Please cite your authority on this claim?
“I almost feel like he is avoiding this as he afraid of the let down if he doesn’t get accepted.”
Could be true, and likely for high achieving kids. Perhaps he realizes the reality of getting into a top 20 and is subconciously saving himself the heartache! Could you have a heartfelt talk with him about this? Of course there are other benefits to having a fantastic essay to complete what sounds like a top notch application, such as acceptances to the one-tier-down schools, merit aid, honors programs.
If he really, really wants a top 20, he’s going to have to write a fantastic essay, like everyone says, and still cross his fingers. And it’s time to start if it is due 10/1 for ED. The others can wait. He’s really just started being a senior and all that that entails, it will likely wear off as the college app timeline and pressure picks up amongst his peers.
But…when you say maybe he’s not cut out for a top 20, maybe he’s not. This was a hard realization I had to realize with my son (NOT Top 20 material, but it’s all relative) in regards to essays and then later applying for honors. He didn’t want help, didn’t submit great essays, and only applied to honors at the last minute when I really pushed him, with another not great essay. So, he didn’t get selected to interview for honors, and did not get in to any of his reaches.
So, in other words, he ended up exactly where he belongs, and I say that in the most positive of ways. I realized I wouldn’t be there to shove him along in college and he was on his own now. So while I think you should have a heart to heart about his true desire for a Top 20 and what it takes to reach for it, after that, time to let him work this out himself and land where he lands (its super hard, I know).
@Lindagaf so interesting about essay topics! My son is applying to a few schools in Scotland and Ireland, and the essay is exactly the opposite of what (apparently) US schools want to see. The UK schools don’t care if you play the ukulele, know 17 ways to make toast, or are scared of ladders, they want to know exactly why you are applying to study the course you’ve chosen and what makes you qualified to do so. My son will have to write completely different essays for his US applications—maybe more fun ones?
Where does Duke say they lower their standards for ED? Or that a mismatch or kid who blows a Why Us has a better chance than RD?
Or are you presuming stats is what makes a match?
OP’s son may genuinely need more time to settle on this responsibility.
Btw, it’s not a creative writing assignment.
@llamamama1714 but that’s partly because your choice is your choice from day 1 in the U.K. It’s very difficult in most cases to switch majors, and definitely disciplines, if you change your mind after you start - unlike most US options.
@llamamama1714 I think it’s because US schools are pretty open about using holistic admissions. A lot of colleges around the world simply go on stats. I think it is one reason why US colleges can be so ridiculously competitive. Even kids who have no chance apply because they think maybe their essay or teacher rec or club activity will compensate for lower grades or test scores. It might, but only for a tiny proportion of (most likely) hooked applicants.
I understand your frustration, but it is only September. ED/SCEA deadlines are generally Nov 1. He may not have senioritis but is feeling paralyzed in trying to write the perfect essay. A good essay is needed, but not perfect. Is there a teacher he feels comfortable with to brainstorm with on the essay? At this point, all you can say is that the deadline for top choice school ED is xxx and the choice is his. You are willing to help either by brainstorming or to find someone to help him. I don’t think not being willing to work on an essay the second week of September necessarily means he is not “top 20” material. Good luck
I feel your pain. My oldest never enjoyed any kind of creative writing and the personal essay was very much out of his comfort zone. In the end he wrote an essay that was at best good for an engineer.
What worked for us.
We did a lot of brainstorming about possible essay topics over meals.
I asked my kid what schedule for nagging we should have and settled on once a week.
In the end what worked best was for me to be in the room without talking. It kept him focused.
Reading lots of sample essays till he got familiar with the form.
In the end it was actually one of his procrastination activities became the entry to the essay. He’d been noodling around with a program that created sentences that combined language from various online sample essays. He used the terrible result as his entry into the essay. Essentially the topic of his essay was that he’d rather write a computer program than a college essay.
It also might be pertinent to suggest a gap year. He could drop the college applications for the next 11 months or so, enjoy his senior year, get good grades, line up good LORs, and rejoin this battle later.
@socaldad2002 – the recruited athlete/ED thing is really limited to Ivy and NESCAC type schools.
Duke, Vandy, NW and Stanford all play full scholarship, Power 5 conference, D1A sports. Completely different animal and completely different recruiting/admissions process. Those schools compete for athletes with the other schools in the ACC, Pac 12, SEC and Big Ten (most of whom don’t have ED). They would run on the same NCAA timetables that their competitors do.
