I have heard that universities compare students to others from their school. However, if students apply ED or EA, do they look at those separate from the other RD applications from that school?For instance, if students with lower stats applied early, but students with higher stats submitted their applications early but went regular decision, would they defer or reject the ED students knowing that there are higher achievers in RD from that high school?
I’m not an expert but my understanding is ED/EA might provide the tiniest bump (if any at all) to an already qualified student. It does not help an unqualified student move to the front of the line. If 2 students from the same school have virtually identical stats/ECs/LoRs and are equally qualified, I suppose if the EA/ED applicant is admitted, it could mean the RD applicant is not. The one thing that is more certain is a decision has been made about the ED/EA applicant before anyone sees the application for the RD applicant.
There is no single answer to your question.
It’s probably more representative to say that colleges consider applications in the context of the school and the class, rather than Student A v Student B, especially in the first reading. As you know, every school includes a school profile with the student’s application, which will give the college an idea of where the student stands relative to their cohort. Whether or not your school ranks, colleges are well able to figure out roughly where a student stacks up relative to their class from the profile.
And, policies vary by college as to how they approach ED / EA. Some colleges make a straight up or down decision on early applicants: either you stand out and they take you, or you get rejected. Others defer all but the kind of super-outstanding students that they want to woo. Still others value the love that an ED application demonstrates. It’s too variable for a blanket statement.
From your other posts I am guessing that you are expressing your anxiety as your student waits to hear back from an ED or EA school. If you are using CC as an outlet for your anxiety so that you don’t exacerbate your student’s anxiety, or to get info to help address your student’s anxiety- fine. But really, y’all need to find a more constructive way to handle the anxiety. As long as your student applied to at least one genuine safety (imo, that is a college to which s/he is all but certain to be admitted, you can afford, and where she will be happy enough to go), everything will work out. For now, the die is cast, and it really doesn’t matter which way it works at the particular colleges in question because there is nothing you can do about it now.
I encourage both of you to find something to distract yourselves with: physical activity, doing something for somebody whose needs are greater than yours, etc. Come back & tell us how it worked out & we will either celebrate with you or help you with Plan B!
Colleges know what they expect. Often, they know what they can expect from particular high schools. The Early app kid isn’t going to get a special bump from applying early, just because his school competition hasn’t applied yet. He either matches and is a compelling admit or not. That’s where it starts.
At the same time, this can also apply to fabulous applicants. With the RD pool unknown, a college can defer, to wait to see who else shows up. That’s not a loss, IF you truly are a good match. It just delays your decision.
“I’m not an expert but my understanding is ED/EA might provide the tiniest bump (if any at all) to an already qualified student. It does not help an unqualified student move to the front of the line.”
I agree that ED/EA does not move an unqualified student to the head of the line. However, at most schools, ED (as opposed to EA) provides more than a tiny bump to a qualified applicant. If you are a qualified applicant, ED can significantly improve your chances of getting in. That said, the benefits of ED will vary from school to school, so you need to do your research when deciding whether to apply ED to a given school.
Thanks for the advice.
You can get a general idea of what an admission department considers important by looking at the schools Common Data Set (Section C). It will tell what is important to what is not considered at each college. There are objective categories (grades, test scores, class rank etc.) and subjective categories (essays, recommendations, ECs etc.). I think the common data set helps most at schools that are moderately selective. When choosing among very selective schools many of the things they deem important academically (ie. grades, test scores, rigor) are pretty much a given for most of their applicants. They then will look at more subjective criteria which can be hard to quantify and impossible to predict. Class rank while objective is ED primarily shows (the ultimate) demonstrated interest. It can also put you in with a smaller applicant pool but that advantage is diminishing somewhat as more people apply ED for the admissions bump rather than it truly being THE school they want to attend. One recommendation I would make is only apply ED if the school is in fact your number one choice and you can afford it.
ED may be especially advantageous if the college sees level of interest as very important, and you appear overqualified.
Why no schools fill all their spots in the ED (1 and2) rounds and thus eliminate the need for RD all together? I am seriously asking this question, esp for the highly selective schools with lots of applicants.
It’s a legit question, but have you seen the thread about opinions on limiting a kid’s total apps? You’d still need an RD round to get kids to backup choices and safeties.
They may find that some types of applicants whom they want to admit some of are too underrepresented in the ED pool. For example, while most highly selective private colleges skew their students toward those from wealth (about half with no FA, usually meaning top 3% income or wealth to afford that), they may not want almost all of their students to come from wealth, which is what they may get if they admit their entire class ED (lower and middle SES students may not have good counseling that helps them get applications in by the ED deadline (QuestBridge notwithstanding, since many do not know that QuestBridge exists until it is too late), and may not want to apply ED so that they can compare FA offers).
