I found it fascinating as well! For one thing, when 36% of the students are athletes, it has to have an impact on the culture. I have nothing against athletes at all (was a college athlete myself) but such a high percentage has to alter the vibe at the school, perhaps in a way that non-athletes would not be searching for in a college. One thing the author said that really stuck with me was that Amherst actually admits a higher number of athletes (raw, not proportional to the student body) than Alabama! Crazy.
5 Likes
I believe one reason athletes are encouraged to apply ED is because if the school is going to give a preference to someone to fill a specific athletic spot, they would like to give just 1 offer to fill that spot. ED gives them that opportunity. If the athletes were in RD, the schools would have to give the preference to a greater number of athletes in order to field the various teams since they would not know who would accept. And then the school could end up with more pitchers than they need.
3 Likes
Colleges not at the top end of selectivity, but which care a lot about level of interest and yield protection (e.g. American University), are those where applying ED can make a huge difference for an “overqualified” applicant who sees such a college as their top choice, since ED is the strongest possible way to show a high level of interest in the college.
1 Like
Absolutely. There are also schools, like Tulane, that take such a huge proportion of kids early that applying RD is really unlikely to result in an admission.
1 Like
This is also the case at some schools that offer EA rather than ED (for example, University of Maryland College Park is generally considered a reach for any RD applicant, because it fills up most of its space in EA).
1 Like
Easy now.
There is generally quite a difference between an athlete at Amherst and an athlete at Alabama.
Amherst athletes are truly student-athletes. They aren’t planning on a professional sports career. They become lawyers, doctors, writers, et al.
So do some at Alabama, and I’m not going to stereotype athletes at Alabama, except to say some are going to the Olympics, others to the NFL, and others to the NBA. None of the Amherst kids are.
There isn’t anything amiss with the “athlete” culture at Amherst and the NESCACs.
3 Likes
D24, unhooked, got in ED at Rice. The Rice AO told her that approximately 46 percent of the incoming class of 2023 got in ED. Not as high as, say, Tulane, but not an insignificant amount, even taking into consideration athlete numbers in ED. Rice does care about demonstrated interest, and applying ED is a definite way to demonstrate your interest.
Another classmate of hers got in unhooked to Northwestern ED. They are both I would guess in the top 5 or so in their private high school class, but their school doesn’t rank. The other 3 top students did NOT apply ED and are attending non-HYP Ivies.
All of S24’s teammates on his HYP Ivy team were admitted via SCEA.
1 Like
Didn’t say anything about the culture being amiss. Just that it must affect the culture. And some non-athletes may not find it a draw to be at a school where such a substantial part of the student body is engaging in athletics as their key extracurricular.
3 Likes
I think those unfamiliar may be surprised how involved in other clubs and extracurriculars NESCAC student athletes are.
1 Like
When son was applying, we were invited to a party at the NYC Harvard club for ED admits. As far as I could tell, of about 40 kids there, 2 were unhooked, with many of the hooked having multiple hooks e.g. recruited athlete + legacy, etc.
2 Likes
It also has a huge impact on their ED numbers. Probably 200 people with athletic hooks have to be accounted for to understand the real ED landscape.
I think that Rice is in a really unique position.
It is a totally awesome school, but probably loses tons of candidates to the better known Ivy’s which would depress its yield.
I would hypothesize that Rice has a strong yield protection motive in their ED program.
1 Like
Well put. Another way of saying it is that there are practical reasons for managing yield and it is not all just prestige.
On our tour of a dozen or so colleges, I did witness something funny. One student was getting lots of individual attention from an AO after an information session, but before a tour. Our group was waiting for their conversation to end so that we could start our tour. Our tour guide pointed to this conversation and said the following to our waiting group, “I am from South Dakota. I am the only person from South Dakota currently at this school and I am graduating this year. The school has little luck recruiting students from South Dakota for some reason. That student is also from South Dakota. They are going to chat her up, so this may take a few minutes.”
Is that practical or prestige? Both?
Just to give some statistics, in their last CDS, Tulane reported admitting 1193 ED applicants, 4077 overall, so about 2884 non-ED admits.
Assuming something like a 97% yield from ED (this is based on a few times I have seen actual ED yield stats), that would be about 1157 ED yields. This is out of 1867 enrollees total, so about 710 non-ED enrollees, which implies a non-ED yield of around 24.6%.
A couple comments.
Because RD yield for most colleges is way below ED yield, it is typical that even a college that gets most of its enrollees out of ED (in this case, an estimated 62%) will still have to admit more people non-ED than ED (in this case, about 71% of Tulane admits were non-ED).
That said, that 24.6% RD yield strikes me as pretty high given what I have seen for other schools. So this isn’t proof, but it does seem possible that Tulane may have selectively not admitted people in RD that it thinks it has very little chance of enrolling. But nonetheless it does admit quite a few people in RD, and enrolls some.
1 Like
To your point about Tulane and yield protection… A lot of people from our high school apply to the University of Michigan.
If you look at the Scoir data from 2019 to 2024, Michigan consistently rejects the people with the very highest stats and then admits people one level below them.
It proves nothing, of course, but Michigan’s Scoir Scattergrams are odd to look at. We want your best and brightest, but not your very best and brightest.
5 Likes
Few colleges provide this, but some HSs or GCs have a record of unhooked admit rate and/or ED admit rate, at the HS level. For example, 3-year admit rates for unhooked applicants with 3.6 to 3.8 UW GPA at Harvard-Westlake are below.
Case Western – 10/11 = 91%
Chicago – 20/47 = 43%
WUSTL – 16/58 = 28%
Cornell – 10/50 = 20%
Tufts – 6/32 = 19%
UC Irvine – 1/26 = 4%
Vanderbilt – 1/29 = 3%
Amherst – 0/10 = 0%
UNC:CH – 0/12 = 0%
4 Likes
From the point of view of college admission, the impact of athletes is much greater at Amherst. A far greater percentage of admits at Amherst are athlete hooked at Amherst, and Alabama is not difficult to get admitted to without a hook.
5 Likes
I note some prominent LACs can have like twice the athlete percentage as others. I gather this is primarily a function of league combined with college size.
I don’t know what perceptible difference having, say, 36% athletes versus 18% would actually make in terms of student life. Obviously there are not a lot of people in a position to compare.
But it does seem like that could potentially have a material impact on things like ED admits rates.
1 Like
I agree this appears to be semantics, and similar to other competitive schools that recruit athletes. They all “admit students based on their academic credentials and accomplishments” so each school could/would say that. Actually the ivys even have specifically laid out academic indexes for athletes; no school doesn’t consider those credentials. But there is a benefit to being a recruited athlete. Like ivys, NYU doesn’t award sports scholarships, etc. I think it’s not convincing that statement precludes there being a bump for athletes, although they are clearly trying to convey that message.
2 Likes
My child experienced this at Tulane……she was a very strong candidate, got into 5 of the 6 ivys she applied to (unhooked), yet was waitlisted at Tulane. I’m sure if she asked to get off the waitlist, they would have taken her, but it appears they (rightly in this case) assumed she wasn’t someone who would have said yes, that she’d have other options and would have hurt their yield.
3 Likes