How does one come up with an ED or REA application strategy for a student who is more of a pragmatist rather than an “all in” personality. He is the kind of person who finds the good and works to make the most of whatever situation he’s in. He is a rising senior and has perfect scores (36 ACT and 4.0 uw GPA), highest rigor (12 APs by end of senior year), numerous national awards and meaningful community impact in his ECs, a defined and authentic “story.” Even has “hooks” at one top 10 school, which is in his top 5 preferred schools. He has many elements that lean toward applying ED or REA. His school counselor even supports ED. Yet, I can’t tell if he’s only considering ED because it makes sense statistically for his admission chances. People on CC constantly warn against ED except if you have a number one “dream” school. What if your student isn’t into dreaming about college but very much in to increasing admission chances from a practical standpoint? Is ED only for dreamers? Is ED or REA advisable in this scenario? Our son can honestly see himself being content at many colleges and is mainly looking at the statistical benefits of ED but why is this approach to ED often seen as invalid on CC?
You don’t !!
First off there’s no such thing as a dream school. I went to my dream school - Syracuse for sports broadcasting. It was fine but a dream nooooooo way. All schools have bad profs or roomies or good or mean kids or whatever. Many come on here seeking to transfer from the dream school.
#1 is affordability - are you willing to pay $100k a year where with their stats you can go for under $20k and certainly under $40k to great schools? It’s a buyer’s market.
Even if you think you are willing to pay, are you sure - ready to commit now to paying ? One top school pressured my son to ED and he loved the school. They noted to me of it’s not affordable, they’d release me I said to them, it’s not an affordability question. It’s a question of if I want to afford it -no.
ED is marketing. Colleges are using FUUD - fear, uncertainty and doubt. We fill half our class ED - blah blah.
Yet look at the yield of non ED. They need to let in, depending on the school, 5,6,7+ times the applicants to get enough to fill the other side of the class. That’s because ED includes the invited - athletes, questbridge and more.
Some would argue ED takes the app season pressures away - and that’s true.
But every year we hear horror stories - kids ED’d and now regret it. They gamed to get in #30 and now #10 came through RD (they should have withdrawn the app), got into my cheap state school I didn’t expect to, I thought I wanted small but now big.
Short of someone needing significant aid or 100% truly knowing what they want and the parents are 100% on board financially, I can’t see why one would ED. And most don’t.
Good luck.
Mainly because it can lead to regrets. “If I got in there, maybe I should have tried for x school”. If your son is absolutely sure he wouldn’t have any regrets about locking into whatever school he chooses, then go ahead (but be aware that not all schools have the actual statistical advantage that ED seems to confer, because a significant portion of the ED admits may be athletes, legacy, donor or otherwise hooked). REA gives more flexibility- you’re not locked in - but you are giving up the option to ED somewhere else by doing that, and there is often not an admissions advantage in REA.
Would your student be happy with one and done if he is accepted ED? Or does he want the option of being able to choose amongst multiple acceptances. If he wants to make a choice amongst several acceptances, he can’t ED. And ED acceptance would be binding.
Is your student one who would like to apply early to only one college? If so, SCEA or REA could be a good option. But there are firm rules each school having these options have about where else you can also apply early (no ED for example, and usually not any other EA schools). But not every school offers SCEA or REA. Perhaps his top choice does….of he has one.
You don’t mention affordability in your post. ED is a binding acceptance…so you need to do your due diligence on whether this would be an affordable acceptance.
I guess my free advice would be…your student is a very strong applicant from what you have written. I’m not sure I see a reason to apply ED anywhere.
But that’s my opinion.
Is this still his list of considered colleges?
University of WI (likely guaranteed admission under state program), UChicago, Northwestern, Boston College (his school places many students at BC each year), Claremont McKenna, UPenn, Swarthmore, Rice, UCLA.
Personally, I think the pragmatic approach you describe is 100% valid. Sounds like your kid knows himself and you know your kid. So, unless you need to compare aid packages, why not increase your chances somewhere he wants to go?
Affordability is not a concern. Our older child did not choose ED. He only did EA and RD applications. So ED is new to us.
If affordability is not an issue, then you just have to be sure that he won’t change his mind - if you can.
Some truly don’t care where they go and it’s also true that no one knows walking in if they chose the right school. You can only hope you did.
So if hopefully avoiding further apps and wanting to be done - and you 100% won’t have concerns about what you’re spending, then sure it’s fine.
But if he gets in - you can’t change.
REA/SCEA are different as they are not binding but do limit where you can apply early. If he’s only applying to top schools, the others would be RD anyway as few top have EA.
