Chasing ED

Echoing the chorus to apply ED if there is a clear top choice that is affordable. We are not a full pay family and I ran the Net Price Calculator (NPC) several times before signing the ED agreement. It worked out for both of my children. The college met our financial need and both kids were thrilled to be done with the college admissions process by mid-December.

Penn’s ED admission rate is higher but I have not delved into the numbers to determine how athletic recruits and legacies affect admissions. I do not think the ED pool is markedly less competive though. As someone noted upthread, it is important to have all your ducks in a row if applying early (e.g. LORs, etc).

There really is no downside for families who are not seeking merit and do not need to compare financial aid packages.

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I’m not a numbers person at all, but I am curious about some of the numbers people have been stating here with regard to various colleges and their ED acceptance rates.

I’m currently looking at Bates’ CDS from the last cycle. Section C21 states that of 810 who applied ED, 338 were accepted. That’s about a 42% ED acceptance rate, not 60% as stated earlier. Yes, a lot of those ED students will be athletes. Not all, of course.

From section C1, their yield rate appears to be 42%, which is consistent with the rates of the last several years. It’s not 21%. Maybe I am missing something.

Why is this sneaky? Why not ask kids to participate in this kind of thing if interest is important to the school? It’s fun! My kid loved all that. In fact, she was accepted to Kenyon back in the day and I believe she might have answered similar questions. If a college asked her questions, she was much more interested in it. U Chicago is famous for asking students to complete quirky writing supplements. My son loved the supplemental questions for USC— Q: What’s your favorite food? A: Tacos. Q: What’s your dream vacation? A: Mexico City for tacos. (He did that, btw😄)

Sadly, many colleges have abandoned asking students to complete supplemental essays because it dissuades some from applying. I personally think it’s another way for a college to determine fit.

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For clarification, my post stated 60% of students in Bates’ class of 2026 were ED admits, not 60% of students applying ED were admitted.
https://lookerstudio.google.com/u/0/reporting/62141c42-1e1d-4644-abf0-0e004aa939d4/page/p_92z1mm9d7c

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Ah, got it!

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I have a slightly different opinion on ED than a lot of the posters here. I didn’t ED because I didn’t have a clear first choice, but I really ended up regretting it. I basically had a “Top 5” vs a single “dream school” so I just decided to RD to them all. My counselor also thought I was very likely to get into one or more of my top choices through RD. My final results were that I was waitlisted at all 5 of my top choices. I can’t help but wish that I had just chosen one to apply to ED to increase my chances. I was a highly competitive applicant (great EC’s with lots of leadership, 4.0 UW, high rigor, 1540 SAT, valedictorian, etc.), but no hooks and from CA. It’s just hard to stand out in the RD round and fill the school’s institutional priorities at schools who take 50% of their class during ED. So my advice is that as long as you don’t think you will regret an ED and you can afford it, then go ahead and give yourself that small statistical advantage. The regret can go both ways and you may actually regret NOT ED-ing in the end. Plus, there is something to be said for the people who finish the process in December! Because I was waitlisted my process went through the end of the summer and it was pretty brutal.

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I didn’t really mean for it to be about me specifically. More just a general thread. We are gearing our current college visits towards potential ED schools though.

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Seems like you are referencing the reputation of American University, where “overqualified” applicants (who look like they will be admitted to Georgetown or George Washington) commonly report getting waitlisted or rejected (and American lists “level of interest” as “very important” in its CDS). So an “overqualified” applicant who has American as their top choice may want to apply ED there.

However, that gets tricky if the applicant also wants to try for merit scholarships, so needs to show a high enough level of interest to avoid being waitlisted or rejected for yield protection, but not ED-level high that the school does not feel it needs to use merit scholarships to seal the deal.

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One thing to think about is that if you have multiple approximately equal top choices, but would have no regrets committing early to any one of them (eliminating the others early before seeing admission and FA/scholarship results), then applying ED to one of them can make sense. In this case, it may make sense to choose the ED school strategically in terms of where ED is most likely to give the most increase in admission chance. (But again, this gets more complicated if you are trying for merit scholarships.)

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So obviously there is no way of knowing if ED would have made a difference in your case, but I think it really depends on what colleges specifically you are talking about. I do tend to think the “best” solution to your sort of situation is just make sure you have some great target options. But if all of your “Top 5” fit certain parameters, that might be the sort of situation in which picking an ED could make sense strategically.

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That is certainly one of them. In some circles, yield protection is also known as “Tufts Syndrome,” which is a bit of a tipoff. Some people also think Chicago fits into this category, and various other universities and SLACs.

This is a complex issue because once you offer ED, that is also presumably pulling some of your most interested applicants out of the RD pool, which will likely drive down RD yields. But generally speaking, the logical candidates for this effect are colleges have that have one or more notable things going for them, at a level that will attract highly qualified applicants, but in circumstances where those highly qualified applicants will likely prefer other colleges with similar virtues if admitted.

