Admissions platitudes that annoy you?

[ucbalumnus]

@ECCA2026

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.

MIT, Stanford, and three of the eight Ivy League schools use EA (with restrictions except for MIT), not ED.

[ucbalumnus]

@momofboiler1

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. ; )

What a company considers “elite” may differ from what some other company considers “elite”. A big company hiring for engineering may find HYP to be too small and not worth recruiting at when anyone they make an offer to chooses IB and consulting instead.

Also, there is much more emphasis on recruiting at colleges near the business location(s) in that page than the headline would lead one to believe.

The page also mentions that companies are saying that they have less emphasis on diversity, but does that really indicate any actual change, versus changes in public statements based on prevailing political winds? I.e. maybe they said that they emphasized diversity when Black lives mattered, but now they say nothing about it when doing so is targeted by hostility, even if they did not actually make any real change in hiring practices.

[ECCA2026]

Good point. Thank you for clarifying that. I was not being precise in part because of my focus in responding. But the advice the strongly competitive kids at D26’s school get for the highly rejecting restrictive EA schools is the same as ED, do it if first choice due to advantage. I get that the trade offs are different (and for some high achieving students are arguably worse, but I digress). And I initially included MIT for a different point (the high proportion of kids at D26s school that are going to what are often coveted highly rejectives), and lost the plot a bit.

[ECCA2026]

@blossom

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 never claimed that ED was universally helpful. To the contrary, I was responding to your prior assertion that seemed to imply there was universally no admissions advantage to ED.

And your point about most kids getting deferred at highly rejectives instead of outright denied because it advantages the college (which I agree is true where it happens), tells us nothing about whether a portion of those who actually get into the highly rejectives ED received an admissions bump in ED vs if they waited for RD. That is an entirely different issue.

[sbinaz]

@jym626

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.

Agreed.

Life is a marathon, not a sprint.

[sbinaz]

@NiceUnparticularMan

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.

This happens at our high school a lot. Every year, there are students who, along with pressure from their parents, ignore the sound advice from the counselors and they apply to all top 25 colleges/universities…they do so with an underlying assumption of “That may apply to everybody else, but I’m unique/special and I’m going to get in.” They have no idea that there are 10’s of thousands of other students just like them all competing for the same small # of spots. Many of them get rejected everywhere but the in-state publics they applied to (applied to begrudgingly).

[sbinaz]

@blossom

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!)

That’s not our school’s counselors’ stance on ED. For example, our HS’s counselors, I think, actively discourage from applying ED. They talk a lot with parents and students about the terms & conditions that come with applying ED, how you shouldn’t apply ED if you aren’t sure that the school is affordable, etc.

[NiceUnparticularMan]

@ECCA2026

I’m not sure I agree that yield protection in RD is the only time where strongly competitive students benefit

So to give an example of what I mean, Rochester is a popular university in my circles, and at least for kids from our S24’s HS, they are known not to yield protect. Instead, if they get a highly competitive applicant RD, they will admit them and usually offer them merit, which is what happened with my S24. And that helps explain why they are popular in my circles, because they are an unproblematic Target or even Likely depending on the kid in question.

In circumstances like that, I don’t think there is in fact any admissions benefit to such a kid applying to Rochester ED. Of course if they love Rochester and want to be one and done, that’s a very concrete benefit. I just don’t think it is associated with any boost.

Universities like Brown, say, also basically state this is how it works for them. I believe them.

Universities like Chicago, in contrast, say nothing like what Brown says. And as explained, I very much believe Chicago yield protects, in the sense I suggested.

Tufts is another university with a reputation for yield protecting in my circles, and I believe that is true for them as well.

OK, so my feeling is if you are looking at Brown and Rochester, at least from my HS, you in fact don’t have to worry about missing out on some sort of ED boost even if you are highly competitive applicant. If you are a highly competitive applicant to Chicago or Tufts, then maybe you do have to worry about possible yield protection, and ED is a pretty decisive way to eliminate that worry.

Of course then you have to be truly OK with being committed to Chicago or Tufts. Because if in fact you are highly competitive for such colleges, their yield models are probably quite right you will have other highly desirable options, if you want them.

[NiceUnparticularMan]

@ECCA2026

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?

You didn’t ask me, but I think the main point of EA or ED was and remains that if you get an early admissions from your favorite college which you know will be comfortably affordable, you can shut down the process and just enjoy the rest of your senior year.

The idea of using it tactically to improve your admissions chances has always to me sounded like a potential misuse. Not always, I think in certain cases that can be true, indeed you might actually be told that is true, in which case it probably is true. But when people are merely speculating that if the ED admit rate is higher, that must mean applying ED provides a generic boost enjoyed equally by all applicants, well, that never sounded plausible to me. And I don’t really see any evidence to believe that is true.

[ucbalumnus]

@NiceUnparticularMan

But when people are merely speculating that if the ED admit rate is higher, that must mean applying ED provides a generic boost enjoyed equally by all applicants, well, that never sounded plausible to me. And I don’t really see any evidence to believe that is true.

The common assumption that “lower admit rate” = “more selective” without considering the strength of applicant pools also means that opinions about admission selectivity are often formed without full context. This can be useful for college marketing purposes, including the marketing of ED.

[ECCA2026]

@NiceUnparticularMan

But when people are merely speculating that if the ED admit rate is higher, that must mean applying ED provides a generic boost enjoyed equally by all applicants, well, that never sounded plausible to me. And I don’t really see any evidence to believe that is true.