To me this depends on how much value your son places on potentially being done in December. For my D22 this was a huge relief - she had no desire to wait until April and then have to choose among several options - she picked her favorite (which coincidentally was the hardest to get into but that wasn’t why she chose it). She was so thrilled to be in and done I had to restrain her from pulling her other apps until we got the financial aid offer the following day and confirmed it was ok. She’s never regretted it. I think regret over an ED acceptance is relatively rare and usually because 1) a parent pushed them to ED to a school that wasn’t actually their first choice, or 2) they were really trying to game the system and it wasn’t really their first choice. My daughter probably would have been happy at other schools but she liked her ED choice a lot and loved the idea of having the whole process done with. By the way she’s a week from graduation now and has never regretted the choice even when things (inevitably) didn’t go her way from time to time. So personally I’d pay attention to your son’s personality - will he like racking up acceptances and having choices in April? Or would he prefer to choose a school now and be happy with that decision? Having to choose between multiple good options on a timeline would have stressed my kid out. She didn’t care about bragging rights that she’d gotten into multiple schools. ED made sense for her. YMMV.
I think the question in OP is really about 2) here:
(My D19 also ED’d with no regrets, and it was amazing to be done with the whole process before winter break, but it was also her clear #1 school.)
His preferred list has evolved a bit. Some of the original schools, upon visiting, did not have the energy he was looking for. Other schools lacked the major he’s interested in. He added a few more schools since he originally began campus tours He has a list of 12 schools now. Four are top contenders he sincerely likes equally Two are safeties that he also likes but not quite as much (one of those will likely be a guaranteed admit) The others, based on his school’s data are solid targets.
did not have the campus vibe he wanted and others didn’t have his particular major.
So first, I am skeptical about high numbers but unhooked kids getting a notable admissions “boost” from many of the most selective colleges that typically have high RD yields anyway.
I think when it might “work” is if they are NOT applying to one of those colleges, but instead there is a college they really love, but the college might mistakenly conclude they have no realistic chance of yielding them. So, like, if this kid actually prefers Tufts to Harvard or similar, but Tufts would mistakenly think they are likely to lose them to Harvard or similar, they could avoid that mistake by applying ED to Tufts.
Even then, though, Tufts needs to want them. But they very well might.
And I am not sure that makes Tufts a “dream school” per se. And you would still need to know you could not only afford Tufts, but would be OK not even seeing merit offers and such.
OK, so if all those conditions are not met, and you prefer keeping options open, you can just apply REA somewhere if you feel like it.
I think those colleges typically have REA precisely because they don’t have these concerns anyway. So it probably won’t actually “boost” you.
But you might get an early offer, which is nice when it happens. Sometimes that is the end for kids, sometimes they continue on with a shorter list, but either way it is likely useful.
I note in my experience, kids often discover new preferences even after applying. Sometimes it is because of post offer visits, which can be clarifying. But also many kids are just generally evolving, learning, and so on during senior year.
So I tend to be a bit skeptical of kids who claim to like some set of colleges equally. They may not see a reason to form a strong preference YET. But they might before they finally have to make a decision.
It’s interesting that using a less emotional approach to choosing colleges (I.e. looking at statistical advantages in ED) is considered “gaming the system.” Some kids truly do equally like multiple schools, especially since there are many variables that are being simultaneously considered in the process. My son loves philosophy and tends to examine big decisions like this with a certain amount of intellectual stoicism but I wouldn’t characterize him as gaming the system.
With your kid’s stats and the fact that you don’t need an FA package, you might be looking at paying full price at schools that are FA only or getting huge merit at schools that give it. While cost may not be THE deciding factor, it is always a factor, especially with him not having a clear #1 choice. If he isn’t completely sold on a specific school at full price, I’d skip the ED and make the decision based on more information in April.
To me, this is an issue. Heck, my kid had four majors Junior year - so he evolved. And he had a favorite - Wash U - til we went to Purdue. He told everyone he wanted to go to Wash U and that ended the minute he saw Purdue (and got in). We were done - wearing the t shirt and random people saying Boiler Up. Til he visited Alabama with some friends and saw he could get his own room and bathroom - Purdue was in the trash heap.
So what is important to your student? Obviously something because he’s eliminated or elevated schools based on Vibe/energy.
Someone mentioned Swat.
In the last CDS, 426 kids enrolled. 228 came in ED.
So there were 198 RD or there’s a little breakage so let’s say 200 that came in RD.
They admitted 977 - so that means 649 (650) were left - so they had to admit 3.5 kids RD to fill that remainder of the class. So they admitted far more RD than ED.
That’s a low yield vs. others, btw.
