Makes sense, harder to generalize with a smaller N. For my kid’s large school, it’s more like 46/107 for Chicago and 2/47 for Brown (this is for the past three years). The rate for RD for Brown is exactly the same - 22/520. So absolutely no advantage at ED. In contrast, for UChicago, RD is about 10% (46/443). Seems like ED is a no-brainer if that’s your top choice.
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For my kid’s 1500-student public school, from 2019 through 2024, 16 percent (of 33 applicants) got into Brown ED and 3 percent (of 195 applicants) got into Brown RD. For UChicago, it was 28 percent ED (39 applicants) and 3 percent RD (55 applicants).
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At Brown, looks like our ED stats (classes of 2017 to 2024) are 6 accepted, 1 deferred then accepted, 6 straight denied, 9 deferred then denied. Being strict, 6/22 is 27.3%.
RD, 4 accepted, 1 waitlisted to accepted, 32 denied, 2 waitlisted outcome unknown. 4/39 is 10.3%.
At Chicago, ED, 4 accepted, 4 straight denied, 2 deferred to denied, 40%.
EA, 2 accepted, 4 straight denied, 1 deferred to unknown, 4 deferred to denied, 3 deferred to waitlisted to unknown. 15.4%.
RD, 0 straight accepted, 1 waitlist to accepted, 4 denied, 8 waitlist unknown. 0%.
I know that recruited athletes, other hooks, different mixes in different pools, and so on are playing a role in all this. To the point where I do not in fact disbelieve Brown when they say there is no disadvantage.
But Chicago? Oh, Chicago. You do you.
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This seems to be a pattern, with Chicago having a higher ED acceptance rate at many HSs than one might expect based on selectivity. At some HSs Chicago acceptance rate is more than 10x higher than other colleges of similar selectivity. I suspect there is either a type of yield manipulation or preference towards particular HSs.
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For sure I think what is happening here is Chicago historically has struggled to yield the kids it wants from high schools like this once they get competing offers. So, it is willing to be materially more generous than its competitors when it comes to these kids in ED, but then doesn’t bother admitting these kids RD since it thinks it can’t yield them anyway. But it does waitlist a lot, at least at our HS, and that did yield them the one kid from our HS (I suspect the other eight happily took other offers)
I note I think this becomes a sort of self-reinforcing effect. “Everyone knows” in my circles if you actually really like Chicago you should probably ED there. So it didn’t get many RD applications to begin with, because the kids who really seriously considered Chicago likely already applied early.
By the way, I thought it would be interesting to compare another school with a reputation for “yield protection” but that is actually popular with our kids (including mine!), WUSTL.
ED 1: 6 accepted, 4 straight denied, 1 deferred to denied. 54.5%.
ED 2: 4 straight accepted, 1 waitlisted to accepted, 7 denied. 33.3% (strict), 42% (with waitlist).
RD: 17 accepted, 5 waitlisted to accepted, 37 straight denied, 1 waitlisted to denied, 23 waitlisted outcome unknown. 20.5% (strict), 26.5% (with waitlist).
This was what my S24 was looking at (well, with a year’s less data before he joined the data) when considering whether to ED2 WUSTL, or hold out for Yale (he was deferred REA) and also consider other offers. In the end, after looking in depth at the scattergram, he concluded–rightly as it turns out–he had a very good chance of getting in RD anyway, and did not need to ED2.
Again, to me this is obviously “working” at WUSTL because our kids like WUSTL, and so WUSTL does not feel the need to reject our kids RD because it assumes they won’t yield. In many cases, they will!
That said, they clearly are also willing to waitlist a lot of our RD kids and see what happens. Indeed, between ED2 and RD that was 6/29 waitlistings that turned to acceptances, and my sense is that is a really high percentage.
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Very interesting.
I am curious, do you have any sense for the average stats of those accepted kids vs the average accepted kid stats at WashU?
At our school, we see some evidence that some colleges like our HS and other colleges dislike our HS. Specifically, if we have stats that are much higher than the college’s average AND our admit rate is much lower than the college’s average…the college probably dislikes our HS.
Conversely, when our stats are lower than the college average AND our admit rate is higher…the college probably likes us. Wellesley, for example, seems to really, really like our all-girls HS.
On the other hand, there are schools where our stats are much higher than the school’s average and our admit rate is much lower.
Of course, you need a large enough sample size to make this meaningful, which our school is able to get in some cases.
So SCOIR reports that but it needs some interpretation.
We use a 4.33 grade scale, but no weighting. So people who have a 3.9 or indeed 4.1 or whatever did not get the highest possible GPA, although really no one gets much above a 4.2, and even that is rare. And then there are different paths to those GPAs–one person could have a 4.0 with almost all flat As, another some A-/B+ but also enough A+ to balance out, and so on. And of course rigor varies too–we have a ton of highly advanced classes across all the departments, some kids do such advanced classes in all of them, some in none of them, some in just like one department, and so on.
OK, with that context, overall the average accepted GPA was a 3.93, average scores were 1468/33. ED, 3.92 1465/34, RD 3.94 1470/33.
One thing that always strikes me at college like this, for our kids at least, is that the averages tend to not be very different between ED and RD. This is even more interesting when you realize probably there are more hooked kids applying ED. So for unhooked kids, there is very little evidence that applying ED would lead to colleges like WUSTL being materially more generous with their academic standards.
What of course I cannot see is everything else. What was the “average” rigor rating? EC rating? Recommendations rating? Essay rating? No clue, and so it is possible the standards were more generous in ED in ways I can’t see in SCOIR.
