And to add to your fine point- the “buzz” that excelling at EC’s can overcome weak academics should be put to pasture.
If you are the next Yo Yo Ma, it’s likely fine that you took college prep bio and not AP bio. And it’s also likely OK that you opted for AB Calc and not BC Calc.
But the parents who believe that the EC’s can “raise the dead” are usually not raising the next Yo Yo Ma. They’re raising a strong tennis player (terrific JV material) or have poured tens of thousands of dollars into gymnastics training (Stanford loves gymnasts, right?) or have been driving a kid back and forth from a research lab all year so the kid can claim “was instrumental to the success of a research grant devoted to cutting edge oncology interventions”. The kid WAS instrumental– without the careful note-taking and supply ordering and data entry of overtime hours of the techs and coffee fetching, no research lab could function.
This is also the reason why many top students want to apply to highly selective colleges. Oftentimes, their best friends are the ones they’ve had the same AP classes for years, complaining about BC Calculus, Physics. They’ve shared HS leadership roles together, spent countless hours on community service, played on the same sports teams.
Sure, every college has them but these super achievers make up the vast majority of the student body at highly selective schools. Many top HS students want to be around overacheivers like themselves. That’s their people.
My concern is when the parents are pushing these kids to the breaking point. There are many who may buckle under the pressure, not be able to or want to maintain the level of intensity once at college, choose to decide to play too much once at college or simply crash and burn. I’ve sadly seen too many crash and burn once at college, for a variety of reasons. So yea, while sharing to these families what the elite schools may be looking for, we may also not be doing them any favors.
So just for clarity sake, I think sometimes there are three different categories to keep in mind, what I might call uncompetitive, marginally competitive, and strongly competitive. I do think if a highly selective college practices yield protection in RD, then the strongly competitive may benefit from applying ED. I believe the uncompetitive do not benefit and are just rejected.
The most controversial thing I think is the marginally competitive probably mostly do not benefit either. I think these are the sorts of applicants who typically get deferred (if not rejected), rather than accepted ED. I generally think the existence and use of the deferral option is rather underappreciated when people are gaming out what colleges do with ED.
I also think counselors are often in a tough spot where that sort of nuance might not be particularly appreciated, and the safe thing for them to do is just recommend both the marginally competitive and the strongly competitive consider applying ED. If ED doesn’t work out for the marginally competitive, including if they are deferred, well obviously that is not the counselor’s fault. If instead the marginally competitive applicant applies RD and is rejected, as you note they may then believe applying ED could have made a difference, and blame the counselor.
I really don’t mean to sound conspiratorial, I just think it is pretty obvious that recommending against ED is a risky thing for counselors. Whereas I can just say whatever I think.
That is an extremely valid concern and I really struggle with it in general in forums like this. On the one hand, I think often the misinformation about highly selective college admissions can lead to even worse outcomes for kids, so I want to try to help parents be better informed. But then I am sort of buying into the whole idea of studying what these colleges want and forcing kids to conform, which I don’t support at all.
In the end, I tend to come back to thinking that pointing parents to things like MIT’s Applying Sideways posts, the Inside the Yale Admissions Office Podcast, or so on does more good than harm, because these sources have a basically humane message for parents and kids. But I don’t think that makes your concerns a non-issue, and I am constantly thinking about these issues as I participate in discussions here.
My largely unverifiable feeling is that while a lot of the time such counsel ends up being ignored, every once in a while there is a kid or parent who is actually relieved to learn that highly selective college admissions does not work like they heard from peers, social media, or so on.
Or perhaps I am deluding myself. But I do feel like it happens sometimes.
Also, this is FAR easier for some individuals than others - some kids find it easier to seek out friends than others…even if those “people” are there. Kids with anxiety, or who are simply introverted, may find this very hard. The first year of school is hard enough with lots of transitions, but the platitude makes it sound relatively to find one’s people. It can take years of trying…why if there is a school where “your people” are easy to find? Yes, it is a learning experience, but personally don’t think everything needs to be hard in life….(that said, I don’t think everything should be made to be very easy either).
I’m not sure I agree that yield protection in RD is the only time where strongly competitive students benefit, unless if perhaps what you mean by that is that they admit a significant percentage of the class ED. The most competitive students at my D26s high school (where a majority of the students go to schools with sub-25% admission rate and a full quarter of last year’s class went to Ivy League or Stanford/MIT), are generally encouraged to apply ED if they have a first choice. Roughly 1/2 the class in her school is typically done with admissions after ED round. As her counselors tell it, though the best students at her school are strongly competitive at the 3-5% admission schools, there are way more such students than slots, and their odds are better in ED. If the strongest students at her school did not benefit from ED, there would be no reason for her counselors to encourage it. Instead, they would do what they did with D26, which is tell her that she has a really good shot at all of her top choices, they were confident that she would get into one, likely more, so she did not need to ED unless she was dying to go to a particular one of them. But, D26 was not applying to any of the sub-10% admission rate schools.