So, colleges in a really popular market like DC or Boston, but are not considered at the top of those markets as per things like widely-publicized rankings, but not too far down either, are one general class of possible candidates. That covers colleges like American and Tufts.

Chicago is an interesting case because way back before ED, it had a notorious yield issue, and indeed it ranked pretty poorly for such a well-regarded institution in things like revealed preference studies:

Chicago was only 27th in that study, and then in its own region, it was even lower at 29th!

So even though no one is necessarily “overqualified” for Chicago, it is still plausibly a place that could have a yield model indicating a lot of very well-qualified RD applicants are very unlikely to yield. Which becomes a signaling problem if you would really prefer Chicago over, say, Penn (12th on that list).

No kidding. My S24 was considering WUSTL for an ED2, and so I looked into it and they swear they will consider ED admits for merit scholarships equally along with RD applicants. But I encountered a lot of people skeptical about that. Of course it would make sense for WUSTL to commit to that if it helped promote ED applications, but some people just don’t believe such things.

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Yes, exactly. It’s easy to see percentages and think it means you, personally, have a better chance. That may not be the case (and in my post above, I was definitely avoiding saying that ED is a “benefit” - there can be lots of variables at play as you note - plus ED kids are generally more “on the ball” so likely to have higher stats anyway since hitting ED timing requires lots of earlier than normal prep and planning).

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:slight_smile: didn’t say it was bad - just that it was sneaky, because it is. Kids get numerous emails from schools and often don’t track that a song request or other item, while a fun little piece of engagement, that goes unanswered or that asks a student to do “X” in the portal is really a demonstrated interest test. It’s also a nice way for the school to try to help applicants actually engage - but it is also something that schools track through clicks, submissions, etc., to see if an applicant is just checking a box on Common App for another easy app, or actually interested in the school. Yield protection through these methods is a real thing and closely tracked by many schools prior to decision release.

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Does anyone have an updated list of all schools offering ED? Like VT removed this option this year and on another list I recently found, Boston College was not on it but I’m pretty sure they do ED.

I just don’t view it as sneaky. Why not ask kids for that kind of engagement? Give the spot to the kid who is really interested, rather than the kid who is just throwing out an app. It’s primarily private colleges doing this, who need to protect their yield. I don’t have a problem with them tracking interest. It seems fair enough to me.

Anyway, applying ED is viewed as the highest form of interest so that’s not really an issue for the OP, unless the student doesn’t apply ED.

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Also getting back on Bates (it was one of the schools I did calcs on based on 22-23 CDS): Overall admit rate 14%; ED admit rate 48%; ED admit rate after removing an assumed 165 recruited athletes 30%; RD admit rate 11%; ED% of all acceptances 28%; % of matriculating students from ED 61%.

Note 165 recruited athletes assumption also does not hold true as you get closer to 50 or higher on the LAC ranking. Athletic recruitment is an odd critter, but kids generally are trying to use it to get into a slightly higher ranked school than would have been possible with grades. As you go down the academic ranking of schools, athletic programs have a harder time getting athletes to commit until the higher ranked schools have locked up their recruiting classes (and they are accepted). ED application numbers at the 50th rank and lower dramatically fall off for this reason (e.g. Willamette in OR had 30 ED applicants).

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It’s sneaky because if the kids don’t respond or if they treat it as a casual ask, it could be factored into the reason they’re rejected. So they are not the “fun” exercise they’re billed as.

An excellent book to read: “Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions”
While the author is a bit of a snob regarding legacy and athletic admits, it’s an amazing look inside the college admissions process. An illustrative example in this book of just how serious demonstrated interest is a story about Tulane.

Tulane was one of the first schools to go deep into DI and yield protection. A student highlighted by the book was a very well-qualified applicant and received a rejection. They appealed and found out that the reason was that the applicant missed the Tulane AO’s visit to their high school. The applicant was absent the day of the AO visit and then submitted his attendance record to Tulane showing that as the reason, and Tulane changed the decision to an offer of admission.

So those innocuous looking little emails prompting for responses are a real thing… they are tracked and can have a real impact on students that are on the bubble for admissions (which for elite schools is everyone).

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Is this another way of saying that the RD % rate at a particular school is not static for all RD applicants during that cycle. Meaning that for a specific applicant that percentage may be zero or near zero whereas another applicant’s chances may be far higher, based on the quality of application submitted?

A 17 year old is mature enough to understand that he/she should “show interest” if in fact he/she is interested. I don’t think this concept is difficult.

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Thanks to CC, I have an autographed copy of that book :smiley:

We can agree to disagree. Not many students are forced to apply to private colleges. Those who are all in are going to learn the strategies. When a student applies to a private college, they sign up for the game. Kenyon has a few incredible scholarships, but I doubt they are giving them to students who don’t show interest.

Play along, or don’t play along. For colleges who track it, the kid who shows interest is playing the game.

Now we are digressing, and debate isn’t allowed. Happy for you to pm on this if you want to continue the conversation.

I hope you landed at a college that was great for you!

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