What sort of school denies someone simply because they didn’t go to an AO visit? That’s taking DI to an extreme.
Colleges are concerned about yield. It helps them plan and manage for their incoming class.
A number of years ago, Lehigh published a very frank article that showed a much higher yield rate for students who showed demonstrated interest, especially those making on campus visits.
Section C7 of the common data set will show to what extent a school considers demonstrated interest.
Edited to include the link to the Lehigh article: The Impact of Demonstrated Interest on College Admissions | News Article | Lehigh University
And ED is the ultimate in demonstrated interest since it’s telling the school you will absolutely attend.
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It’s either or… no college expects a kid to do EVERYTHING.
But a kid visits and takes a tour- they note that. A kid can’t visit (too expensive, too far, doesn’t have a parent who can take time off to drive), the AO comes to their HS- they note that. They have video chats for kids who have questions which can’t be answered on the website- they note that. They pair kids up with an alum for an informational interview- they note that.
Any one of these activities helps check the “I’m interested” box. The kids who frantically add three colleges at the last minute because “OMG, I hate my safety school” and can’t even be bothered to open an email invitation and the follow up “submit your questions” AND the “do you want to see an interesting article from the student newspaper” email… that kid has a very low probability of attending, and the adcom’s at those three colleges know it.
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Great book — really helps readers see inside the admission offices of the three schools in which the author embedded himself.
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Yes, daughter got several of those in the last few weeks. Lehigh asked them to submit a favorite song to a playlist. American had a survey, and Colby asked about what clubs on campus they might join. Seemed to us they were trying to suss out who would open and reply. (I had my D reply, hope it helps!). I also read somewhere about a SLAC that automatically cut all kids who hadn’t bothered to open an account in the schools portal after submitting the common app.
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Hope Lehigh still does the same! We loved our visit there and D used the why Lehigh essay as a way to recount her experience and reactions on the tour.
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Of course, not every applicant has a good idea of how to play the level of interest game (which varies from one college to another) – those with good dedicated college counselors at prep schools likely have a considerable advantage here. Here is an older thread on the subject (although the FAFSA order is no longer applicable, since FAFSA no longer shows the school list to the schools): Ways to show a high "level of applicant's interest"
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Yes. The opposite assumption is a version of the ecological fallacy:
An example of ecological fallacy is the assumption that a population mean has a simple interpretation when considering likelihoods for an individual.
Dividing the number of admits by the number of applicants does not actually tell you anything about any of their individual likelihoods, it just tells you the overall group result.
And then when you compare ED to RD, this is even worse because the mix is different. People are sometimes partially correcting for this issue by accounting for recruited athletes. But the non-recruited athletes who apply ED versus RD are not a random sampling, they are a self-selected group, and therefore you cannot assume those are the same mixes either.
Just a crude example, but suppose a college only admits applicants it grades as 95+ on an internal 100 point scale. Suppose there are going to be 1000 95+ applicants, and then 200 apply ED, and 800 apply RD. There are then 300 94- applicants ED, and 4200 94- applicants RD. The ED admit rate is 40% (200/500), and the RD admit rate is 16% (800/5000). But if you are an 95+ applicant, your odds are 100% either way, and if you are 94-, they are 0% either way. All that really happened is a lot more 94- people applied RD.
Of course it is not usually THAT simple. But the point is people seem to be often making a bad assumption that individual odds must be changing, versus the mix changing, and there are good reasons to believe the mix could be very different under the right circumstances.
Edit: Oh, now suppose ED yield is 100%, RD yield is 20%. 200 ED enrollees, 160 RD enrollees, so ED admits are about 56% of the enrolled class. All without any sort of hypothetical boost at all.
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I am sorry to hear that, but that is buyers remorse IMO. ED is not meant to “game the system,” particularly at an Ivy do to the skew mentioned by @momofboiler1
If she had ED’d somewhere else, she might now be regretting not have taken her shot at her preferred school. The results are unpredictable and you have to go in with no regrets.
I will however say that holding out after a deferral very rarely pays off, though I have yet to convince a child of mine of this. Still, they know the deal and decided they want to know for sure and not wonder “what if?”
Bates should be releasing some new numbers this month - like Bowdoin (which already announced) and others, they have seen bigger numbers again this year, especially for ED. So, my guess is that both rates for ED acceptance and RD will drop a bit more. I will post if I see anything - it’s usually on Instagram – Bates college or president’s posts.
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I linked the 23-24 Bates CDS above, which shows a lower ED acceptance rate than for 22-23.
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So, would your position be that - absent the AOs reviewing an application while being in a bad mood or some other aspect that may affect or bias their review outside of the application itself - generally speaking an applicant that is admitted in ED would likely have been admitted in RD and an applicant admitted in RD would have been admitted in ED had they submitted the same quality of application in that round?
If so, it would seem that the only valid reason to submit ED would be to get the process over and enjoy the remainder of HS. In doing so, you would be giving up the opportunity of choice. That would be the trade off, correct? Or am I missing something?
100% Agree. The “game” is to be played, but we should not fool ourselves that the game favors those that have resources to be informed, or parents that are active. Most of those with means don’t realize the advantage they have… and I can tell you from talks with many, many parents (including soccer families - club soccer cuts across classes) most teens really have no idea about any of this…
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Should be obvious that the overall admission rate is not necessarily the chance for any individual applicant. A frosh applicant with a 2.0 HS GPA in the bare minimum college prep courses does not have the same chance as a frosh applicant with a 4.0 HS GPA in 4 years of each core + at least 1 of art, choosing the harder (honors, AP, IB, DE, etc.) options when available at colleges that tend to get talked about on these forums.
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ED also means being seen as having a higher level of interest for colleges that consider that in admissions (although ED level of interest may be a negative for getting merit scholarships).
Yes, I agree that your example is more on the obvious end of the continuum.
I’m thinking more along the lines of those that, on the face of an application that they report here on CC, would appear to be a highly qualified candidate, but go 0/10 on reasonably selective schools.
I think that is likely true for at least a lot of unhooked individuals at a lot of colleges.
I do think there are different possible cases. A coach may only be able to fully recruit in ED. A college uncertain of how many of applicants of a relatively rare type it will be able to yield out of RD may load up a little extra in ED. And then I do think a few colleges may reject or waitlist sufficiently low projected yield applicants in RD that they would accept ED.
But I don’t think ED is likely to do much if anything for someone who is unhooked and relatively easy to replace out of RD. Because why would it?
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Essays and recommendations are application items that the applicant and outsiders like people posting on the forums are not able to compare with those of the applicant pool at a highly selective college. So it could be that the applicant who goes 0/10 despite high stats does not have essays and recommendations that the admission readers find good enough to rate the applicant highly enough to be admitted.
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Yeah, when it comes to demonstrated interest I think it becomes a question of what is enough.
Again schools not attracting a lot of ambitious shotgunners may find relatively mild demonstrated interest requirements are enough to get their RD yield where they want it. Like, anyone actually visiting Rochester has arguably done a lot already to make it clear they are at least reasonably serious.
But maybe American, say, is finding that is not enough, that too many people visiting Georgetown or GW or whatever will stop by American to check off that box.
So again I find it plausible an American might well admit some people ED it would reject or waitlist RD.
Not so much Rochester, however.
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Part of the problem is at a minimum you would need full transcripts and school reports and recommendations and essays to even start looking at those applicants the way these colleges do.
Edit: obviously this is just the same observation another poster also made.
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