Hi
I am parent of D22. A question on ED choice. Are there any guidelines/ best practices to choose ED school? Are EDs from the reach or match list of colleges one shortlists? Thanks
ED to your first choice if you have run the NPC and would be happy to go if accepted. Your first choice could be a safety, or it could be a reach.
8 Likes
Choosing to apply ED is a way of showing a commitment to attend if accepted. As skieurope mentioned, it should be a clear first choice and the NPC should show results that your family can manage.
It is also worth noting that in many cases, ED does not provide the true boost that many assume it does. The majority of those admitted ED are recruited athletes, and in some cases legacy applicants who only get a bump during the ED round.
4 Likes
While I agree with everything shared by other posters, some applicants try to use ED applications in order to get a possible admissions boost.
Many applicants have several “first-choice schools” and apply ED to the school which has the highest ED admit rate.
4 Likes
True, but potential unhooked applicants should get into the nitty gritty on relative ED acceptance rates by removing recruited athletes, legacies, questbridge, and posse applicants, etc. from the equation.
3 Likes
Not an easy task to do.
Also, “hooks” can vary year-to-year & school-by-school. While standard hooks like first generation, URM, under-represented state, athletic talent, etc., are easy to define, each school has specific needs that vary cycle to cycle. Those needs are hooks for that particular application cycle.
In short, there is no static,universal definition of a “hook”.
It’s not that hard to do, make sure to get the larger pieces which are URM, athletic recruits, QB, and posse. Many of these numbers are in the public domain, and especially for LACs, the differences in ED acceptance rates with and without these numbers can be dramatic (and incredibly misleading if one isn’t adjusting the ED acceptance rate for these factors).
Wouldn’t any public domain info be shared after the fact–after the ED application period ?
Athletic recruits, Posse, and QB don’t change much from year to year…estimating these numbers is better than blindly using the overall ED acceptance rate, comparing it to the RD acceptance rate, and thinking one (an unhooked candidate) gets a huge bump in ED.
ETA: Take Middlebury for example. Remove the 75 or so recruited athletes and 30 Posse applicants every year, nearly all of which go ED (maybe with the exception of class of 2025 where more athletes went thru RD than average) and compare acceptance rates. It’s also easy to make estimates for proportion of legacies and URMs in ED too, but just removing the athletes and 30 Posse students is eye opening.
Our personal experience: ED1 plus participation in a pre-college program (you’ll find them under cute names, like POP and WOW), plus a long Zoom talk with one of the professors, plus attending a bunch of info sessions has worked for my D in this admission cycle. I don’t know how much boost it provided but it was an LAC with a single-digit acceptance rate, and I know they got to know her and were sure of her genuine interest. She was a strong candidate but not “cancer-cure-strong” and the college is in the high reach category for anyone.
4 Likes
I’m not a fan of ED due to the binding component. No chance to compare merit. I do understand why people do it. I would never ED to a match school, however. If it’s a true match, you will likely be in. Yes, not 100% but likely.
Many believe that on ED you give up the possibility of strong merit. Why would a school pay you or pay you SO much if they already have you.
So I personally see no reason to apply ED to a match.
In my case my daughter had a strong #1. She’s in but not going. We had offers at places she still liked that were a third of the price. Had we gone ED, we’d have withdrawn b4 getting any offers.
In many cases schools are more aggressive than you could ever imagine.
Good luck to you.
3 Likes
Are there schools (e.g. American) that maybe have a large ED boost where a student would be a match in ED but move to a reach on RD?
Fair question. American is all about demonstrating interest. Of course they’ll say the best way to do that is ED. These educational institutions use some hard core, that I perceive as slimy, to make you think that. I’ve seen studs rejected and below average accepted I’m sure it’s related to demonstrating interest .
Not sure but Bates may be another. If that school thinks of you only that way, do you even want to go?
No question that it’s an advantage but how much is it ? Perhaps more at second tier schools that are need aware than top schools.
So the question is valid. But what you give up flexibility wise, especially if full pay, is huge.
Parents have to weigh all sides. If you can keep your kid from getting emotionally attached to a school, you can avoid the ED decision
1 Like
If you don’t need first semester senior year to strengthen your record, you have an affordable first choice, and you are a strong candidate for that school, ED! You’ll be done with the process and you’ll get whatever advantage there is in applying ED. If you are deferred to RD or end up on the WL, you may have a slight edge again because they know you are likely to accept an offer.
It’s true that the ED benefit won’t make up for being a ho-hum applicant nor is it ever as great as the numbers suggest because of all the hooked applicants. BUT if you are a student they want, you have the first mover advantage for the buckets you fill. The applicants in the RD round who are your doppelgangers will have one fewer seat available because of the one you’ve taken. So there is a very real advantage in that regard.
Personally, I recommend that students who don’t need to compare FA offers, who don’t need another semester to polish their resumes, and who have a first choice where they are a competitive applicant do ED. But I don’t recommend picking an ED school purely on perceived advantage in an application strategy.
2 Likes
ED is actually the strongest way of showing a high level of interest in the college.
American University is well known for placing a high priority on level of interest, as evidenced by past threads of students surprised by waitlist or rejection from there when they thought it was a “safety”, and by explicitly saying that level of interest is very important in its common data set. So if a school like that is the student’s affordable first choice, but the student is “overqualified”, applying ED there makes sense.
3 Likes