I understand that it does greatly affect culture at Amherst. One example is socially. Since Amherst eliminated frats a long time ago (which sounds great in some ways) and so there aren’t these social houses for parties that would be open to all, a lot of the social life I heard revolves around things like mixers between say the women’s soccer team and the men’s whatever team. If you aren’t on the team,you arent in the party. They have to keep the size of the party limited because of the space they can get, so it’s just a mixer between teams. As the athletes tend to be a bit more social than the average non-athlete, and they socialize together, this does have an impact on the type of social life available to the non-athletes. Anyway, this is something I heard and believe makes sense. I think if I went to Amherst, I’d rather be an athlete (meaning, it wouldn’t really appeal to me to go there if I was a social person who didn’t want to play on a college sports team).
This makes sense and is consistent with what visitors have reported right here on CC. But it’s not inevitable that “athletes tend to be more social than the average non-athlete”. Schools with lots of musicians tend to be pretty social, too. Come to think of it, I can’t think of a single rock band to come out of Amherst, but several, from time to time, have emerged from its NESCAC competitor, Wesleyan University over the years.
I hesitate to post, because there can be a reflexive anti-Greek reaction, but one reason my student at Washington and Lee likes his fraternity is because it has fostered a connection with a wide cross section of students. He’s on a team, so that’s a built in social group, and his fraternity has not only other athletes, but actors, musicians, kids very interested in politics etc. And all Greek parties are open to everyone. This is why I think the Greek issue is a little more nuanced than some recognize.
It is also hard to know how many RD applicants are hooked/unhooked.
I follow a fairly simple rule for ED:
If you are unhooked and applying ED, and an average excellent applicant (stats are in range…), your chances are probably roughly half of the published ED acceptance rate.
The key is not to get the exact percentage right, since there is no way of knowing; rather, the key is to understand that unhooked applicants’ chances are less than 100% of the published ED rate. That should be the key takeaway.
I like to err on the side of caution, and I think it’s unlikely that those chances are less than 50% of the ED rate. So I go with 50%.
So a school with a 40% ED rate is really more like 20% for the average excellent applicant. That should be sufficient to temper expectations – it effectively turns a match into a reach.
Yes, yield protection is very real. My cousin was WL at Northeastern but got into to Duke RD and Umich Ross OOS.
Sibling legacy at Duke (which doesn’t seem to have much of an effect). He applied ED, was deferred but got in RD and that’s where he’s attending. Otherwise unhooked.
Here’s the Harvard-Westlake Data in all its glory. It’s the only high school I know of that publishes such data.
Based on what I have learned in this thread. Here is my own homegrown formula:
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Get the number of ED applicants and ED acceptances off the CDS section C21.
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From BOTH the applicants and acceptances…subtract 25% of the number of athletes at the school (e.g., they are replacing one class out of four). Also subtract the number of Questbridges. Both of these numbers are public.
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Tack on another one third to the total subtracted in line 2. For legacies, donor’s kids, faculty kids, etc… This number is just a WAG.
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Recalcuate ED to get a more realistic ED rate.
You could certainly quibble with the above (and knowing CC, people will). It won’t give you the right answer, but it gets you closer to reality. And also just remember that every school uses ED differently just like every school uses waitlists and deferrals differently.
Public service announcement- admit rates are not quotas, do not represent a college’s promise to admit you if you are in the top quartile of their applicants, and do not reveal much of ANYTHING about the dialogue that happens when adcom’s read individual applications.
Threads like these make me sad. HS kids read them and assume they can predict their own chances of admission. If you’re talking about your own state flagship which has a grid showing “GPA of this, Scores of that, absent a felony conviction you’re in” then sure, the overall rate has predictive validity for your own particular situation.
But elsewhere? And does it really matter if the “REAL ED” rate for the unhooked is 8% vs. 4%? Because the reality of a kid getting in still favors rejection, not acceptance. So 4%, 8%… this isn’t what a kid should be focused on.
Every calorie expended on doing the math and the baroque calculations is a calorie not being expended finding something to love about your “sure bet” colleges. Which is by far a better (and more realistic) investment.
Ok so now that people have come down on me for “semantics”, there are a total of 450 student athletes at NYU (i assume it is reasonable to assume that non DIV III athletes are not “recruited”?) All About NYU Athletics - MEET NYU.
ED admits at NYU last published were 7220 NYU Acceptance Rate: Official Common Data Set 2023.
I don’t know what the proportion of student athletes per intake year is, if the 450 is spread pretty evenly over the undergrad years or more skewed to the younger end, but either way it doesn’t look to me like a couple of hundred out of over 7000 is a significant impact.
As for other hooks, yeah Mick Jagger”s son may have been accepted because of his dad, and someone D knows who shares a last name with one of the building names might be there because of that, but I doubt there are more than a handful a year of those.
