@Wje9164be What are the potential advantages of going to a LACs, if any?
The main advantage of LAC’s is the focus on undergraduate education. The professors are there because they love to teach. There are no graduate students to compete with, and undergraduates are not a nuisance. I went to a faculty panel on Admitted Students Day at Pomona and one of the professors said their motto is not “Publish or Perish” but rather “Cherish or Perish.” Read this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/l-jay-lemons/the-gold-standard-the-powerful-impact-of-residential_b_4633443.html
@Corinthian What a great article! It certainly does its job of making LACs more appealing than other traditional ones. The fact that the professor actually brought the student to the airport himself. Wow.
@SaphireNY The problem is that every school is somewhat different, and the information available is spotty at best. You really need to research the particular school to understand how it works, you can’t just go off the ED admit percentage to see what the advantage is because the pools are different, how various hooks and tags are handled is different, etc…
And the schools (at least most of them) aren’t interested in disclosing the exact details because they are using ED for their own purposes - not always just nefarious yield stat juking, sometimes for more valid reasons (managing financial aid burdens, athletic or other special requirements recruitment, determining applicant commitment, etc…)
There is another advantage to ED especially for someone who is in target for the reaches. Eg at or about 75% for Penn Brown or Cornel but is not spectacular in any way by the standards of top colleges. If you are one of 6000 applying as opposed to one of 30000 there will not be as many just like you.
This means two things, you will only be the 10th violin playing, stem, debate team captain they have seen that day, as opposed to the 500th that week. Plus, you become part of who they are building the class around as opposed to someone used to fill in the class.
@SaphireNY So you’re saying that it’s beneficial to students who aren’t spectacular, but are in target range for scores?
Nobody asked, but here’s how I would put it for an unhooked / untagged candidate, relative to where the sit in terms of test scores/GPA ranges at a particular school:
Below the 25th percentile: Really no boost at all
25th-49th: Slight boost (+5%)
51-75: Good sized boost (+15%)
76th&up: Big boost (+25%)
All approximate, and it is going to vary somewhat by school.
That averages out to big boost overall (+12%, which might be double the overall admit rate) but it is not distributed evenly. If you think you can add the average boost to your long shot 5% chance and significantly raise your odds by going ED, you are naive (in my opinion.)
@NickFlynn So lets say I am an untagged candidate who boasts test scores around the average/slightly above; it would be more beneficial to go ed than someone who is only average/below (obvious I know).
I am in agreement with Nick and my experience with an athlete gave me a front row seat in the ED process at 15 schools.
First, its even less beneficial with small schools. Someone mentioned Bates having a rate of 55% but more than half of ED acceptances are preselected applicants like athletes, legacy and URM through the Prologue program. They are counted in that figure. Athletes go through admissions during the summer. Also the non-hook applicants are higher than average stat students.
So, the ED applicants this year were just 6% of total applicants, with the remaining 94% accepted at a 17.8% rate. Clearly, more people would apply ED if there was an edge.
ED is beneficial if your stats are above average and you want the adcom to really focus on it because they aren’t as busy during ED.
I don’t think any student should think it is beneficial otherwise.
“Clearly, more people would apply ED if there was an edge.” I disagree. I do think NickFlynn is correct although I think 50-75% is too broad a category and if you are at the 70th% your odds are not the same as 52% but are close to 75%.
Also if you are at the 70-80% for every school with all boxes checked (class president, non recruitable varsity athelete, debate captain, head of food drive, all of these not just one), no blemishes that are obvious. There is a tremendous temptation to see where you will end up. Will you get a HYPSM, will you get a free ride at Duke or WashU or Rice.
While a few people who are particularly good at presenting themselves in an application or have small hooks at certain achools will end up with those, most RD people will be on here next April complaining that they did not get in any place they really wanted to go and now have to go to CMU or UCLA (I know good choices but these people were envisioning Penn and Columbia as their fallback). The reallu unlucky will have to go to theirstate safety (either the honors program or free ride but not where they wanted to be).
Finally committment is scary. I went from school to school last summer and they mostly looked alike to me. If one had stood out I would have applied ED.
As for Bates, did not apply cannot say. I have heard that about Amhearst as well. That is part of the research the OP needs to do. However, schools like Vanderbilt are taking 50% of their class ED. I doubt everyone there is a legacy or good with a ball bat or speed record.
@cbound88 What types of ec’s was your daughter involved in? Just curious.
I did ed, and about the only thing I gained from it was not having to finish my other college essays. But I’d say it depends on school, your financial situation, and how far behind your second choice is. And be wary of red acceptance rates. Ed acceptance rate for my school was roughly double the regular acceptance rate, but once you factored out the recruited athletes it was much closer to the regular rate, meaning the “boost” my application received from ed was pretty close to zero.
For me, the bottom line is that you should use ED as it is intended - for situations where you have an absolute clear favorite choice, that you are sure is going to be both affordable and a good fit, and that you are already sitting with a decent chance of admission (i.e., sitting above the midpoint of the freshman class stats in terms of scores/GPA/course load/etc.) Trying to strategize with ED is largely a fool’s errand - if a school is a big long shot for you RD, ED will very likely end result in nothing more than an early rejection letter.
There are some particular exceptions to this rule of course (what good rule doesn’t have them?) - if you are solid candidate for HYPMS, and you are dead set on an Ivy, then you should take advantage of SCEA (I know, not ED technically.) If you are a Penn legacy with a decent shot at admission, you need to do ED. And I am sure there are others I don’t know about. Most of the time however, I would stick with the paragraph above as guidance.
@BatesParents2019,
Small correction-ED applicants made up 12% of the applicant pool at Bates this year (679 of 5636.)