I wouldn’t worry too much, and if she is devoted to any of the SCEA schools (please visit if she hasn’t already!), might as well apply to one EA. She does have great stats.
If you are from CA, taking a swing on the East Coast would be very important. It is quite a lifestyle change. Did she randomly pick Yale, Duke, and Harvard based on their reputations?
If the OP’s daughter goes to a “very strong” private school in Northern California that regularly sends graduates to top colleges in the East (and has students doing research with Stanford professors), I would not be as quick as many people here to dismiss the college counselor’s advice so cavalierly. She ought to have a very good idea of which students are likely to be accepted at which colleges. She also knows which students are applying where, and what their letters of recommendation say. And, yes, part of her job is probably managing her charges so that all of them don’t apply early to the same college and compete head-to-head. That’s part of the deal at those very strong private schools, and bucking the system tends not to improve the outcomes.
We don’t know whether one of the other top students – one who IS #1 or #2, and maybe one whose application might possibly look even more impressive than the OP’s child’s – is completely set on applying SCEA to Yale. But the counselor knows. So if the OP’s child is up in the air between Yale and Duke or Northwestern, it could make all kinds of sense for her to get a shove in the direction of one of the latter.
I also agree with @panpacific that this is the sort of choice lots of ambitious high school seniors have to make, and they are perfectly capable of making it and living with it proudly. In the real world, the similarities between Yale and Duke are far more significant than their differences, and it’s not irrational at all for a kid to decide that her preference for Yale is not worth giving up a meaningful advantage in securing a place a Duke. (I will add that most of what I know about college admissions strategy I learned from my daughter, who made a similar, very thoughtful decision, which at first puzzled her parents, but which worked out just great.)
Personally, my instinct in this case is that a Yale SCEA application would be a lottery ticket, and there would be a pretty high probability of admission to either Duke or Northwestern ED. Yes, she could apply RD to Duke and Northwestern if Yale defers or rejects her, but she would not be anything close to a lock at either college RD. There’s a real advantage in applying ED there, and no advantage at all in applying SCEA to Yale. I don’t have any doubt that someone attracted to Yale could have a good experience at Duke; I’ve seen it happen plenty. (I’m a little more confused by the kid being interested in Northwestern and unwilling to apply to Penn. Those are two very similar universities.)
I know I might’ve made it sound discouraging. Personally however We actually had good experience with SCEA. My kid just recently was in a similar situation as OP’s daughter. She eventually decided to go for SCEA of a high each school and was deferred. But in regular round, she not only got in the school she SCEA’ed but also got in a couple of other Ivy League schools and a few top schools including Duke. The major factor that contributed to the EA decision was the realization that she’d be happy attending any of those top colleges on her list in the end. Had she had a hard time letting go one of the schools she could’ve ED’ed to secure, I would’ve discouraged her from SCEA. If you have already fallen in love with Duke, then Yale might be like a fantasy. Is it worth the risk of losing your love for a fantasy? Not a great analogy I know, but you get the point.
Here are some things to think about:
May I be a cynic? I think private school admissions counselors are under immense pressure to get kids into their top choice. Is anyone else in her class applying early to Yale? Could the counselor be pushing your D towards another school to help the other student and/or her own results stats?
If your D doesn’t love Duke, another approach is to check out some of the EA schools that are NOT SCEA (single choice early action.) Would she be happy at UChicago, Georgetown, Boston College, University of Virginia or one of the other EA colleges that let you apply to more than one EA college? If so, apply to a couple of them and with luck she’ll have an acceptance at one or more by December.
Some of you are over-thinking the college counselor’s intention. They always discourage non-hooked students from applying to HYP etc. and especially for SCEA. Typically, these students would have a good chance securing a top school by ED, which is why they are competitive for HYP. To counselors, ED is a much more efficient way to achieve great results.
And I think OP’s daughter loves Duke, almost as much as Yale. She doesn’t need to find a new love.
I thought that the OP’s daughter had expressed reservations about the social atmosphere at Duke.
Thanks to everyone for these super helpful answers. Marian, that is right – concerned about the social life focused around sororities and sports. The academics there look great, but she is definitely not interested in Greek life. Otherwise Duke would be a perfect choice.
I do think that the counselor is trying to maximize kids getting in early and has said that while she is a great candidate for Yale, that it is more of a crap shoot than Duke. But I genuinely think that he thinks her personality is more of a match at Yale than Duke, so he is also conflicted.