The thread question is which schools ED is really an advantage for unhooked applicants. NYU is one of those. If the question was really about the tippy tops that should in have been in the title.
Yeah, I find this intellectually interesting, but I don’t really think it should do anything to the decision tree.
As far as I am concerned, you should only ED if it is your clear favorite, you know you can comfortably afford it, and you don’t think it would be worth comparing offers including possible merit awards and such.
If no college meets all those criteria for ED 1, I would not ED 1. Same if you get to ED 2.
And to me, it really doesn’t matter if your estimated ED odds are 5%, 15%, 50%, or whatever. Indeed, higher odds just means even more likelihood you should NOT be EDing when those criteria are not all met.
To the extent people have various rationales for EDing somewhere even when it doesn’t fit those criteria–almost invariably there is a way of thinking about college admissions involved that I don’t personally think is a good idea.
I hear you and concur, to a degree.
I do think a hook could add to the decision, too, in a benign way. Hooks are explicitly not what this thread is about, though.
If your family can afford it, and you like the school about as well as half a dozen others, and you have a school-specific hook like a legacy, and you like the idea of getting into a prestigious, rejection-heavy school, then ED seems reasonable to me.
Sorry for derailing the thread by mentioning hooks. But the calculation, of course, changes when those are involved.
So this comes up a lot at our feederish HS since there are a lot of legacies of various fancy colleges.
My feeling is if you happen to be a legacy at your favorite fancy college, great. If that is not your favorite fancy college, though, I would not normally recommend applying there binding.
Of course, the way you described the hypothetical, there is a tie between like seven colleges. OK, if you are truly indifferent between seven colleges at the top of your list, and want to ED one, for whatever reason, fine. If that is because you are a legacy, sure.
But in the real world, this seems to more come up where actually the kid does prefer another college, perhaps several, perhaps a lot. But they think Mom or Dad’s college with ED might be their best bet to get into an Ivy or T10 or Ivy+ or T20 or whatever would most impress their peers, and indeed possibly most please Mom or Dad. So they contemplate EDing that college even though in fact it is not their favorite.
And that is the sort of thinking I really believe kids should be encouraged to reflect on and come to a better way of approaching college generally.
“Come to think of it, I can’t think of a single rock band to come out of Amherst, but several, from time to time, have emerged from its NESCAC competitor, Wesleyan University over the years.”
Williams produced Fountains of Wayne (and Stephen Sondheim). 
My non-athlete Williams student has a robust social life without attending athlete parties. (She even has a couple of friends who are athletes, but has said that NARPs aren’t generally invited to athlete parties.) The radio station is a popular activity and they throw a few parties each semester. I know that other clubs, as well as the college, throw parties throughout the year. Williams is hardly a party school, and it may take NARPs longer to find their people during their first year, but students can have a good social life (with or without parties).
Agree, with one caveat.
I have frequently encountered a personality type, among teenagers and adults, that is sort of generally skeptical about making these kinds of choices.
I wouldn’t say they’re “indifferent.” But they’re aware that a number of different circumstances and situations could work very well for them. And also aware of a strand of arbitrariness that runs through this kind of college decision-making, anyway. Kids and parents can cathect onto a college for pretty random reasons. I’ve known many skeptical teens for whom the very idea of “favorite” seems a little silly.
A more positive way to put is that, in a world of many very good options, maybe choosing the school that may choose you makes a certain amount of sense, all other things being equal.
Rock legend Jim Steinman who wrote all of Meatloaf’s hits and hit songs for the likes of Celine Dion (It’s All Coming Back to Me Now) and Bonnie Tyler (Total Eclipse of the Heart) is an Amherst grad.
I am surprised at your take on this.
A kid might read that Villanova has a 56% ED acceptance rate. My thread is saying that after you account for legacies, athletes, donors, Questbridges, etc…that the real ED acceptance rate is potentially much lower.
It is a WARNING to the kid who thinks he or she has a 56% chance of being admitted.
And any data can be misused or misunderstood. It doesn’t mean that we should ignore it. You just have to be careful. And I have caveated the heck out of all of my statements.
Not potentially lower… It IS lower. And quantifying how much lower is spurious accuracy IMHO. To what actionable purpose is all this arithmetic?
Cool. I wonder what sport he played. 
Of course, even if unhooked ED admission rate were provided, that still gives incomplete and not necessarily comparable information, since the unhooked ED applicant pool may differ compared to the unhooked RD applicant pool.
Because ED is a binding agreement. In some cases, applying ED may not be helpful AT ALL to your cause. So kids are signing binding agreements and getting nothing in return. Yet they THINK that they are getting something.
The comments and experiences other people have posted have been enlightening to me and others. Sorry if our discussion has offended you.