@Waiting2exhale I have/had no intention of starting a CC war, I would presume everyone accepts that their ideas all have hurdles. (If I am reading your comment correctly.)
No, just referring to the sheer amount of comments that would then flood in if your summary post were its own thread. This thread is not generating nearly the amount of posts that I thought it would, for some odd reason.
War = the madness in the amount of discussion
Do people agree it would help for Ivy League Schools to release their results earlier?
On a related note, why don’t more colleges do rolling admissions…?
Someone’s post this evening captured what I was talking about at the beginning perfectly…
"General Comments: To be honest, this entire process is like a game of roulette. The only way to increase your chance of “winning” is by “playing” more: I was rejected by schools generally accepted to be “less selective” than yet I got into . I hate to say this, but my only advice to other students is to apply to as many schools as you like given that you genuinely are interested in each one. "
Probably because it gives them less control over the admission thresholds or class composition than having most or all applicants evaluated together. For more selective colleges, that seems to matter more than for less selective colleges, which are more likely to do rolling admissions.
Typewriters, white-out, and snail mail.
What do you all think about the SCEA/REA schools moving to an ED model? That would eliminate some of the trophy hunting that goes on when someone is accepted at one of these in December and then goes on to collect as many admissions as possible from other schools. Yes, I know there’s the financial aid effect but from what I’ve seen, there’s a lot of wiggle room there if the FA isn’t acceptable. There would also be some fallout on the EA schools that don’t require a single choice. They would inevitably pick up a lot of new applications that are not permitted under the current REA/SCEA rules. I realize that the applications to the schools I’m including are small in number but the domino effect is huge.
Thanks for the idea @3girls3cats , I think it would be helpful for this problem. It forces some of the sorting to happen early on.
I think the effect would be very big as you suggest. For one thing, those students who are getting accepted to those schools are tending to get into a lot of other schools, all things equal. And like you said it would domino.
Of course, the flip-side is that the students doing this have less choice. They have to make that decision whether it is worth it to bump up their odds. Something has to give somewhere.
I think a historic criticism has been that early decision favors wealthy students. That said, certainly those REA schools are known for great financial aid. The more subtle point is that more affluent families can afford more of the search cost - fly to schools to check them out, hire college counselors to help them figure out the best fit, and so on.
From a practical matter, I think Harvard would not agree to it, at least based on historical patterns. I read that at one point, they were considering ignoring early decision because they were so against it.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2002/6/6/harvard-may-ignore-early-decision-as/
Thanks @ucbalumnus that makes sense. Though maybe they could move to a priority admission date, get the basics of their class right with that, and tinker at the margin with the class composition with a rolling admission scheme. I suspect UMich does something like this. The other thing is if they could get SIRs sooner, that eliminates the guesswork associated with who is actually going to show up.
I presume there is also a stigma against rolling admissions, since many of the most-applied to colleges don’t do it.
I do think it would help spread out their workload a little better.
Maybe there are other reasons as well…?
Princeton and Harvard did eliminate early action/early decision for a brief period. The argument was that the early decision/early action model favored wealthy applicants. When the applications flooded the other schools, both H and P reinstated single choice early action programs. (Princeton went from an early decision program to no early decision to SCEA.)
Unfortunately, I think the deck is stacked in favor of wealthy applicants no matter what the colleges do. But given the generous financial aid that these schools grant, it would not necessarily deter those who need the aid from applying. Nor is that the crowd I’d want to limit.
I also think that the colleges do what benefits them and for that reason I agree that there’s little chance that any of them will convert their SCEA programs to ED. I do think it would help though.
@3girls3cats yeah I tend to agree with you. It would actually probably help on the financial aid front on a trickle down basis also. A lot of the same students who are getting into HYPS are probably getting awarded scholarships from other places that are intended to entice them to go elsewhere.
If this were in place, the “yield” of places offering scholarships would probably go up. I suppose eventually schools would offer less scholarships in response eventually.
But in the end, higher yields mean that things are going the right way, in my opinion.
I agree with @3girls3cats – If you take those SCEA colleges and MIT (which is just EA I believe) and turn those early applications into ED then you don’t have the “trophy hunters” applying everywhere and skewing the admissions process for the rest of the applicants. I have seen here, and IRL, kids who apply early (and have been admitted) to Harvard or Stanford, and then proceed to apply to EVERY other IVY, MIT, etc. for bragging rights. It lowers admissions rates at these colleges, which they seem to appreciate, but it has made for a crazy college process in the last few years.
I understand that sometimes there is a FA component in the mix, but these really are the most generous colleges in that regard.
(I have personal issues with this, my D applied ED to her #1 choice and is very happy there, but I feel sorry for the kids still in the process).
@3girls3cats what did you think of my original idea (if you had time to read it all haha)?
@inn0v8r, I really like the idea of creating an incentive for students to release their spots earlier in the cycle. I think that positive incentives are very powerful and that it there were a way to make it workable, could have an effect on application trends.
I doubt that the Ivies would change their notification dates and in all honesty, I think there are people who would continue to apply even with those results in hand. You see it with SCEA all the time and wonder why, if you chose a school early on and were accepted, did you then need to go on and apply to 20 more schools?
The biggest stumbling block I see to all of it is that the schools would need to cooperate. Right now they seem more interested in lowering acceptance rates to ridiculous numbers (4.7% for Stanford this year!)
Hey @3girls3cats: Can you give me a link for those Stanford stats?
@Waiting2exhale I think it is derived from
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2016/march/admit-admission-announce-032516.html
Wow, that goes up as soon as they accept the kids, I guess. Thanks.
@3girls3cats thank you, all good points.
The colleges are definitely a party to this. In a way it is kind of like empire building, right? More applications = more fees = more staff, plus the low admission rate, which is associated with the school being “better.” Heck, we all probably are guilty of turning to the admission rate as a heuristic for how good a school is. I think we as humans are wired to follow the crowd logic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_proof
http://www.wsj.com/articles/humans-naturally-follow-crowd-behavior-1410543908
“Heck, we all probably are guilty of turning to the admission rate as a heuristic for how good a school is.”
That is absolutely the nature of the illness which has spread among parents, probably moreso than among the kids.
By the way, I wonder if younger students and parents realize just how serious the overall problem is?
If the admission rate falls from 10% to 6% over a period of a few years, it doesn’t sound like a big deal, right? But that of course means going from 1 out of 10 chances to 1 out of 17 almost. Not to mention, the non-recruited athlete non-legacy folks face a lower rate still.
What are we headed for - what will the college admissions world look like in 5 years, if this trend continues un-abated?
Also, for those who think it is just a problem at the high end - again, it trickles down. The harder it gets, the more students have to apply to safeties, which is someone else’s match, which makes those schools harder to get into, and so on…