Brutally honest chance me for Northwestern and WashU ED + other RD [3.9, 34 ACT, bus/econ]

Chance Me / Match Me
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If the NPC asked about the additional home, then that should be a decent estimate.

If the additional home is 100% paid for and then you sell it, that could be a wash in the NPC…meaning you could get the same result if you enter a 450K second home asset (completely paid for) or cash. Run these scenarios in the NPC to make sure (some schools that use CSS could assess cash differently than a second home asset. FAFSA will assess the second home value or cash in the same way.)

Anyhow, if WashU becomes a clear first choice and the NPC is affordable, I wouldn’t hesitate to apply ED.

I will give some thought to safety/target schools that could get to budget.

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That is not inconsistent with what I wrote. There are a couple important things to understand.

First, hooked applicants can make up a significant portion of the ED pool, and so you would have to back them out. I note Northwestern is a Big 10 sports university despite being a midsize private (unlike most Big 10s). So Northwestern probably has similar numbers of recruited athletes, which means they take up a higher percentage of enrollment slots. And those people are usually encouraged or perhaps required to apply ED.

Then second, the unhooked ED and RD pools are not random samples drawn from the same population. So, it is entirely possibly the unhooked ED pool simply contains a higher percentage of competitive applications and a lower percentage of uncompetitive applications than the RD pool.

Indeed, this is a complex theory in its own, but I generally think the admit rate among truly competitive unhooked domestic applicants remains like 15-25% even at highly selective colleges. I think what drives down their overall acceptance rates are basically uncompetitive applicants treating them like lottery tickets, plus increasingly Internationals, at least when they need aid (or at need blind colleges, where full pay Internationals also seem to drive down acceptance rates).

OK, so when a college like Northwestern or WashU reports an ED acceptance rate that is in that 15-25% sort of range, I don’t think you need any sort of generic ED “boost” to explain that. I think you just need a combination of hooked applicants and then not as many unqualified applicants (or perhaps Internationals or Internationals with need) applying ED.

Of course I can’t entirely rule out that sometimes there are some unhooked applicants benefiting, say due to the practice known as yield protection. But it doesn’t have to be all of them benefiting. It could just be a small additional fraction, with most unhooked ED applicants getting no benefit at all (including basically all the ones rejected or deferred).

Did they actually say they are doing this? Or is this something people are inferring they are doing because a high percentage of their enrolled class ends up coming from ED admits?

Because the latter observation does not imply the former. The thing people seem to overlook is ED admits have extremely high yields (something like 97% from data I have seen). RD yields, even at very selective colleges, are much lower. Like assuming a 97% ED yield rate, in the 2023-24 CDS I am looking at, it appears Northwestern had something like a 38% RD yield rate. It is a great university, but RD admits to Northwestern will typically have some other great offers as well, and they don’t all pick Northwestern.

OK, so they admitted 1174 people ED, and got approximately 1139 ED yields. They admitted 2565 people RD, so a lot more, but only got approximately 972 RD yields. So more ED enrollees than RD enrollees, but not necessarily because they “reserved” those 1139 spots for ED. Rather it just worked out that way, because the applicants they wanted to enroll out of ED yielded at much higher rates than the applicants they wanted out of RD.

Again, I don’t think this means ED is always a bad idea, I just don’t think it provides a generic “boost”. And so it isn’t a substitute for a good list strategy, which leads me to . . .

Given your interests, I would suggest you take a look at Rochester. Great all around university, very flexible curriculum structure which is good for combining things, and they have a pretty robust merit program.

I think you might also benefit from checking out some additional Jesuit colleges besides Georgetown (ND is Catholic but not Jesuit). They generally fit your criteria, and are often in major metros and very well-networked.

BC is the next one a lot of people consider, and you probably should too, but it is a very tough admit these days, including because of the general popularity of Boston.

So some others you might consider would include Fordham (in NYC), Loyola Marymount (LA), Santa Clara (Bay Area), and Loyola Chicago (obviously Chicago). Marquette (Milwaukee) and Saint Louis (obvious) might also be worth considering.

Obviously check the NPCs, but outside of BC, I think merit is a realistic possibility for the others.