At colleges that admit a large percentage of their students ED and practice “crafting a class”, that may mean that RD applicants who resemble ED admits may have reduced chance of admission compared to RD applicants who do not resemble ED admits.
You are making an assumption that colleges with low acceptance rates accept no more than one student per high school, and therefore if one is accepted ED, any others who apply RD will be rejected. The RD applicant is often more likely to be rejected, but only because they are competing with more qualified students for each available place than are the ED applicants.
The benefit that ED has is indeed for qualified students. Colleges with acceptance rates of under 25% or so generally reject many more qualified applicants than they accept. That means that that the college can pick an equally qualified class from half as many applicants. An additional factor is that, for yield protection, college want to accept a large chunk of their incoming class from the ED applicants. However, the number of ED applicants are only a fraction of the number of RD applicants. Even after removing athletes, and other ED applicants from different programs, the proportion of applicants per available place is higher than it is for RD applications.
With fewer qualified applicants per open place, the chances of each qualified applicant to be accepted increases.
Of course, for colleges with acceptance rates of under 5%, even a threefold increase in acceptance rate means 2.5% versus 7.5%, or a rejection rate of 92.5% versus 97.5%. So applying SCEA does not mean that one’s acceptance rate becomes actually realistic. The acceptance rate may have tripled, but the rejection rate of ED applicants is 95% of the rejection rate of RD applicants.
On the other hand, for colleges with average acceptance rates of over 15%, the realistic increase in acceptance rate may make a realistic difference.
PS. I expect that if the number of ED applicants increases, relative to RD applicants, the advantage of applying ED will decrease.
No, not on that basis alone. You’re forgetting one very important factor: The college has no idea whether or not that RD applicant with higher stats will attend.
That’s what I’m afraid of. This school is my daughter’s top pick. But I advised her not to apply ED because I felt like they would not offer any scholarships to someone they had already in their ED pool. However, her stats are better than the students who applied ED but they have never taken more than 2 students from her high school…ever, according to Naviance. So this is the root of my anxiety… they may take the birds in the hand and that leaves my daughter out of play. Well, EDs are supposed to come out today…we’ll see.
Applying ED definitely gives you a bump - I saw a youtube viedo by the president of Northwestern U analytics break it down. He says when analyzed ED provides a bump in 40-80 points on SAT - as an example if you got a 1480, applying ED will give you a 60 point advantge as in your score would be viewed with candidates in RD equivalent to 1540. That being said - if you are not within the schools published middle 50% in scores and GPA, whether you apply ED or RD it sdoes not make a difference unless you are legacy or an athelete.
Here was how some of the college admissions officers I know explained it to me about wholistic admissions - weight 35 (SAT and GPA) 25 (extra curriculars) 30 (essays)
10 (recommendation letters and alum interview). This how they view the candidate - they spend about 20 mins to review an application and the piece that sets one candidate from the other is genrally unique essay or extraordinay ECs. Most students applying have the SAT ang GPA within the range.
Hope this helps.
Helpful information, @MWolf and @FunnyDad. Assuming a family runs the NPC and deems the school affordable, how much does need-based financial aid come in to play?
Not receiving enough financial aid is an acceptable reason to decline the ED spot.
IMO, if there is a clear favorite and the the NPC shows it is doable financial for the family, apply ED.
I wouldn’t rely on what anyone says, as gospel, if you do not have the basics, meet a college’s bar. A college like NU doesn’t need to reach down and add points. (Think about it. They have thousands or tens of thousands of applicants who have high stats, to begin with.) In the world of top selectives, a 1480 is not equivalent to a 1540.
As it is, plenty of kids are confused by what it takes for them to match. Someone interprets some post, article, or interview one way, and others don’t do more to vet it. They go on blind faith and false assumption.
Any bump usually goes to athletic recruits, whose playing ability can trump other standards. No one should blithely assume there’s magic in an Early app.
@momofsenior1 I was wondering more about if schools are more likely to admit a student who needs money during ED or if they would defer them and hope for more full pays in RD.
@helpingmom40 - For need blind schools, admissions wouldn’t know if a student was applying for aid.
For need aware schools, then they are risking deferring someone who will be guaranteed to attend, with an RD admit that could go elsewhere.
ED benefits colleges greatly from a yield management perspective. Not sure how need aware schools balance budget concerns vs yield.