But . . . I don’t know. Stuff like this makes me skeptical it really makes much difference for kids below their normal ranges.
For the record, I can also do Brown and Chicago:
Brown
Overall: 4.01 1467/33
ED: 3.99 1450/33
RD: 4.04 1484/32
Chicago
Overall 3.90 1454/34
ED: 3.88 1460/34
EA: 3.91 NA/35
RD: 3.97 1430/34
Again nothing really remarkable. Indeed, these three aren’t that different between each other. Brown does seem to skew to higher grades, followed by WUSTL, and then Chicago (except RD).
Some might be a little surprised about the order of the last two, but again WUSTL does well with our high grades kids, and Chicago . . . well, maybe not so much.
Edit: Oh, and keep in mind this all goes back to 2017. So average test score ranges would likely be higher recently, and maybe GPAs as higher GPAs work better in the TO world.
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Really excellent stuff. My quick take is that your HS has a lot of supremely talented kids who fall into the “ranges” of the colleges in question. One thing that stood out a little is that your averages for the colleges look a little low. Brown is in the 34-36 or 34-35 ACT range for 25-75 percentile scores, for example. A 33 average ACT is low.
You mention that there is a lot that you cannot see (e.g., rigor, hooks, essays). Fully agree. I would note that some schools are VERY GPA and Test Score focused and others are perhaps more holistic. For example, at our school, kids with a certain (high) GPA and test scores get into Notre Dame without fail. But fall just below those levels and you DO NOT get in. You can see the very clean break points in the data.
With other schools, when you sort by GPA or test scores…it looks like a shotgun distributed the acceptances and rejections. Those schools are perhaps very holistic, but who knows?
At my son’s high school, there’s a definite sense that some schools like our kids and others don’t.
Brown, as mentioned above, has accepted just 24/568 over the past 3 years. Average GPA is 96.4 (100 pt scale, no weighting), average SAT - 1555.
Harvard has accepted 42/582, average GPA 96.5, SAT - 1556. I’m certain a lot of the same kids applied to both but only got into the latter.
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Interesting!
Is your school in the Cambridge/Boston area? I understand Harvard does give a little bump to schools in the area.
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You can’t confuse the “bump” Harvard gives to local schools to the “bump” that children of faculty and staff get (obviously, those kids are local as well). They are not the same.
The bump to kids from schools with a disadvantaged population in parts of greater Boston is a distinct strategy (improving “Town Gown” relationships) from the practice of a second look to employees kids (generally NOT from disadvantaged schools- but in places like Belmont, Brookline, Newton, Lexington-- towns with exceptional public school systems where a lot of Harvard employees live.) And then the magnet school population in greater Boston- yet a third pile of local kids- who have already been prescreened before entering HS.
That’s why these byzantine calculations seem off to me. They invariably ignore a few critical variables in lieu of speculation (Harvard hates our HS for example).
That difference is very apparent in our data as well, sometimes right on the face of the scattergrams.
Sometimes the admits are very clustered into a well-defined GPA/score box, with few flat denials in that box (although the ratio of admits to waitlistings is another interesting variable), and very few admits outside the box (sometimes way outside, which is probably a hooked case).
And sometimes the pattern is much fuzzier, far too fuzzy to be all hooked cases.
Generally, I agree our HS seems to get in more kids than their raw grade/test score combinations would predict, whether that more takes the form of a higher hit rate in a high range, or a more generous competitive range, or some of both. For sure recruited athletes and legacies and such are contributing, but beyond that too.
I think it is many things. I think all the very advanced class options with not everyone getting the same grades really helps. I think our kids do tend to get involved in “good” ECs, and the school has resources to help. I think our college counseling is really good at steering kids to their best bets, and away from too many other kids–if the kids will listen. And so on, and it all adds up to good-looking admissions stats.
And a lot of this stuff can be duplicated outside of these high schools. You can do interesting classes through DE and such. You can do interesting ECs outside of school. You can get great college advice, including here for free!
But it is all just sitting right there, one-stop-shopping, at high schools like this.
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I was merely trying to understand if these stats came from a Boston area school or not.
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No, we’re in NYC
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If he had been accepted at Northeastern, would he have attended given his other acceptances? That is the reason for yield protection.
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How are you able to see ED data in Naviance? I don’t see a distinction or breakdown between ED or RD.
I think this depends on the school. I’m heading to a NESCAC (Hamilton). Being a very small school that has a significant athlete population, ED is crowded with athletic recruits. But if I’m being honest, most of my unhooked friends got in through ED (ED2 specifically). about 50% of the incoming class is ED admits.
I would however estimate that the majority of ED1 admits ARE hooked, but the ED2 admits are mostly unhooked.
So for someone unhooked……if Hamilton is their first choice (and is affordable per NPC), I actually might recommend applying ED2.
I got in RD, unhooked. It was mostly unhooked kids in RD, but there are so many people that apply since it’s a well ranked LAC that you have to show why you want Hamilton in particular and what about an LAC interests you. They do consider demonstrated interest.
That may have been why I got in. I had a stellar interview, and I did all of the optional supplements besides one. At Bowdoin for example, I did some of the supplements but I didn’t interview or do the video. I got WL.
The LACs want to accomplish so much with just ~2k kids so it’s important to them that they accept people who will put everything into the school.
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We have Naviance at our high school. You can tell the ED/EA applicants in the scattergrams because they have slightly different symbols. I can’t remember if it’s an open circle vs a filled in circle or a box or something like that. There’s a key at the bottom of the scattergram. (No idea if all the schools have the same version of Naviance, so I don’t know if that would be helpful…)
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Yeah…we don’t have that with out version. Oh well.