Choose a safer option or take a risk?

College Search & Lists
1

<p>Hi all,
I’m currently a junior trying to decide where I want to apply early. My top choice is Harvard, but it’s of course very tough and I think I have a pretty slim chance of getting in (if any at all). However, I think I have a decent shot at Cal Tech and if I got into Cal Tech, it would provide a bit of comfort knowing I have a school I can fall back on. Since Harvard is single choice and Cal Tech isn’t, if I decided to choose Cal Tech, I could also apply to other non-single choice schools, which is something to consider. The pro of applying to Harvard is that it could be the tipping point between acceptance and rejection (instead of RD). What do you guys think?</p>

<p>Below is my stats for reference</p>

<p><a href=“Chance for CalTech/MIT/Princeton/Berkeley ? - Chance Me / Match Me! - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/1611803-chance-for-caltech-mit-princeton-berkeley-p1.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

2

<p>Harvard has Early Decision and Caltech has Early Action (non-binding). Applying ED to Harvard doesn’t mean you can’t apply early to other colleges; it just means you can’t apply through any other binding early application programs. So just apply ED to Harvard and EA to Caltech.</p>

3

<p>The OP is correct in that Harvard has restrictive EA. </p>

<p>Personally, I would apply EA to my first choice. </p>

4

<p>uh @julliet is wrong harvard has SCEA, which means you can only apply to it and no other schools ealy</p>

<p>^agree apply to your first choice.</p>

5

<p>I would think long and hard about why Harvard is your first choice? Why do you HAVE to go there? By applying SCEA to Harvard you may be foregoing a great opportunity to waltz in to another school ED which otherwise could be a challenging RD admit. </p>

<p>Ask yourself what would be your greater long term regret; applying early to Harvard, being rejected, then knowing you missed out on the early admission advantage at Cal Tech or another great lower tier school like,say, Harvey Mudd, Williams, UPenn etc… OR getting an early admit to Cal Tech, knowing you didn’t take your best shot at Harvard. </p>

<p>Do you have at least two or three target schools you would be thrilled to attend if you loose out on your top choice? If not, start looking. Reach schools are easy to find. The real challenge is finding great targets. </p>

<p>Edited to say there is no right or wrong answer. Applying early to Harvard could be the right way to go for you, but do it thoughtfully.</p>

6

<p>SCEA allows you to apply to public universities and to international universities in addition to SCEA.
Harvard and CalTech are very different, so first you would need to think in terms of fit since a poor fit is not going to result in admission.</p>

7

<p>Hmm, just double-checked Harvard’s website and it appears that’s correct:</p>

<p>Early Action is a non-binding early program, meaning that if you are admitted you are not obligated to enroll. You have the flexibility and freedom to apply to other institutions during the regular decision round, and you have until May 1 to compare you admission and financial aid offers. We require that you apply only to Harvard College during the Early Action round. (See the frequently asked questions below for policy clarification.)</p>

<p>The clarification is that you can apply to public universities and colleges as well as international universities.</p>

<p>Personally, I think this is absurd and stupid and I wouldn’t do it just on principle. There is no advantage to the student to do this:</p>

<p>Harvard does not offer an advantage to students who apply early. Higher Early Action acceptance rates reflect the remarkable strength of Early Action pools. For any individual student, the final decision will be the same whether the student applies Early Action or Regular Decision.</p>

<p>It seems like the primary advantage is to Harvard, who gets to up their yield rates and plan earlier for their freshman class.</p>

<p>BUT bitterness aside, lol, the purpose of early decision is to apply early to your first choice college. If Harvard is your true first choice (based on personal factors and not prestige), then you should apply there.</p>

8

<p>“Harvard does not offer an advantage to students who apply early. Higher Early Action acceptance rates reflect the remarkable strength of Early Action pools. For any individual student, the final decision will be the same whether the student applies Early Action or Regular Decision.”</p>

<p>Not sure I buy this. 21% EA vs 5% RD</p>

9

<p>From the outside, there is no real way to tell whether the higher EA admission rate is due to a stronger applicant pool (possibly including more recruited athletes and other highly favored applicants), an actual preference for EA applicants (even though it may be an unintended preference), or both.</p>

