Colleges with rolling ED admissions: Wake Forest

Applying to College
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I have not heard of this before. Wake Forest, a very selective university, offers rolling Early Decisions. In other words, you can get a decision on a rolling basis, but the final ED deadline is November 15. They have a blog post from Sep 27 welcoming their new ED students. We’ve released our first decisions! Any schedule changes? Let us know! | Undergraduate Admissions

You can read about their “relatively unique”(their words) process here: FAQs about Early Decision | Undergraduate Admissions

I know about rolling decisions of course, but I thought that generally, less selective colleges utilize that. Is this a new trend? Do other colleges do this? I’m not sure what I think about this overall, but maybe why not? Will other colleges follow suit? I’m betting some will.

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The new one this year that’s similar (but requires the student to have attended a summer program) is UChicago. ED decisions as early as late September, apparently.

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I do see that as a little bit of a money-making venture. Basically “attend our summer program and get an advantage in admissions.” Hmmm.

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I like this concept of rolling ED. What a great way to take the pressure off the process if you have a an affordable first choice.

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I think that’s how a lot of people are reading it too. Not a lot of goodwill to the idea of having to pay for a summer program to get access to an ED option.

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Wake has had early rolling admission for a while. I always found it interesting too. Several years ago it was only available by using Wake’s application (not Common App)… I’m not sure if that’s still the case. (I didn’t read the FAQ linked above.)

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They say both common app and coalition app.

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One interesting twist on this…if you apply and get deferred or rejected prior to Nov 1 you still have time to ED1 somewhere else. I have heard anecdotally (don’t know them) of people doing this but that it is harder to do if you applied via Common App because it’s not set up to allow a second ED1 if you don’t get in.

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I would say one nice advantage is that if you get in you don’t have to submit your other apps. For example, the UC app is a lot of work and is due Dec 1st which is typically before you would heard back about an ED school.

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Yes, this was nice for my DD- bc Wake was her clear first choice. We had hoped to get everything in in September so she cd do EA at another school (she didn’t have a clear 2d choice so I don’t think she wd have ED-d someone else), but that was hard as an NYC pub school student— her counselors didn’t understand they needed to get their pieces in by Sept 30 (DD told them but probably undersold it and the school just saw Nov 15 ED deadline). So then I pushed back in October so everything got in then and she heard before Thanksgiving. I do think private school students, especially in parts of the country that start pre-Labor Day can get the most benefit from the very early Wake ED rounds.

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Just to be clear she was able to submit a couple EA applications (and even heard back from one school before Wake), but the other school was a single choice EA that she didn’t feel she shd apply to with a pending ED application somewhere else