And not every hook is comparable to every other hook. The brilliant child of a food service employee of the university has a stronger hook than the “average grades, average scores” child of a legacy, all things being equal.
Yup. We will never really get a look inside a particular admissions operation’s “black box.” And even if we did, it would be different from another school. But still, you can learn a lot by asking questions and trying to draw out things that are directionally correct.
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The only thing you know you get with ED is that if you are admitted, you are done with college applications. (ED deferral or (especially) rejection do give a minor amount of information for subsequent RD applications, although that is not typically seen as much of a benefit.)
College counselors probably push ED applications for the above reason, since it benefits them to lock in as many college admission results as possible early, reducing the risk of a shutout that will be harmful to their reputation (and the reputation of the high school that they work at).
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Schools can also change their numbers of ED acceptances. For example, in the fall of 2023, Cornell decided to accept roughly 10% less ED applicants than the year prior. This was met with a lot of angry CC posters who felt Cornell was being duplicitous. Some were saying they would have applied ED elsewhere if they had known prior to the ED deadline. Which brings it back to the question of what actionable purpose does this all serve.
I agree with others here that an ED application should be your top choice school. Parsing out highly flawed/incomplete data should not be part of the decision tree.
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I think the actionable purpose is in deciding whether it’s “worth it” to submit an ED application at a school where you’ll not get a significant boost from doing so.
For example, let’s say that I’m not quite a full pay family, but I run the NPC for Amherst and it looks good. It’s acceptable on cost. I could apply ED and bind myself to that cost at a max, but with the only benefit of finding out early since my odds of getting in ED are similar (or maybe even worse?) than applying RD. In this case, I should probably NOT apply ED because my chances are similar in the RD round AND I get to shop around to see what other offers I get. Amherst might be my first choice, but if Williams comes in with a bunch more money, I can be swayed.
If, on the other hand, I was considering Tulane as my first choice, then yes, I could apply RD and try to shop around, but I’m much less likely to get accepted there since ED is the ultimate “demonstrated interest”. I think that’s why the math is interesting here. It might change your determination of whether it’s worth it to apply ED even if it’s your first choice.
Now, if you’re a full pay family then this scenario might not apply, and that’s fine. Just pitching that I do think there are times where doing some math on this has value.
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Yes, and actually I admire the kid who can thoughtfully realize they would do equally as well at many places.
So I don’t mean to sound skeptical about that–if they are thinking that way and just want to pick one for ED, including because they are a legacy, I completely agree that is not a bad way to think.
Of course assuming it meets the other conditions (comfortably affordable, don’t feel a need to compare offers).
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I think if this is a concern you should really not ED anywhere. And many people don’t, and this is a leading reason why. They are doing things like hunting discretionary merit, and they don’t want to commit before seeing offers.
ED on this theory then becomes primarily something for people who would be comfortably full pay, or alternatively if the NPC for the ED college says they would get such a great deal that even big merit offers elsewhere would not sway them.
And people have observed before that this arguably makes ED unfair to families who need to do things like hunt for merit, and I for one agree with those people.
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I think of the “AND I get to shop around” as a specific benefit of not doing ED. But there ARE benefits of doing ED including, but not limited to, getting an admissions boost (in some cases). Hence the reason that I think doing the math can be worth the trouble.
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I don’t want to belabor this too much, but this is where the point I made above about how that actually makes the problem worse is relevant.
Like, suppose College A has no merit and the NPC says need alone would get you to $40K/year.
College B has need and merit. The NPC says need alone would get you to $50K/year, but possible/not-certain merit could get you as low as $30K a year.
If you are price sensitive, you should not ED College B because they might admit you ED and not give you merit and you would be stuck with $50K. But you should not ED College A either, because College B might admit you and give you merit, and if College A admits you ED instead you would be stuck with $40K.
OK, now add in the fact that not only will applying ED give you an early answer, it might make it more likely that college admits you. But that is a bad thing! Because in each hypothetical the bad thing happened precisely because the ED college actually admitted you ED!
Of course if either College A or College B is so much a preference for you for other reasons you would be happy to pay $10K/year more to attend that college, then fine. But that is consistent with my proposed framework.
But if you would rather choose whichever one ends up cheaper, now it is actually a problem if there is an “ED boost”, because that may just be boosting you right into the more expensive college!
I can’t tell if we’re agreeing with each other or not, lol! 
I was just trying to say that the data on unhooked ED rates is useful in decision-making. At least it’s useful to me. But I can take others disagreeing with that idea.
So what I was trying to illustrate is that if it is a bad thing if you have to accept a certain college’s offer because you might get a less expensive offer you would prefer, then not applying to that college ED is the right call regardless of what it does to your admissions chances. Because the binding part is what makes it bad.
In a way this is so obvious it is sort of a puzzle why it is even controversial. And among many families it isn’t, but among some there is still this lingering feeling that ED has to be considered. And I think at least in part that is because some families really feel the pull of it being some sort of “boost” at a “reach” school, and wouldn’t that be nice? And if that WAS nice, then yes, the magnitude of the boost might be of interest.