10

<p>Yea I have a hard time believing there is 0 advantage to applying early when the acceptance rates are so radically different (20 to 5), which is partly why I’m leaning towards just going for it.</p>

11

<p>

</p>

<p>EA is also an advantage to the admitted students, since an early admission (if affordable) can allow the student to reduce the number of other schools to apply to, since an affordable early admission turns the school into a safety.</p>

12

<p>* Yea I have a hard time believing there is 0 advantage to applying early when the acceptance rates are so radically different (20 to 5), which is partly why I’m leaning towards just going for it. *</p>

<p>My answer to this is always - what reason does Harvard have to lie to anyone? If anything they would want to encourage students to select SCEA because it benefits them so much. Remember who applies during SCEA - development admits, generations-long legacies, recruited athletes, students who have their stuff together enough to decide that Harvard is their first choice by the summer before, students who go to high-powered schools with dedicated counselors for organizing these kinds of things.</p>

<p>I’m not saying that there’s absolutely not higher chances for an individual student to get in during SCEA rather than RD, but there’s simply no way to know for sure. It doesn’t seem likely.</p>

<p>* EA is also an advantage to the admitted students, since an early admission (if affordable) can allow the student to reduce the number of other schools to apply to, since an affordable early admission turns the school into a safety. *</p>

<p>Given that you don’t find out until mid-December and given that many colleges’ merit scholarship deadlines are through early programs with deadlines between November and late January, a student would at least need to begin working on some application essays and collecting materials before they found out from Harvard - and in a large number of cases would be prohibited from applying to those schools’ scholarship programs altogether.</p>

<p>Besides, getting admitted to Harvard doesn’t mean that you’ll get the financial aid package early - you can’t turn in FAFSA until January 1 of the year you plan to attend, and most parents don’t get tax documents until mid-to-late January. I mean, families in certain brackets (especially less than $80,000) can be reasonably sure that their financial aid to Harvard will be pretty good, but if you have significant assets or a complicated financial picture…you may not know. (Perhaps they work out some special deal with SCEA applicants for them to get estimated packages earlier, I don’t know.)</p>

<p>I think of two examples from my individual case - I applied to two schools that gave me full or close to full merit scholarships. Both of them required me to apply Early Action in order to be eligible for the scholarships; the early action deadline for one was December 1 and for the other one was November 15. Harvard would basically be asking me to sacrifice my virtually guaranteed acceptance and very good chance at merit scholarships from these two schools for the possibility that they might admit me, at a school with a 6% admission rate (and yes, a 20% SCEA admission rate - but that by their own admission is due to the competitive students in the pool).</p>

<p>Every person has to do their own risk-benefit analysis, of course.</p>

13

<p>The RD rate is lower than 5%. 5.8% was the overall rate with the regular and early combined last year. But this year they selected a greater portion of their class SCEA than last which pushed the SCEA acceptance rates up and will push the regular rates down about to 2-3%-just a rough estimate in my head someone can do the actual math. </p>

<p>I just don’t buy that the SCEA pool is 10x as strong as the regular pool. I think that they are definitely accepting people that would not get in otherwise-not that they aren’t qualified this is harvard lol- to manipulate their yield and acceptance numbers. Especially for this year I think H accepted more SCEA to try to get their overall acceptance rate below stanford. I doubt it worked just because of the small increase in S applicants and the small decrease in H applicants </p>

14

<p>These are the choices one has to make with all of the rules and limitations. I don’t think Harvard deliberately makes EA more of an advantage. It’s just inherent. When you are the first perfect SAT scorer, the first one with the dying grandpa essay, the first classics major when they need some, the first oboist, you are more likely to be accepted than in the regular season when there are stacks with the same thing you have and the admissions folks can choose. Many who get turned down for Harvard are just as strong in profile as those who don’t.</p>

<p>I advocate going with the true first choice. One year my son’s highschool had about 10 kids accepted to Harvard, early. Yes, ten. Some kids who played your game did not get in RD–no one did, by the way from that school, and they wonder to this day if they would have been accepted had they done so. They chose to play it safe and apply to Wharton, I remember and some other schools, and they did get accepted, their gamble worked, but they got some of that joy erased by the thought that they were just as “up there” as classmates who got in early at Harvard because they took that chance. </p>

15

<p>^^^I agree. If you apply RD, your niche may already be occupied. </p>