This is an easy statement for me to agree with. In fact, such speculation would fit nicely into the annoying platitudes category that this thread is about. The conversation I have been engaging in on the ED topic, has been pushback on the seemingly opposite platitude that some seem to be promoting in this conversation - that ED has no admissions chances benefit for any of the very competitive applicants who use it. Of course it does not benefit all who use it. But, I cannot fathom that it benefits none of those who are relying on their very sophisticated college counselors who have access to the student’s data and their school’s data and are telling certain kids it will up their odds at certain schools.

It is also true that the published differential in ED admit rate includes a disproportionate share of hooked applicants, thus any boost for a particular unhooked applicant is almost always going to be way less than that published number. It is also true that not all kids have the same percentage chance of getting into a particular highly rejective. Some kids have way less than a 5% chance to get into Brown for example, while other individuals in the pool have a way better chance than that.

I guess my main point in engaging with all these folks on this particular topic was that I was not buying the platitude that ED universally provides no admissions bump to unhooked applicants. For me to believe otherwise would take some serious conspiratorial thinking based on the information I have.

[NiceUnparticularMan]

@ucbalumnus

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.

Pretty much. Like if Tufts’s yield model thinks this applicant is probably getting into multiple higher ranked colleges in the Northeast, Tufts’s yield model might say don’t bother.

Again, what I meant to be doing is distinguishing Tufts from, say, Rochester, where Rochester might instead admit and offer merit.

I note this also basically explains why some colleges have REA/SCEA and not ED. Basically, they don’t NEED to yield protect because they get great yield out of RD anyway. They truly are mostly offering REA/SCEA as a courtesy–you are ready for an early answer, we’ll give you one, unless of course we choose to defer you, in which case oh well for you. But we don’t need to bind you to that early answer because we know we will get the student body we want even if you decide not to take that offer.

[NiceUnparticularMan]

@ucbalumnus

This can be useful for college marketing purposes, including the marketing of ED.

Yep, and not to be cynical, but clearly ED is an extremely one-sided deal in favor of the college. So, sometimes they actually point out that there is no advantage, which is nice of them. Other times they say there is an advantage, and I believe them if so (although interestingly I have seen this more with rolling admissions or EA that works like rolling than actual ED). But in some cases they basically just reference the higher ED admissions rate, without actually promising anything, which to me reads as inviting people to draw an inference that they know isn’t actually valid.

[NiceUnparticularMan]

@ECCA2026

The conversation I have been engaging in on the ED topic, has been pushback on the seemingly opposite platitude that some seem to be promoting in this conversation - that ED has no admissions chances benefit for any of the very competitive applicants who use it. Of course it does not benefit all who use it. But, I cannot fathom that it benefits none of those who are relying on their very sophisticated college counselors who have access to the student’s data and their school’s data and are telling certain kids it will up their odds at certain schools.

Agreed, so basically the model I am using, if you will, is sometimes ED might help some applicants either for what we have described as yield protection reasons, or for first mover reasons, but it is not always perfectly clear if either of those circumstances might apply to an individual applicant.

The cynical bit is to suggest that a college counselor talking with an applicant where it is not known whether they might benefit has incentives to just support them applying ED anyway. The reasoning being if the applicant isn’t happy with their admissions results, they might blame the counselor for discouraging ED, whereas there is much less risk if they do apply ED, because if it doesn’t work then it isn’t the counselor’s fault.

[ucbalumnus]

@NiceUnparticularMan

The cynical bit is to suggest that a college counselor talking with an applicant where it is not known whether they might benefit has incentives to just support them applying ED anyway. The reasoning being if the applicant isn’t happy with their admissions results, they might blame the counselor for discouraging ED, whereas there is much less risk if they do apply ED, because if it doesn’t work then it isn’t the counselor’s fault.

Also, for the college counselor, an ED admission means that the work with the student is done.

[CFP]

Do admissions officers spend more time on ED applications? Do you get a more thorough review because there are fewer applicants?

[ECCA2026]

@NiceUnparticularMan

The cynical bit is to suggest that a college counselor talking with an applicant where it is not known whether they might benefit has incentives to just support them applying ED anyway. The reasoning being if the applicant isn’t happy with their admissions results, they might blame the counselor for discouraging ED, whereas there is much less risk if they do apply ED, because if it doesn’t work then it isn’t the counselor’s fault.

Why do they have to either encourage ED or discourage it in such circumstances, why can’t they just tell the student/family what they know, say it is unclear if ED will help or not for their kid at this school, and let the kid/family decide if they want to ED or not and just support that decision either way? Seems less risk of blame than leading folks on with untruths.

[ECCA2026]

True, but at least at my kid’s school, it seems the most scramble tastic work for the counselors are the kids who ED but did not get in, and are now working with them over break to pull together revised lists, new added schools, etc.

The non-ED kids with lists that have been set (or close to it) since EA apps went in seem way less work than those kids, especially over winter break for counselors.

[CFP]

Yes because this is real world and not hypothetical devils advocate. Both my kids applied ED to highly selective schools with one safety, one target, and a couple of EA reaches.

Had they not gotten in to their ED choices, it wouldve been exactly that. It wouldve been a scramble to get a bunch more apps in before the RD deadline.

Im sure there are some kids who applied to multiple schools but many just want to wait and see, especially since the first semester of senior year is so busy.

[ucbalumnus]

@CFP

Yes because this is real world and not hypothetical devils advocate. Both my kids applied ED to highly selective schools with one safety and one target.

Had they not gotten in to their ED choices, it wouldve been exactly that. It wouldve been a scramble to get a bunch more apps in before the RD deadline.

Isn’t it commonly advised to have the additional applications ready to go if ED (or EA) does not result in admission, if there are schools that the student would only apply to if ED (or EA) does not result in admission? Then the “scramble” would be just paying the application fees and pressing submit.