My D got a spot to play her sport in a D3 school and the adcom gave a “Go” on her pre-reads. Should she work on the essays for other schools" just in case" during summer or should she wait until the result comes back for ED to the D3 school? How do people usually do when they apply ED?
Thanks in advance!!
I would say that your D is much more of a sure ED admit between the backing of the coach and a pre-read by an adcom. But my D who was a non-athlete who applied ED to her top choice also applied to two schools with non-binding EA and did start to prepare supplements for other schools just in case. PS She got in ED to her top choice and is very happy.
Thanks @happy1, that’s a good idea. I will look up some schools in our states with EA.
Most ED schools would still allow you to apply to public schools EA/rolling.
@billcsho thanks for your reply. I think most schools allow it but I was asking if the actual prep work for the essays is needed so soon say, in the summertime. She might still work on them but just want to see how other people have done it in the past with the similar situation. Do people wait until the ED result to see if they need to work on applying to other schools? I just don’t want her to spend too much time on prepping essays since her chance of being accepted to this school by ED is very high.
Do not wait for the result. A good essay takes time to revise. Also, unless it has ED1, it is not likely to have the ED result before EA deadline for other schools. Even it does have ED1, there will be only a few days in between. The student may get too nervous to write a good essay.
I worked on all my essays over the summer and fine-tuned those for my top 4-5 non EA schools in advance of the decision date. There really is not enough time between the EA/ED decision date and the RD application date to start and finish a highly polished application.
How much of a match is the ED school? If she is at the 75% of SAT already, then don’t bother. If she is below 50%, then start writing.
^ It really depends on the school. For top schools, having 75th percentile in score may still have less than 50% chance to be admitted ED.
@bopper @billcsho She is the coach’s top recruited athlete and adcoms already did the pre-read and gave the coach a “Sure thing”. Her accumulative GPA is 3.97 and 4.6(w), IB candidate, will have 10+APs after senior yr, all 5s in 6 AP exams so far and 33 ACT. The school is 28-33 ACT, so I think she’s pretty safe as an ED applicant.
We were concerned that if our kids were rejected in the early round, they might get demoralized and find it hard to work on the other applications. So they did (almost) all of the applications before the early decisions. In fact, they sent in the applications. We could have saved the fees, I suppose, but doing it this way made the early school seem more like just one of the larger group, and so reduced the stress.
^ Pretty much the same case for my D. She applied 6 EA (one SCEA) schools and one RD. She could have saved the money for the RD school but the deadline was Dec 1 or 15 for that one. She did save the money from not applying to the safety in RD at the end as she got the other admission notice already. Basically, she worked on all the essays in the summer even for the RD school. I am sure OP’s D would have no problem getting in, but it is just for the peace of mind.
My DD applied ED where she was toward the top of the percentiles and she did not work on other applications.