Look at neighboring Haverford, 229 of 397 came in ED. So 168 came in RD.
They had 896 admits - so 667 kids had to be admitted to get 168 or 4 per.
Hence the FUUD - and others will be higher rates.
ED is a choice, not one I would make but clearly as many have shown, it has extreme value.
What your student/you need to decide is - given their changing/evaluation and the possibility of further change, is it the right choice for them?
Only you and they can decide.
Good luck.
That wasn’t my choice of words but it is considered that by some. But that is the approach that is most likely to lead to regret.
Actually I think one wider advantage of ED (assuming the kid gets in and adheres to their contract by withdrawing other applications), although it’s probably marginal in the big scheme of things, is that it takes out a a number of the kids who would otherwise perhaps be applying quite widely and helps reduce the applicant pool everyone else is competing against RD.
If your son truly doesn’t mind which he goes to among a list of colleges and won’t have any “what if” moments once he’s committed somewhere, then I’d say go for it, though would suggest you look at the hooked breakdown for each college to see if there really is a significant statistical advantage vs RD.
If your school has Scoir (or maybe Naviance), I’d look at the scattergram with the heat map (Scoir has this feature). You can refine results by ED, EA, and RD and see what happens to the odds based on which application pathway you select. My son found this very eye opening to see what could happen to his odds in the two rounds based upon past students’ experiences from our high school. In some cases, like we saw with REA schools, the impact was minimal. To be fair, those schools don’t claim much of an advantage to applying REA. But, he could clearly see that the schools he likes that offer ED do confer a good boost, and if he chose to apply REA, he would have to be willing to forgo that ED boost.
I think in some cases - schools will tell you - they’ll make the same decision in ED as RD.
Some say things like this:
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Please do not assume that your admission chances are improved by applying under the Early Decision plan. The Board of Admission makes the same decisions under Early Decision that it would under the Regular Decision plan.
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From an REA - There is no statistical advantage in applying Early Action, as both our Early Action and Regular Decision pools will have roughly the same acceptance rate.
The other thing we don’t know is - how does the non invited ED profile compare to the RD student profile. Is it stronger or not as strong?
Given hooked students (athletes/QB and more) are part of ED, rates are often inflated. I think in general, the wealthy apply ED at a higher rate than the non-wealthy who may not even know about it or are afraid of the amount of aid they might get/not get if middle class. So school’s may be partial to ED, even if need blind, knowing they’ll finish ahead financially. And then for need aware schools - well they’ll love it.
With a student high in rigor, a perfect test score and national awards, your student is liking getting in to various top schools - ED or otherwise.
As for gaming the system, it’s not all in cases but some simply want to get into a high ranked school. I want to go to Penn but I don’t think it’s realistic, so I’ll ED to Emory. If they play it right and get in, they’ll never know if they’d have gotten into Penn or not. Others, don’t do what they should and withdraw and then they find out they got into their preferred school.
The other thing is - many posters will list 12 schools and ask - which should I ED (i.e. which is my best odds of getting in) - forgetting one might be super charge and the other tiny; that one might be urban and the other rural. The point - it’s not about what might fit me but what great name do I have best odds of getting into. That’s gaming. We literally know nothing about them - their desires, needs, etc. The only thing we know is - they want in a big name, no matter what it is, where it is, what it costs, etc.
That’s gaming….
Do any of these colleges have early action…not SCEA or REA, but just plain old early action? Do any have rolling admissions?
ETA…one of my kids liked three colleges equally well. One was rolling admissions and the other two had early action. So…she had those applications completed and sent by October….and had acceptances to all three before Christmas. This was 2006, and I believe EA decisions are now coming out in January. And…she didn’t make her matriculation decision until April 30…she went back and forth between two of these three.
We’ve looked at SCOIR for his school. Two of his top four college choices showed very high ED odds (this essentially triggered my post). For the two other colleges he likes the odds were only mildly increased, not nearly as dramatically as the other two. While SCOIR doesn’t factor in ECs, LORs, awards, legacy….its useful in understanding the basic chances for his community. It’s hard to ignore the ED boost for those two schools. But I understand the risks of going ED. I’m more aligned with RD approach because it’s familiar to me from my older child, but our son is now leaning ED. I just want to understand the implications for both strategies with a student who doesn’t see colleges as dream destinations but in more pragmatic terms (eg more focused on intellectual culture, city access, nature nearby, social opportunities alongside professional internships, rankings for the desired major, free speech climate, small classes…) He’s visited all the schools on the top of his list, knows students at several of them, and has determined four of them are highly desirable based on his criteria and now he just wants to go to the one where his chances are highest.