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The number of ED admits that a school chooses to give in any given year is well considered and intentional. So yes, WashU intentionally admitted ED applicants to fill 2/3 of the class (at least for Class of 2028, 2024/25 CDS here.)

Schools that meet full need like WashU yield closer to 100% of ED admits than do ED schools that don’t meet full need. When an ED school moves to RD, admissions know exactly how many spots in the class remain, based on ED admits/enrollees (which again was planned in advance.) Then, admissions grosses up the number of RD enrollees they need by taking into account their predicted RD yield and admit accordingly. Things did not just ‘work out this way.’

I would encourage OP to apply ED if they have a clear first choice AND the NPC is affordable (assuming the NPC asked about real estate holdings in addition to a primary home.)

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So obviously I disagree.

I think every college with ED has to consider who they actually get applying ED. If they get a lot of people they like, the sort they would want RD anyway, then they may enroll a lot of students through ED. But as soon as they get to the point with the remaining ED applicants that they are sure they can do better waiting for RD, I think they reject those. And I think somewhere in between, when they are not sure either way if they could do better RD, they start deferring those ED applicants instead.

This is consistent with what I have seen AO says. It is also consistent with things we can see.

Like, not a lot of people pay attention to the not-most-popular colleges that have ED, but they do have it as well sometimes. An example I like to look at is Rochester (AS&E, so not the music school).

In their last CDS, Rochester reported 527/1385 for ED stats, so 38% ED admit rate. Overall AS&E stats were 8150/20307, so 40%. This means the RD rate was barely higher than the ED rate–in fact still within rounding of 40%.

OK, this means Rochester probably enrolled around 43% of their class ED. And it means their RD yield was likely quite low–like maybe under 9%.

OK, so why didn’t Rochester admit more people ED? If it had, it could have secured more admits ED, could have a lower overall admit rate, higher overall yield rate, and so on. So why not?

Again, I think it is because they ran out of ED applicants they actually wanted to enroll. And even at 9% yield, well, they get a lot of RD applicants. So, admit enough of them, maybe particularly the ones who are at least more promising in terms of yield, maybe offer merit to the ones who might need a push, and so on . . . and something like 11 RD admits will produce one enrollee you prefer over the ED applicants past the line you drew in the ED sand.

And then I think Northwestern and WashU and so on are really no different. They just get a lot more ED applicants than Rochester, and specifically get more ED applicants that are past that line. Meaning rather than thinking they can do better in RD even with fractional yields when it comes to around 60% of their ED applicants, like Rochester, they think it is more like 75-80% of their ED applicants where they think they can do better in RD.

And of course their RD yields are higher, so that means they don’t have to admit as many people RD for each enrollment slot as compared to Rochester, and indeed don’t need to offer much merit, and so on. So they are undoubtedly right about that, that RD for them sets a higher bar for ED admits than it does for Rochester.

But the point is I don’t think they do this all blindly in advance. I think they see who they get applying ED, and make decisions about who to take based on what they expect to see in RD, with some wiggle room for uncertainty about the RD pool provided by deferrals.

Again, I am aware people have different opinions on this subject, but to my knowledge there isn’t much evidence that colleges arbitrarily set ED enrollment targets and then work back from there. And everything I know of is explainable by colleges doing what obviously makes sense to do–take as many people ED as they like until they get to the point they think maybe they could do better in RD, despite fractional yields in RD. Then defer or reject the ED applicants past that line.

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I don’t want derail this thread, so we will have to agree to disagree.

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Take the scholarship award from UTD and save your money for an MBA from an elite MBA program such as Northwestern-Kellogg.

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Are you sure that you are looking at undergrads when coming to your conclusion that NW is “better” for consulting placement than WashU? I think this may be true at the MBA level but my kid just graduated from WashU undergrad(2025) and has an accepted offer from an MBB firm. They know multiple others from their class with similar offers. Having looked at the face sheet for the undergrad interns for all the office sites for their firm, I would say there were several from WashU and few from NW. The ratio was reversed for the MBA level interns however with more coming from NW. They also have b-school friends heading to quant firms/IB positions. I feel either school would work for your career goals. I wouldn’t pay 40k more for NW personally.