But if you would rather go to a less reachy school if it cost less, and costing less is a realistic possibility, then actually, it is NOT nice to get a boost at the reachier but more expensive school. I mean it would be if the boost was not associated with a binding offer, but it is.
Anyway, that’s my two cents as to why it actually should not matter what size boost you get, if you want to compare actual offers.
I know someone that applied to their first choice ED as a FP student. She was deferred and then accepted with a 20k/year merit scholarship……this isn’t a “tippy top” LAC- a good LAC but still food for thought.
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Ah, now I get where we disagree. Thanks for this clarification!
I interviewed enough early applicants to Brown to see all the ways that so called “data” gets used in real life when it comes to college applications. Nobody would advocate using your mortgage payment to buy lottery tickets instead, even though owning 500 Powerball tickets does- in fact- increase the likelihood that your combination of 500 different numbers might come up a winner. Hey, you never know as the advertising used to say.
Kids who didn’t have a snowball’s chance were applying early- despite the University stating loudly at every presentation and on the website “there is no advantage to applying early”. But kids see that 15% admit rate (or whatever it is) in early, vs. the 6% admit rate in RD (or whatever it is) and cannot help conclude “my chances are more than double if I apply early”.
So sure, you never know. But the kid who is pining away for Brown (and in many cases, the probability of the kid in front of me getting in was close to zero-- they just couldn’t clear the academic bar, let alone everything else) is a kid who isn’t falling in love with Skidmore or Muhlenberg or Conn College or Rochester or Carlton-- no guarantees the kid is getting into those schools either, but they were easier admits “just by the numbers”.
So I see the arithmetic and the parsing and the examining of the black boxes and all of that as a gigantic waste of time. Kids in my neighborhood now consider “picking my early school” as a rite of passage-- right after getting a driver’s license comes “where are you applying early”. Sure- it’s harmless. Like getting a new hairdo before prom. You’ll cringe in 20 years when you see the photos but it’s a harmless rite of passage.
But why do adults feed the frenzy with this microscopic “Real ED Admit Rate” calculations? If a college explains that a significant portion of the early pool is hooked- I take that college at face value. And if money is an issue- it seems like shutting down the process is problematic.
But hey, you never know.
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I note one of the sad things to me about all this is I know some kids who were really happy to get into a particular college early so they could shut down the application process and just enjoy senior year. Not everyone is in a situation where that makes sense, but it is nice when it lines up that way.
But if that is what you are after, it may not involve using ED to get into a more selective college at all. Indeed, this is most likely to work with no more than a Target, but one you really love, the price is right, and so on.
And I was a little heartbroken talking to the parents of one kid who did that, and they almost seemed to be apologizing for the kid so quickly “settling” for his ED school since he likely could have been competitive for higher-ranked schools. And I didn’t want to make it awkward, but I tried to quickly convey my view that their kid had done it right!
You know your own kid. If he/she will be happy heading to American U in August (a fabulous place) even if he/she would have been competitive for Georgetown or U Penn… then terrific. It’s the kids with the nagging and grinding regret that are a concern…
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I agree that the “information” contained in an ED deferral or rejection may not be much of a benefit. Indeed, I have seen it be quite the opposite! I think of some cases here on CC where very accomplished female applicants apply ED to their top choice LAC and get deferred (or rarely even rejected) producing a conclusion that “If I can’t get into this school even with ED, I must be overshooting!” resulting in a panicked flurry of RD applications to a multitude of much lower ranked schools. In the end, the student gets many acceptances from schools across the spectrum of selectivity, but what a waste of application time, effort and money!
Far better to have understood from the start that, as in the example above, “Admissions is really only looking for athletes and boys in Early Decision” [at selective LAC x.] In other words a deferral of a female applicant in ED (from LAC x) gave no information one way or the other in regards to the strength of the application.
So I thank OP for this thread. I think it can really pay to expend a little mental energy at the onset to really understand how the system works at the various schools.
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Another example could be when a student has a current favorite school, but would rather leave a door cracked open in case things change. Maybe Favorite School is known for the arts, but 2 months into senior year a great teacher is unexpectedly piquing a kid’s interest in Econ. Maybe in November, dad is in the middle of getting a lump worked up and Favorite School starts to seem sort of far away. Knowing what an ED application is “worth” (if anything) could sway the decision.
Those also sound to me like cases where the kid should just not ED, that indeed again they could end up “boosted” into a college they regret binding themselves to.
The way I see this is the kid can only go to one school. They only need one school to be happy with. Will they be happier with another school had they not gotten into their ED school? Perhaps. But if they’re happy with the ED school, then it’s a moot point. It’s not like one can quantify the happiness differential between the school one settled on versus the other possibilities.
Though my child did not ED, I felt this so much when it was time to select schools and mine had decisively picked a school (second one he visited) without even so much a visit to the other schools that were higher ranked and highly recommended by people we knew.
Could he be happier at any of those other schools? Maybe. But if he was happy with his choice, then I’ll take that.
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