Don’t forget - Brown’s website statement:
Please do not assume that your admission chances are improved by applying under the Early Decision plan. The Board of Admission makes the same decisions under Early Decision that it would under the Regular Decision plan.
Understood!
Ask your HS counselor what they recommend. I defer to their advice. Obviously you can’t improve on your unweighted GPA and you have a rigorous senior course load. So unless you are expecting a big award or some meaningful EC in fall semester, an RD application likely won’t be meaningfully stronger than your ED app. But again, talk with your counselor.
Got it! Thank you so much for the advice!
A few thoughts here:
You attend a private school so it is possible that what I am about to say does not apply (?). In our HS, students who are competitive for schools such as Brown have letters of recommendation that state they are the strongest (or one of) student they have had in their 20+ years of teaching. Then the letter goes on to discuss not only grades, but significant leadership, how they bring the class to a higher level of discussion, etc.
I’ve always found this an odd statement. The first sentence makes sense. But the second is impossible to know, even in a world of sophisticated predictive algorithms. Brown gets the pool it gets in ED. They can guess but don’t really know what they’re going to get in RD. And they always admit ~50% of the first-year class in ED. If the ED pool overall ends up being weaker than the RD pool, it seems inevitable that students who would not have been admitted in RD will be admitted in ED. So that second sentence feels to me a bit like protesting too much.
And I do think it’s true that at any school applying ED demonstrates a different level of interest that likely helps candidates who are deferred to the RD pool. So if it’s truly your first choice and you can afford it/don’t need or want to shop around for merit, I don’t see why you wouldn’t apply ED.
So Brown admitted 898 ED. How many were athletes etc who knows.
They admitted 2635 total, split evenly by gender. Don’t know the gender of ED admits.
So that means 1737 were RD.
If 1718 enrolled including all ED which is likely close that means 820 enrolled RD. But 917 RD chose not to attend Brown. I’m sure they predict it up front.
I don’t know that RD is just as likely. But clearly they are saying stat wise it’s no disadvantage. We are not admitting you ED with a weaker profile, just because we can ensure a butt in seat.
Yes—totally agree with that. And the first sentence of the statement makes that clear.
Hi! Sorry I forgot to include LORs. I am getting one from my pre calculus teacher who basically jumped of joy when I asked her and wrote “with pleasure!” under her signature that she had to sign she was writing it. I’ve also known her since I was 8.
I got my second one from my Spanish teacher who I’ve had for 3 years who I think really really liked me as well
Good to know!
In one of your prior posts you indicated taking regular pre calc because you didn’t think you would do well in honors. I don’t know how this will play out for admissions.
What do you mean when you say you think she really liked you?
Do you anticipate that these letters will stand out?
I think if you want to apply ED to Brown, you should. I am just thinking out loud and trying to get the whole picture. Is Michigan affordable?
Hi, thanks so much for the response. I took on level precalc because I didn’t want to do BC Calc senior as I wanted to focus more on my sciences, so I’m taking AB calc instead.
My precalc teacher definitely liked me. She would always tell me how she loved I would help others in the class just because I wanted to and that my questions helped others learn better. On the last day of school I talked to her for an hour to say bye.
I think the letters will stand out.
To be honest some of the colleges on my list are still subject to change, notably Michigan. I’m currently leaning to not applying there because the NPC was not favorable, unlike brown and others
Their “guesses” are pretty sophisticated, but fundamentally they address this uncertainty by reserving the right to defer ED applicants to RD (one of the extremely one-sided aspects of ED). Basically, if they are unsure if they will want an ED applicant once they see the RD pool, they can defer them and then decide after actually seeing the RD pool.
When you think this through, the actual issue for them is more a matter of predicting yield. Like if you apply ED and they accept you ED, your estimated yield is going to be something like 97% (it is never quite 100% for various reasons). If they defer you and then do decide to accept you RD, then maybe that yield goes down–although not necessarily a lot, since after all you did apply to Brown ED.
Still, suppose your estimated yield went down to like 75%. What this means is for every applicant they defer from ED to RD like this, they would have to decide to admit four of them to actually enroll three of them. But since they were marginal on you to begin with, eh, probably not a big deal.
This only gets “bad” for the college if they have a lot of uncertainty about whether the yield for deferred-in-ED RD admits like you will be 75%, or 50%, or something else.
But I find it very plausible that colleges like Brown, at least, have no particular concern about their yield estimates for deferred-in-ED RD admits.
What does your guidance counselor say about ED? Have prior students ED’d to Brown?
I haven’t talked to them about it yet, but will do so. Last year, one person EDed and was accepted. One person was admitted off the waitlist after RD. That’s all who applied last year.
You might benefit from developing a greater representation of high matches on your list.
Are UF and Penn State affordable?
UF is more affordable than Penn state. We could make it work with UF more.
Have you considered dropping Penn State and adding Pitt? Have you tried the NPC for the University of Rochester?
I feel the need to add some actual statistics to this interesting (but somewhat flawed IMHO) discussion around who gets deferred to RD and why, how the U worries about yield, etc.
applications to the undergraduate Class of 2029
admitted to the undergraduate Class of 2029
What their website doesn’t include is that a 5.65% admissions rate means a REJECTION RATE of over 94%. Let that sink in. It is so tempting to conclude that most of those 94% were unqualified, admitted to a felony conviction on their application, or could barely write a coherent paragraph let alone an entire essay.
You would be mistaken.
And while it is technically true that the adcom’s do not know who is in the RD pool when they are making decisions about the early pool, it is a mistake to conclude that the dialogue is along the lines of “hey, we have a decent tennis player here who worked at an animal shelter last summer and is in the top 10% of his class. We’d better snap him up just in case the RD pool has no tennis players who love animals”.
OP- you sound terrific, and any college would be lucky to have you. Get that Maryland application in as early as you can, figure out if you like Penn State enough (and if it’s truly affordable and you are truly an auto-admit) and then shoot your shot. But do NOT underestimate the strength of the early pool at any of your reaches, and do not assume that any of your reaches are going to become matches just because you apply EA.
Good luck!
And a point about yield- the waitlist is the “enrollment tool of last resort”, not deferring an EA candidate to RD and hoping that they haven’t fallen in love with another college between December and April. That’s not how deferrals work at Brown.
The vast majority of Brown early deferrals are “soft rejections”. They are the children of alums who have donated both money and time to the University. They are the children of faculty and staff (who typically have a finger on the scale already to maintain good Town/Gown relationships in Providence and the rest of a very small state) who just don’t quite have the academic profile. They are the children of generous donors (whether legacies or not) who don’t have the goods. Or they are students with a wobbly profile, and the U genuinely wants to see those senior year first semester grades to confirm that the student is, in fact- a consistent performer who hit a roadblock back then.
The U does NOT defer early applicants because they are worried about yield from RD. That’s what the waitlist is for, that’s what the waitlist does. The U knows how many beds it needs to fill except for a few dozen students who may need to take a break, returning seniors who decide to stay at their overseas fellowship for an extra semester, a few Gap year kids who decide not to show up. But these are manageable numbers for the most part. So if yield is up- only modest admissions from the waitlist. Yield is down, more aggressive admissions from the waitlist. But gaming the RD pool by cherrypicking the unsuccessful Early applicants? Doesn’t work that way.