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I mostly based this conclusion off of the peak frameworks study that showed NU had more undergrad placements at mbb than WashU including per capita, as well as a ranking of schools from a current mbb analyst on the WSO consulting forum:

https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forum/school/target-school-tier-list-for-consulting-2025

This is all subjective of course, but in general I just see the sentiment that NU is better for mbb recruitment than WashU being echoed around. It definitely is miles better than WashU for ib recruitment, which I admit I’m not as interested in though it would be nice to keep my options open. I like finance, don’t like the idea of 100 hour work weeks haha.

The face sheet is really interesting though and definitely a toss up. Could you give me more information on this if you are able to do so? This might be something that pushes me to ED at WashU over NU esp considering the extra 40k cost. Thanks.

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I note the data used in that study is getting a little stale at this point, and there have been significant changes in the recruiting process in many industries, not least consulting, including because of COVID. The gross numbers in question are also small enough that it wouldn’t necessarily take huge structural changes to significantly affect this sort of ranking methodology.

Of course that doesn’t mean I know what it would look like if you did a similar study with post-COVID data. I would just be cautious about making important decisions that really depended on that sort of study still being very accurate.

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I’m a consultant. I hire consultants. We don’t hire because of the school you went to. That’s not to say we don’t invest in recruiting at certain schools, but no one is going to say, “I’ll pass on this kid from WashU in favor of the Northwestern kid because…, Northwestern.”

You like Corporate Finance? You like Consulting? McKinsey’s Global Head of Corporate Finance went to WashU undergrad (so, I’d argue the “not good” bit). And it wasn’t the brand then that it is now.

Young people place way too much emphasis on the brands of the schools. Believe me, we know there are a lot of smart kids and a lot of great schools. We pick people.

ED at the school you like better. Chances are you’ll be happier and do better there. That and a little networking (which you’d have to do at any school) is what will get you the Consulting or IB (shudder) gig.

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I sometimes call that the sweatshirt theory, that next-step gatekeepers choose people based on the name on their sweatshirt.

I actually have yet to meet a real world gatekeeper who does that. I have met a lot of people who have opinions on colleges, including negative opinions on colleges that are highly ranked by the US News. But they all make a point of not just transferring whatever opinions they might have to individuals, because they know that makes no sense.

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You can’t hire like that in a people business.
I may have missed it, but curious about OP’s geo.
“Small uncompetitive state” may be to their advantage.
Also curious why they aren’t including Columbia for ED consideration.

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The face sheet is just the photos of all the incoming interns and where they are going to school. I would stress it is very different than the article you are using. There seems to be now much greater representation of the schools listed in the white and red section of that chart compared to the data from that article, almost as if they are swapped with the green section schools . I think there is a broadening of candidates now with more coming from highly ranked state schools and other Non-IVY and IVY+ schools. Note however, this is just a 1 year sample. I think with the multi-step interview process, there is a push now for just hiring the best candidates and the overall “name” of the school is less vital.

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My bad upon further research I may have accidently overstated how uncompetitive my state is? We don’t have any notable flagship schools and from all the competitions I’ve participated in or am familiar with people from my state tend not to win very much which lead me to do so.
Don’t want to reveal my state online but from information I found, 8 of 1900 admitted to Harvard were from my state but could be due to geography since MIT has a much higher percentage for whatever reason. Specifics don’t matter much though. I think now I’d consider it lower middle end of the arbitrary order of which states have the most competitive applicants (like on the level of Indiana?)

I didn’t consider Columbia ED since I didn’t see any advantages offered from EDing there (not 1st gen, URM, legacy, athlete, etc.) Knowing the ED pool of ivy league schools (ALOT more competitive) I don’t think I would have a good chance of making it in ED anyways, and not RD either. Doesn’t hurt too bad to apply in case I get lucky though.

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Trying to understand your math rigor. Here you say Calc AB but then didn’t take.

Do you mean you took the class but not the test ?

You’ll need Calc for any top school.

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Yes I took the class but not the test. This was because I planned on taking calc bc senior year at the time but decided against it when it was time to forecast my classes. Ik it’s not an excuse but mainly decided not to because calc bc teacher is the most infamously horrible teacher at my school. I’m aware this will hurt me in my application though.