application burnout, that was a choice, not a requirement. I get that the combination of anxiety and workload can be toxic, but even for the high performers, it’s self-imposed.
Those NJ kids who claim that Rutgers is going to be just like HS so they end up applying to over a dozen colleges which are academically inferior and more expensive than Rutgers? I get it- NJ is a small state. But again- self-imposed.
Ok, I think we are getting far afield from the point of this thread at this point, which is platitudes. To the extent there are recent comments about application burnout, those were not complaints about that issue per se. Rather, they were a response to the self-described cynical take that college counselors uniformly have an incentive to push kids toward ED because it means less work for them. My response was that the ED kids who do not get in are actually the most work for the counselors at D26s high school, so getting more kids to ED does not necessarily mean less work. Some responded that they should have all the apps done before then. There was a response saying, sure, but that’s not real life, a lot of kids don’t despite the advice and app burnout is real. I don’t see anyone arguing that applying to tons of selective colleges is not self-imposed. I don’t see a platitude on that issue either. So, can we please move on and not go down that rabbit hole?
Our HS has 3 counselors for 1200 students, they spend 20 minutes with each student regarding college applications. They do not recommend any schools, even if asked, are told to go on naviance. They really don’t advise students well on course selection.
The impression I have gotten from reading about the process at various places is they are facing a tradeoff between fewer applications but also a more compressed timeframe. So they may do an initial sorting where some are obviously not competitive and will be rejected, some are maybes but they are fine deferring them to RD rather than deliberating a long time, and some are actually possible ED admits. Those then may get more or less the same deliberative process as RD admits.
Of course sometimes that can still be quick–like a recruited athlete with a successful preread may not take much time to admit once they actually apply ED.
Knowing parents, they would often not be happy without more definitive advice.
That being said, every college counselor is an individual and so are parents/kids. Like I became aware at one point the counselors at S24’s HS were sort of making the standard pitch for ED in their group sessions with the kids, and then as I reported before, when it came time to actually discussing our S24 not ED2ing anywhere, his particular counselor was fine with that.
So what I am describing is more maybe a default or standard sort of thing some counselors may say, but if you engage them in a way indicating you actually are comfortable with nuance, risk tradeoffs, and so on, then I am sure many will be happy to discuss things in those terms.
I don’t know if this is universal, but at our school, every senior got a flier from the counseling department with deadlines to turn in requests for transcripts/letters/etc. so they would be submitted by admissions deadlines. The deadlines allow much more time for peak ED and RD deadlines than for other dates, and of course they factor in winter break, so my son had to submit all of his requests for potential RD schools before he heard from his ED school. The system works because it places responsibility on the students to manage the paperwork in a timely manner, and it’s necessary in a relatively large HS like ours with the vast majority of our students college-bound.
By the way, as a sample of what I mean, here is a snippet from the Inside the Yale Admissions Office Podcast. This is in reference to their version of REA and not ED, so take it with a grain of salt. But the nice thing about this source is they are relatively open to talking about these process issues.
The context here is they are talking about how they decide whether to defer or simply reject an early applicant:
MARK: Right, exactly. So full transparency, we struggle with this. It is sometimes really hard for us to deny a student. Because we worry that it’s going to be perceived as, well, you weren’t a realistic candidate, and then that might be perceived particularly in a community as like, oh, no, students like this shouldn’t apply. But it’s really not that simple. Right, we’re trying to make a good prediction about what will be coming through our regular decision pool.
And when we’re making this decision about whether to defer or deny a student, we’re really asking ourselves, OK, what do we think is going to be behind curtain number two when we get tens of thousands of regular decision applicants? And if we have a pretty good sense that even though your application was strong and academically competitive, if we just know that it’s almost certainly not going to emerge, we will go ahead and deny that student.
If there’s any question, though, on really either end– if we say the student is close to being admitted but we don’t know if they’re going to stand out when all those other applications come along, we’ll defer. Similarly, if we’re saying, this looks strong, but we’re not quite sure if it’s going to emerge, but listen, this student might actually stand out depending on what comes in the regular decision pool, a defer is relatively easy for us.
You’ll sometimes hear a committee say, hey, a defer is cheap.
HANNAH: Yeah.
MARK: We can punt this decision until later in the spring with the benefit of more context.
HANNAH: Yeah. And just a reminder, if you are deferred early action, it means your application is strong. It doesn’t mean that there’s some sort of deficit that you need to make up for and submit a whole bunch of extra new materials. It means that your application is strong. We just need a little bit more time.
I have a theory that you want to get in your apps in as soon as possible, ahead of the deadline. I am assuming that readers tackle apps as they come in, more or less, so it is better if you get yours in before the deluge while they are still “fresh” and eager to dive in.
I know two “readers” (seasonal workers) at “highly rejective” colleges. Their first day of work is AFTER the deadline, not before. And the fulltime admissions staff is generally on the road during the fall season.
So I doubt getting the application in early gets it read early. There will likely be a work study student scanning to make sure it’s complete– but that’s about it.
But note that different schools may have different thresholds of “likelihood of being admitted RD” for the purpose of whether to defer or deny a non-admitted ED or EA applicant. Some schools defer many applicants, while others defer few. The signal that the applicant should read from a deferral therefore varies depending on the school.
That is true for rolling admissions schools, which may become more selective as their classes (or popular majors) fill up.
But for non-rolling admissions schools, it does not look like it would matter, as long as the applicant is not trying to submit a minute before midnight while the computers are overloaded with other applicants doing the exact same thing.