Great insight. A bit distressing to hear since WUSTL is one of my daughter’s favorite schools and is her favored ED candidate.
The “word on the street” is that WUSTL is unusually sensitive about its yield. We were banking on that.
These things are horrendously opaque. Which led to my post.
But of course that could be true, and in fact for your daughter applying from your HS, that may actually point to ED! It would depend on what WUSTL’s internal yield models would say about RD applications from your HS who fit your daughter’s profile.
Like, I am imagining that their yield model (rightly) said they had a reasonably good chance at yielding my S24 even as an RD admit. But would it say the same for your daughter? Plausibly not depending on a variety of factors.
And yes, absent them actually making their yield models available to the public, this is going to remain very hard for individual applicants to assess.
D19 ED’d at NYU. I don’t remember the difference in admission stats vs RD but it was significant. NYU doesn’t do athletic recruiting or legacy. I don’t know about any other hooks that might fall into ED but it seemed pretty much to be what you see is what you get wrt ED.
I know of several unhooked kids (including mine) who got into Vanderbilt ED.
Awesome and congrats! And by that, do you mean without hooks?
Oops left out a key word 
. Just edited my response. Thanks!
Stop! NYU absolutely does athletic recruiting!
In fact it is one of the more common destinations for recruits from our HS–we have a lot of luck with UAAs in general.
It does not have a football program, however. That may cut down on the number of recruits, but it definitely does not eliminate them.
NYU coaches do recruit. It’s somewhat different than the NESCACs, but I expect many of the recruits are encouraged to apply ED. Coaches have recruiting questionnaires and conduct other recruiting activities, do academic pre-reads, offer full coach support thru admissions/do verbal commitments.
ETA crosspost with cinnamon1212
I note I believe every case I know of personally with an athlete deciding to go the recruited route at a DIII did it ED (assuming they had ED, of course). I definitely do not know if that was always required, but at a minimum it seemed to be the normal expectation, and really I think the kids wanted it too (so they could be done with the whole process early).
I would say athletic recruiting and full coach support ED apps are really a phenomena at the relatively selective D3 schools, and even then a not-insignificant number of recruits are in the RD round. At less selective D3s, recruiting looks quite different than the NESCAC/UAA/SCIAC focus here on CC.
College counselors want to lock in as many as possible college admission successes early, because a shutout in April reflects poorly on them and the school.
“ We don’t award sports scholarships, nor does our Athletics Department designate students to be admitted. At NYU, students are admitted based on their academic credentials and accomplishments. ”
At the very most competitive colleges - Ivy+ type - my impression is that ED confers very little advantage to unhooked students. On the other hand, slightly less competitive schools (although they are still very competitive) like Tufts and Northeastern have the reputation of providing more of a boost in ED even to unhooked students.
That makes sense (same focus really at our HS with maybe a few more in a similar bucket).
I agree with this. I’d also put WUSTL, which is what OP specifically mentioned as an ED possibility, in the same category with Tufts.
The major outlier of course the University of Chicago, which is very focused on their yield and pushes ED pretty aggressively. Maybe too aggressively?
By the way, I just want to note that although yield is the accepted term for college admissions offers being accepted, I think sometimes that connotes to people that the college is targeting some sort of statistical result. I am personally skeptical that is often, if ever, the case. I think really they just want to enroll the best possible classes.
The problem is if you admit someone and they don’t take your offer, now you need someone else to enroll. Even then, if you have reasonably predictable yield and there are lots of that sort of person you could admit, then this is not such a problem as you can just admit enough that after yield you enroll enough.
And my understanding is this is how most colleges mostly work in fact. Even if they have ED (and many don’t), they don’t get enough applicants ED to enroll more than a fraction that way. So, they just admit a lot of kids RD, maybe (or maybe not) use merit to improve their odds, and then enroll a class.
But for some colleges, apparently yield is not so predictable, or not for certain sorts of applicants. Like maybe your yield is pretty predictable for applicants in the lower end of your normal range, but not for applicants toward the top or indeed above your 25ths and such.
In cases like this, if you don’t admit enough people you might have to use your waitlist a lot, and that could mean not getting the best class you could have gotten. If you admit too many people, you are overenrolled and you are putting third beds into doubles and such.
So–now maybe you look to ED to reduce the uncertainty. But you still need to get enough people to apply ED. And again I think a lot of colleges just don’t get the ED applicants they need to do much of this. But maybe you do, or maybe you can with enough promoting and pushing and so on. And you find that way you can do less going to the waitlist without overenrolling.
None of this is great for the kids, but I do think it is usually not so much about the stats. It is about trying to get the kids they really want.
First hand knowledge on this. NYU Heavily recruits athletes and they are expected to apply ED.
I think this is semantics. The AD may not “designate” students, but coaches will support them in coordination with the AO if they are deemed academic enough to thrive at NYU.
This is super interesting to see. Just glancing at Amherst’s last CDS, and they have 185 students admitted ED. Even if that’s not all athletes, it would seem to indicate that a very significant number of the ED admits are hooked. Guess it doesn’t make a lot of sense to try for Amherst ED unhooked. But trying for a larger school, which will naturally have more ED spots might make sense. Fascinating!