Daughter got accepted, not sure I can afford it

Keilexandra
Sun, 09 Jan 2011 23:05:56 +0000

Calmom - “Borderline” and “unremarkable” are one and the same for me. Perhaps the borderline student has a 1400 SAT, but a real passion for [fill in the blank]. Perhaps the borderline student has 1550 SATs but only founded one club and didn’t do anything else outside of school.

The vast majority of kids at regular public schools aren’t going to apply to Swarthmore. They don’t know about liberal arts colleges. And of the few who do, I believe that a not-insignificant minority will throw in an ED app just because it’s their favorite school–without, unfortunately, carefully researching the financial side other than maybe calling the college’s FA office. Then there are a bunch of polished private-school apps–the just-below-top students who aren’t aiming for Ivies, but whose counselors tell them that they just might have a shot at top LAC X or private university Y if they apply ED. Some of these kids will need aid; they can’t ALL be full-pay, just as most all of the top private high schools have SOME scholarship students.

For Swarthmore, using mostly 2013 stats:
EDI - 41-44%
EDII - 20-25%
RD - (969-165)/(5575-493) = 16%
Overall - 17%

Sources:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/swarthmore/831548-historical-edi-edii-stats.html
http://www.swarthmore.edu/documents/admissions/CLASS2013.pdf
[Class of 2013 Starts to Take Shape :: The Daily Gazette](daily.swarthmore.edu domain has changed)

For the class of 2013, 191 students applied EDII to Swarthmore. In the same year, 20.4% of EDII applicants were accepted, versus 15.8% of RD applicants. And most of the athletes would have applied during EDI, which has a commensurately higher acceptance rate.

OlympicLady - EA is a different beast altogether, since it binds only the college, not the applicant. The strongest students will usually apply EA to Stanford or Yale (not both, because of SCEA) if either school is in serious consideration.