All this advice is very helpful – there is no right answer.
Duke really isn’t as “fratty” as the media sometimes makes it out to be. You don’t have to join a Greek organization in order to make friends and have a good time (just like you don’t need to join an eating club to enjoy your time at Princeton).
In the lessons learned forum, a worthwhile read about a student who applied ED to Vanderbilt to secure a spot, and has regrets.
My wife applied ED to a good school, got in, and 35+ years later still wonders how things might have been different if she had had the option of applying to Bowdoin. OP’s daughter likes Duke, but loves Yale, and that’s what SCEA is for. Someone mentioned UVA; well, there’s nothing to preclude application to UVA and Yale EA (single choice EA doesn’t preclude publics).
https://studentaffairs.duke.edu/greek/frequently-asked-questions/faqs-students indicates that 40% of women are in sororities and 30% of men are in fraternities at Duke (overall 34%). But note that first semester frosh are not eligible to join, so that really means that 46% of eligible women and 34% of men (overall 39%) participate.
This appears to be a relatively high participation rate, although not the majority like at some other schools.
High frat participation rate or not, “independent” kids can and do have good experiences at Duke, including socially, and tend to love it just as fiercely as the frat boys/girls do. At least that’s what I have seen. It may matter that Duke’s student body has social/academic demographics (and size) of the student bodies at the Ivies and similar colleges. That means that there’s a certain homogeneity in the student body, and less of a social gap between the median frat boy and his non-frat classmates. So membership in a fraternity or sorority may mean a lot less than it does at some larger, more diverse colleges. That would be consistent with how I have seen or understood the frat system to work at other elite private colleges.
I think private school counselors do a great job of “un-bunching” which in my mind, is the key (and often underrated) value-add.
At our large public HS, the top kids end up bunching- if Stanford is suddenly in vogue, everyone wants to go to Stanford. Another year it’s Princeton (and even the double legacies from Harvard are suddenly in love with Princeton.) Go down a level of selectivity and it’s even worse. The public HS counselors take an attitude of “let the chips fall where they may”.
At the local private schools- based on what I hear from parents- this is absolutely not the case. The counselors work hard (sometimes behind the scenes and sometimes quite overtly) “spreading the love”. If the top three girls in the class are all applying to Yale, the fourth girl will be encouraged to fall in love with another school. If every athlete is gunning for Dartmouth or Williams (none are good enough to be recruited- so these are just the “athletic, outdoorsy types”) the counselors will be quickly setting up an informational day with a recent alum from another college with good athletics.
Is this fair? I don’t know. But you don’t hear about dozens of kids getting shut out from one of their top choices, even though not every kid ends up at their absolute favorite college. But at the macro level- almost everyone ends up at one of their top choices, can talk about “being in love” (as mistaken as that is) with their college, and peace reigns over the land. Which at these small independent HS’s is surely important. You don’t want the Val (heading to Harvard) and the Sal (heading to Stanford) spending all of senior year glaring at each other.
So to the OP- don’t underestimate the strong likelihood that the other kids applying to Yale have some secret sauce you don’t know about… phenomenal out of the classroom activities, awards, interests, etc. Therefore- the strong encouragement to apply to Duke and get it out of the way. Even strong candidates can get overshadowed by a more accomplished classmate- or two or three or four. So rather than have your D biting her nails in March, the GC is signaling that Yale is unlikely given the other students applying from her school.
That’s my interpretation of what you’ve posted. If your D has doubts about Duke than she shouldn’t be applying early- imho- but that’s a different issue of the GC’s take on the matter.
Think about it this way - your child needs to get into one college and that is it. That college should be one on their list of preferred colleges. But they can’t think of it the same as 1 or none, it is more like dating where if you don’t go out with the captain of the football team or the head cheerleader, you move on to someone else. And that someone else might be the best thing that ever happened to you.
There is a balance between someone’s “dream but super reach” school and “dream but difficult for everyone to get into” school. The OP’s daughter has a “dream and pretty good chance of getting in” school, which is a good situation to be in.
I just don’t think the OP’s daughter has a huge risk of not getting into Duke if she doesn’t apply early to Duke. The concern would be to avoid ED applications if Duke is probably going to be her first choice. SCEA, EA, it’s just extra work for the OP’s daughter to apply. Would she go to Yale if she got in, over Duke? Would it be more I got into Yale for her, or I am going to Yale!!!?
