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4 Likes
I totally disagree with this statement: âCongress should take action, now, to forbid binding early decision agreements for tax-exempt universities receiving federal aid.â
Iâd like less government involvement in higher ed and not more!
I do think states could restrict ED for their flagships.
Really though, no one is forcing anyone to apply ED. If families want or need to compare offers, apply EA and RD.
15 Likes
The Early Decision Option Is a Racket.
I agree with this.
Shut It Down
ehhhh - people make choices. People buy stuff every day thatâs dumb - this is just another consumer purchase and colleges use the tried and trued FUUD formula to win minds.
So - while I would not let my kids partake, as long as the risks are spelled out, then why shut it down.
Colleges do say - apply this way only if - and theyâre fair.
But they should provide merit aid data points too - then itâd be more fair - such as 14% of ED applicants get merit average $2K while 55% of RD applicants get - or something like that so people knew the impact, not just from admission but monetarily because many likely lose $$ and would have gotten in anyway.
Itâd also help if they removed athletes from admission stats and broke out by ED1 / ED2 etc.
3 Likes
Given the supposed mission of state universities (to make education more accessible to the state population), ED seems inappropriate for flagships as well as other state universities.
The practice of filling up almost all admission space through EA is also not a good thing in this context. Perhaps schools that do this should rename EA to regular action and RD to late action to make it clear that applying by the later deadline means diminished chances of admission.
7 Likes
I donât understand all the hate against ED.
- If the student has done their homework with NPCâs for the particular schools, they know the likely aid that they will get with an ED offer. Most of the highly selective ED schools meet full need. Yes - one can always get more merit aid during RD from a less selective schools. This is entirely the studentâs decision as to whether EDâing to a particular school (that they have done NPCâs for) is the right choice for them. There is no inherent financial âschemingâ behind the ED process, beyond the general goal of maximizing yield.
- Having very competitive students ED and commit to those schools lessens the intensity of the RD process. If HYPSM had ED instead of REA, imagine the number of extremely competitive candidates who would no longer be in the pool for the rest of the top 20 or 30 schools?
- What is so wrong with picking one school and committing to it? And if you donât want to, you donât have to. The entire process is so out of control because of the application bloat - students shotgunning to 15-20 schools everywhere. I think the kind of commitment and focus required for ED works against the bloat and creates a match for more students early on.
16 Likes
Total drop in the bucket. HYPS have about 1,500 matriculate each year, so assume they take in 700 ED each, thatâs only 2,800 spots against how many tens of thousands of competitive applicants.
I agree application bloat is the problem. The best way to reduce stress is to limit applicants to apply to no more than 3-5 schools with admissions rates less than say 20%. A lot of the craziness comes from students treating college admissions like the lottery. When I applied, and you had to type out each unique application, I only had time to apply to 4 colleges RD and 1 EA. The admit rate for HYP was about 20%. If you were a top 10-15% student with decent SATâs (>1300), schools like Duke and JHU were easily within reach. The fall back for any student that was college bound was the state or surrounding flagships.
3 Likes
I donât have a problem with EA because itâs non binding. The schools that fill the bulk of their classes in EA are very upfront about that and just means students get an admissions decision in January. The schools Iâm familiar with donât require housing deposits until after RD release dates so I donât see the harm.
2 Likes
For private universities I agree entirely.
There are a very large number of very good universities in the USA, and more elsewhere. If a student does not get into NYU, or Harvard or Stanford, then they attend a different very good university and get a very good education somewhere else.
And I think that any student who is even remotely competitive for NYU, or for Harvard or Stanford, will get into many very good universities even if they do not get accepted to NYU.
I do not like ED. I might think of it as âa racketâ. So if you do not like this game, do not play it. We did not play this game. We went to very good universities anyway.
And I agree with this also. Public universities are funded by the state and the state has a right to say something about how the university is run.
For private universities I think that the reputation of the university in the very long run depends upon the universityâs graduates. If the university wants their graduates to represent the university well, then they need to bring in the best qualified students, but I think that this is up to the university to figure out.
I might make an exception when it comes to blatant racial discrimination in admissions. Here the government might have a role even for private universities. However, ED is not that.
2 Likes
That is true. However, those 2,800 students not applying to (say) 10 other schools, potentially impacts the admission decision on 28,000 other spots/students.