Zion Willamson and Christian McCaffrey don’t have to apply ED/SCEA in the same way that a XC runner at Williams or Brown does. Apples and oranges. In fact, Zion announced his commitment to Duke on January 20, 2018. So he clearly didn’t apply ED (since that would mean he would have been bound as of mid-December 2017).
And to repeat, here’s what Duke itself says:
“MYTH: The reason schools have higher acceptance rates for Early Decision is because athletes and children of alumni apply then.
FACT: Some schools do encourage athletes and alumni children to apply during Early Decision, but our philosophy is to encourage all students who have Duke as a clear first choice to apply Early Decision and gain that benefit.”
I’m going with what Duke says, but feel free to believe they are publicly lying to their applicants. ED is a hook at Duke.
Cheers.
I say let him choose his own schedule for writing the essays. He knows when the ED application is due. He knows if he wants help editing the essays or reviewing it for errors, the people who do that may have plans for the last week of October (one of the biggest school districts here has fall break that week, so teachers have earlier deadlines for reviewing essays). Maybe agree he’ll block out time every Sunday? Maybe he’ll decide not to apply ED?
If you think it’s a cry for help, offer it. If you feel he really doesn’t want to do it, back off.
You are reading into something that doesn’t exist Duke clearly states that ALL students should apply (that means recruited athletes too) and they never say “ED applicants will not be competing for acceptance spots with recruited athletes”. If that is what they mean, why not just say it? Unless ED acceptance rates also include athletes who will have a very high ED acceptance rate.
Reread the Myth/Facg statement again for what it’s actually says not what you think it says.
I would love to see an actual breakdown of ED acceptances by athlete, legacy, development case, etc but they will never show us the real numbers as they know that many unhooked applicants would not bother applying ED.
@socaldad2002 – my last swing at this dead horse.
Per NCAA rules, to get an athletic scholarship, kids have to sign the mandated NCAA National Letter of Intent. Per NCAA rules, D1 football players are only permitted to sign their NLIs during specified “signing periods.”
The regular signing period for D1 football players is from 2/5 thru 4/1. For D1 basketball players, the regular signing period is 4/15-5/20. That timetable is obviously in direct fundamental conflict with the ED schedule of being accepted/bound in mid-December. So Duke, as a scholarship sports school, follows the NCAA timetable.
Of course they do. Since they are competing for players looking at say UNC. UNC does not even have ED. So Duke athletics runs on the same timetable that UNC athletics runs on. Not the schedule that Dartmouth athletics runs on.
What you are talking about (athletes required to apply ED) does apply at Brown or Dartmouth. Since Brown and Dartmouth don’t give athletic schollies, their recruited athletes don’t have to sign NLIs. Also, all the Ivies have ED or SCEA. So the recruiting field is level among those peer schools in the same conference. The ED tip varies in strength among different schools. At Brown, it is pretty weak after you back out legacies and athletes, and because Brown only fills 38% of its seats via ED.
But it is strong at Duke (47% of seats). And other ED kings like Vandy (51%), Northwestern (50%) and Penn (54%!!). There’s not that many legacies for those schools, and there’s no athlete/ED thing going on at Duke or Vandy or NW. The athlete/ED thing would be a part of Penn’s numbers (since it is no-scholarship Ivy).
With respect to Duke, they could not be clearer:
“Is there an advantage to applying through the Early Decision program? There is an advantage in the admissions process to applying Early Decision.”
“At Duke we appreciate that we are your unquestioned first choice. There’s an advantage in applying early to Duke—last year we admitted 23.5% of our Early Decision candidates and only 8.7% of our Regular Decision candidates. There are students for whom applying Early Decision can make all the difference.”
As noted above, your comparisons between Ivy athletic recruitment and P5 scholarship athletic recruitiment are inapposite. When the ED rate is triple RD, and when 50% of the enrolled students got their via ED, you are really giving kids bad and data-free advice telling them there’s no advantage.
Now back to the writing of the dreaded essays.
My kid was an excellent writer (5’s in AP Lang and Lit and 22 on his SAT) but he was completely unmotivated with his college essays despite my constant nagging until literally end of October of his senior year. A guy at the 24 Hour Fitness who he played basketball with recommended a friend who did AP Lit tutoring, but had some experience with what was needed on applications. And though he didn’t spend that much time with my kid, what he managed to do was to somehow get my kid motivated with ideas and critique. But even still, essays for UC and USC literally didn’t get 100% completed until 2 hours before the deadline. So it did take 5 weeks, but in reading them, they were quite good and emotional.