Other than that aspect, I agree with a lot of what you said.
In my experience, counselors don’t encourage ED because there’s an actual, quantifiable benefit to the student. They encourage ED because it makes their lives MUCH easier in an age when kids sometimes apply to 25 colleges; it means the “50% of our students get into their first choice college” bragging rights is more or less accurate; it means they have the bandwidth to take calls from the parents of juniors anxious that there has been no official college meeting yet (it’s only January of Junior year people- slowdown!)
I remember the year Penn went “public” with the fact that if you are a legacy, they will only consider it as a factor if you apply ED. That set off a feeding frenzy of the kid rumor mill “YOU HAVE TO APPLY TO PENN ED or you won’t have a chance”. Penn never said that legacies who apply RD won’t get in (and I know a few who did); Penn never said that apply ED or kiss Penn goodbye. Just that the very light touch on the scale which legacy provided would go away if a legacy applied RD. But the rumors persist….
Maybe counselors have hard data that supports an ED admissions advanatge, especially at feeder type schools, but as a parent, I have always emphasized the value of optionality for my kids and kids of friends/relatives who ask for my opinion.
I think ED is fine for a high stats kid who knows where they want to go and can afford it. I think using REA/EA/rolling is a better strategy in terms of optimizing application selection. Whether or not Princeton is your first choice, getting rejected, deferred or admitted gives you valuable feedback on the relative strength of your application. At the same time if you EA/rolling some public, you hopefully will establish a safety fallback and if you are rejected, you better rethink your list and possibly the essays/LoR’s in your application package.
So your take seems to be that there are zero admissions benefits for kids by applying ED? If so, why should any student rationally apply ED then?
I admit my experience and context is limited, but I strongly disagree with your purely cynical take on the reasons college counselors encourage ED. And, in my kid’s context it is hard to argue that most of the kids ED admitted into Ivy, MIT, Stanford are not picking their first choice school. Some, sure but not most.
Based on my experience, I’m not willing to assert that counselors generally are not looking out for their students best interest when they make recommendations. That is not a take I can sign onto.
I agree having options is a great approach for the vast majority of people and support that advice. But, the notion that ED confers zero admissions advantage at any of these schools is just hard to buy into. It seems it would have to mean all the counselors (school and private) who encourage it for their students are giving them completely faulty advice. Virtually, everyone knows you give up optionally and ability to price compare if you ED. If there is zero admissions chances advantage, then there would be no good reason for anyone to ED at most highly selective schools.
I agree that in most situations it is a non-zero advantage, but I also think the advantage varies by institution. The ones that are very yield conscious are going to give ED a bigger boost than those who are less so. A good indication of this is the percent of admits who are ED, is it 20% or closer to 50%.
There are other reasons to ED than just a boost. Getting in creates certainly and fewer apps to complete (for both the student and the GC). It also can provide some feedback on the strength of the app.
There are admissions advantages for some applicants but not for all. A kid who is statistically on the margin for admissions is not likely to see an advantage to ED. There is zero risk for the college in waitlisting the kid and then re-evaluating in light of the entire admissions pool. And I believe that guidance counselors want the best for their students-
AND would be happy to have a less crazy January/February. These are not incompatible goals.
I know a young person who was admitted early to an HYP without applying. Had been part of the John’s Hopkins SET pool (students of exceptional talent if I’m remembering the acronym correctly). There had been a news story about some math problem he’d solved– – and the adcom at the college saw the story which referenced the HS, called the HS and told the principal “We want him. Can someone forward us the social security number so we can set up an admissions file for him?”
For students like this- whether highly accomplished intellectually, musically, artistically, etc. there is an advantage to applying early. The college gets what it wants; the student gets what he or she wants. For the “average good student” who is hoping that applying early is going to allow him or her to jump up a notch competitively– unlikely.
But we’re talking about HYP etc. Would early help at Muhlenberg, Skidmore, Denison, Lawrence, Beloit– fine schools all, but not as competitive at the highly rejectives? Yes. But mixing these pools together and confidently asserting that applying early is universally helpful in admissions- There is no evidence for that. At most of the highly rejectives, the most likely outcome of an ED application is deferral. Ever wonder why? That preserves optionality for the college, not for your kid.
I think the “elite schools” title is click bait since the first two colleges on the list of target schools for recruiting from GE were Purdue and Auburn. Not what people here on CC think of when it comes to “elite” schools. ; )
That said, we do see in our circle the trend for companies to zero in on a smaller targeted list of schools for recruiting purposes and we’ve seen first hand the benefit of in person college recruitment and interviewing.
Perhaps statement by @NiceUnparticularMan would make more sense if we replace “strongly competitive” with “overqualified”. I.e. an “overqualified” student may appear to the admissions readers that they are using the school as a “safety” or “backup” behind some other more selective schools, so they may assume that the “overqualified” applicant will not matriculate if admitted – in that case, the school may reject or waitlist the applicant to protect yield. But if the “overqualified” applicant applied ED, that signals that they will matriculate if admitted.