1 Like
Heâs a conservative hack. This is just part of the current adminâs attack on higher ed.
4 Likes
Which doesnât disprove the fact that the process provides a meaningful advantage to the Usual Suspects.
3 Likes
I disagree with so much of this article. There are some valid points, but the author totally fails to address the reality that there are almost always more affordable options that donât involve prestige and rankings.
This student is being fed a line by her parents, fellow students, and maybe even counselors when she says, âââŠasking a 17-year-old to sign an agreementâ that could obligate them to âpay $90,000 a year is a really, really big ask.ââ Surely everyone signing has done the NPC and knows they can afford the tuition. Or surely the student has been made aware that the agreement is not LEGALLY binding. Or surely the student is aware that other, less selective colleges will probably be an easier admit for her. Or surely the studentâs parents discussed all these ramifications with her before signing the ED agreement. Surely, right?
Would love the author to complete the thought when saying, âBecause there is so much uncertainty, families with high incomes are more likely to choose early decision and therefore benefit (by the perceived prestige) from its more favorable odds.â Because isnât that ACTUALLY the benefit the author doesnât state?
Currell doesnât address the great big elephant in the room: There are cheaper, less prestigious options but he ignores that.
8 Likes
Of course it could be over $100,000 per year by the time that a current high school student has graduated with a bachelorâs degree.
The parents need to act like they are the adults in the room. No 17 year old should be asked or allowed to make the decision on anything that is even remotely this expensive without adult guidance (ignoring a tiny number of young wealthy celebrities â and even they should have some adult guidance). If the parents are paying, then they have the right to say no.
Sometimes parents just need to say ânoâ, and this should not be the first time and might not be the last.
And sometimes a parent says ânoâ to applying ED to an expensive private college, and the high school senior is pissed, and five or six years later she thanks him for having not allowed her to blow out her college budget getting a bachelorâs degree. But this is just part of a parent acting like a parent.
And I do not think that the government needs to be the parent.
This is a very important point, along with the fact that many, many students do very well after graduating from those cheaper, less prestigious but very good options.
3 Likes
I am not sure what is the argument here. For the ED contract, the patents need to read and sign the contract if there is a parent.
1 Like
Nope⊠not everyone. One of my S23âs HS friends attends UChicago, where he had applied ED. The family hadnât done the NPC⊠they were shocked that they didnât receive any kind of aid. They had just assumed Chicago would give similar aid and merit as what another school had given their older child. They are now paying the difference with loans.
5 Likes
This would be on the parents/students who did not do their own diligence work.
On the other hand, U Chicago is very generous about FA, and rarely other schools can beat it. Especially when there are siblings in college, which will get even higher FA in most cases.
1 Like
Absolutely! All Iâm saying is that that families exist who make assumptions, donât run the NPC, and then feel backed into a corner⊠Iâm sure this family isnât the only one. I would feel better about ED if families had to run the NPC before making the commitment.
4 Likes
There are a lot of assumptions here about parents. This platform is filled with participants who are usually very well versed in the college process and are graduates themselves. This is not so in the real world. You can blame the parents and their kids, but itâs not willful ignorance.
2 Likes
This is from an ED contract, and not sure all schools use same language.
âIf you are accepted under an Early Decision plan, you must promptly withdraw the applications submitted to other colleges and universities and make no additional applications to any other university in any country. If you are an Early Decision candidate and are seeking financial aid, you need not withdraw other applications until you have received notification about financial aid from the admitting Early Decision institution.â
It seems that families may back out ED contracts after seeing the financial aid package.
4 Likes
Yes, thanks for posting that. Iâve always been confused about the confusion ever since my D applied under ED. She fully intended to commit to that school, and did, but not until after we got the financial aid package, which didnât align with the amount we thought doing the NPC, and we appealed asking for more $, including more merit $ and were granted an amount that aligned more with the NPC we calculated. She wouldâve declined the acceptance as her ED agreement said she could do if âaid offered wasnât an amount that makes attendance possibleâ. And she was not a need-based applicant but we did fill out the FAFSA and school based one. So my confusion remains - does the ED agreement vary from school to school? Maybe we took liberties in saying to them âyour aid offer doesnât match up with the NPC that we did and what weâre able/willing to pay and we want more $ or no diceâ. 