So I think you’re going to have to find that something that will get him motivated. BTW, the guy who helped out my kid charged $45/hr, and they probably only spent 6 hours on collaboration and critique and review, the rest of it was by himself.
Per @skieurope on another thread stated that recruited D1 athletes (e.g. Duke) need to account for their athletes acceptances in either ED/EA or RD whether or not they sign their NLI intent during a different period.
Unless a Duke specifically states that recruited athletes are not in their ED acceptance numbers, you can pretty much expect some or all of them are in there.
Don’t kid yourself, there is a reason Duke won’t share the information with the public; in order to keep up the fallacy that non-hooked applicants have a significant admission advantage in ED. And what about the other hooked applicants like legacy, URM, development cases, faculty kids, Questbridge, etc. are their applications not in ED either?
You seem to have drunk the Kool-aid…you work for Duke admissions?
Gotta get off Duke and back on topic.
People believe what they want to and others need to try to think clearly on their own.
Agree. Time to move on.
But to address the OP’s question (since the OP thinks this kid might want to apply early to a top 20 school). In my experience, the schools (assuming you choose to believe what they say) are pretty clear and upfront on whether applying early is/is not a significant advantage. The practice on this does vary a lot within the T20, so your application plan should reflect that.
Dartmouth, Brown, MIT, ND and Gtown will tell you applying early is really not much of an advantage.
In contrast, if you ask Penn, Vandy, NW, Duke and Emory (and I did ask them directly) they will tell you that applying early is quite advantageous.
And on the ED/athlete thing, maybe Dartmouth is telling the truth and Duke is lying to attract ED apps. More likely, their practices just differ:
Dartmouth: “Keep in mind that the published higher percentage of applicants accepted early is somewhat misleading because it includes recruited Division 1 athletes, whose credentials have been reviewed in advance. With recruited athletes removed from the Early Decision numbers, the statistical advantage isn’t as large.”
Duke: “Myth: The reason schools have higher acceptance rates for Early Decision is because athletes and children of alumni apply then.
Fact: Some schools do encourage athletes and alumni children to apply during Early Decision, but our philosophy is to encourage all students who have Duke as a clear first choice to apply Early Decision and gain that benefit.”
But none of that is going to matter if you can’t figure out a way to get the kid to write those darned essays!
There are multiple scenarios here. Kid does a bang up job on his essay, applies early- either gets in or not. Kid doesn’t do essays early, but does a bang up job eventually and applies to a bunch of places, is happy with the school he ends up going to. Kid does a half #$%^ job on the essay and still gets in somewhere he’s happy to attend. Kid does a really terrible job on the essay, goes to one of his auto-admits where they don’t even WANT an essay, is still happy with the outcome.
I think once a parent has explained the various scenarios, it’s time to sit back. Do you want to be one of those parents proof reading your kids papers in college? No you do not. Do you want to be one of those parents who has to take a personal day at work because “we” have finals to study for? No you do not.
I think your son has figured out that a strong essay gives him a better shot at a low percentage admitted school. A better shot- not a slam dunk. Now the next step is his.
No one is disputing that Duke encourages early apps. That’s all. You must still be a match to what they want. They have plenty of choices and can cherry pick.
The mistake is in any assuming just having the stats and some ECs is all Duke (or any tippy top) wants. They’re clear on their web site of the sorts of qualities they do look for. Learn those, when matching onesself.
That includes for the essay. OP should assure her son this is just a nice narrative, not grand writing for some big contest. Give them something that shows the qualities/traits/assets they want in the class. I often suggest a kid just recount a tale as if writing to a trusted adult, to share.
“No one is disputing that Duke encourages early apps.”
Yes. Also, no one should be disputing that Duke (or Vandy, Emory, NW, Penn) provides a boost/tip/hook to kids who apply ED. Because that’s exactly what those schools represent that they do.
Even with the ED boost, you still have to be a very strong applicant. Including good essays (hence this discussion). While you shouldn’t over-emphasize the ED boost, the planning shouldn’t under-emphasize it either.
Let’s say the ED tip is “just” a tie-breaker between equally strong applicants. Admissions at Vandy, Duke, NW etc. is a game which routinely produces hundreds/thousands of ties. When playing a game that often results in a tie, having “just” a tie-breaker can be really important.
Or, to quote Duke, “There are students for whom applying Early Decision can make all the difference.”