GC’s are only so good, and have only so much bandwidth. My son’s GC supported his applications 100%, even when he was looking at Ivies for a short time and his GPA was just not there. To me, it was helpful to have support and help my son work through the process himself, instead of telling my son “what are you, crazy?” for some of the most competitive choices on his list.
With her credentials, she will have great choices as long as she casts a wide enough net. I think there are a lot of schools in the zone of Northwestern, Tufts, Vanderbilt, and others that would probably work great for her. Yale and Duke are longer shots, but she’s a reasonable candidate for them as well. Here’s how I would work this out:
At Duke the greek life is very different than other schools. Fraternities are housed in dorm sections on quads, alongside other upperclassman housing. There are also other dorms where groups of various interests outside of greek life can live together as well. Because the fraternities are integrated on campus with all of the other housing, there is a much more collaborative feel to it, as opposed to being in separate houses off campus.
Sororities don’t have housing together, they gather in other ways - this leads to a different feel to the whole experience. While participation rates are statistically material at Duke, it doesn’t feel like other schools with similar rates of participation. If your D is serious about applying, and serious about finding out whether it’s the right ED school for her, she should talk to current students about their experiences both in and out of greek life to better understand the social experience there.
The admission process is so opaque and random, it’s really impossible to predict an outcome at schools like duke and yale. I think the best you can do is educate/guide your child on potential strategies/outcomes and let them choose.
fwiw, here’s a data point for op. We’re friends with a family with a daughter with similar grades from one of the top private schools in her state. . Her first choice is yale, duke is her 3rd choice. Her parents and her college counselor are pushing her towards ed, perhaps at duke, she wants to try for yale. Her parents concern is that if she misses the ed round, the applicant pool will be much stronger for RD. The kicker is she has a 2380 sat score.
I agree with blossom that private schools do a good job at “unbunching”. However, in the case of our friends, the college counselor is strongly discouraging yale. Why? I can think of lots of reasons, most of them don’t paint the most positive picture of what goes on at private schools with respect to “unbunching”.
I don’t think it’s opaque at all. If historically, Yale accepts 3-5 kids from a particular HS (or 8-10, or whatever the right number is), the likelihood that this year they will accept 20 is zero. Yale already knows Bronx HS of Science, or Boston Latin and the other magnet type or strong public HS’s in the country. And they certainly know the private schools which have historically sent kids to Yale. It’s a strategic priority for admissions to learn more about the very smart, super motivated kids at the HS’s that DON’T send to Yale. So digging deeper into a pool that they already know- not happening.
Therefore, when a guidance counselor at a school which sends kids to Yale all of a sudden starts pushing a school which is not Yale- you have VERY transparent evidence that a number of kids stronger than yours are applying early to Yale.
The guidance counselor cannot come out and say, “you have a 2380 SAT score, but one of the kids applying has a 2300 SAT AND is premiering a concerto which she composed at Carnegie Hall in January”, or “one of the kids applying has a 2290 SAT AND is co-author of a paper being presented at the International Aids Conference this year”.
What parents think is meaningful at this level- an extra 80 points- isn’t meaningful, depending on who else from your HS is applying.
So not opaque and not random. If my kid were strongly being encouraged by a savvy GC (not a clueless one, who specializes in the local directionals and the states teacher colleges who has never helped a kid with an elite admissions strategy before) to apply to Duke- I’d be listening really hard, while letting my kid make the final call.
There are always MORE kids applying to Yale than Yale will admit from any pool. No matter how they manage, even the best prep schools cannot make sure whoever they “allow” to apply to Yale will get in - far from that. I believe college counselors in general have a guideline to follow, which is to only not discourage the high achieving students WITH certain hooks to apply SCEA because most others will be declined or deferred. Counselors know that as a fact based on their experience. They rarely “highly encourage” anyone to sign up for the SCEA lottery anyway. It is a risk and an opportunity only the student can decide to take. In the regular round, it’s a different ball game. They will manage to make sure everyone has sufficient safeties and not to flock to one particular top school. What they are trying to avoid is the “winners take all” outcome. How much control the school will take over how many colleges to apply and how many can be reaches etc. can vary.
The general trend many of us have witnessed is that hypothetically assuming personal preference being a neutral factor, the strongest and most confident students choose to apply SCEA or not to participate in the early round at all. They will take time and apply to a bunch of schools so they have options. ED is about reaching high because ED applicants have a leg up and sometime a significant one.