I believe applying to rolling admission schools is allowed by ED plans. There are a few EA schools (ND, Gtown, BC) that do not allow the applicant to apply ED elsewhere but do allow EA elsewhere.
Ultimately, the early situation will depend on what the final list looks like, but for now the plan will be EA everywhere that offers it, with no ED.
My feeling, reading over the 2022 stats, is that at the highest level of selectivity there are certain schools for which not applying ED is virtually the same as not applying at all because the RD rates are so low.
@coolweather I keep hearing that here (that you can only apply to public colleges EA while applying ED elsewhere), but have never heard that in the āoutside world.ā I know tons of kids that applied to Tulane and CWRU EA while applying to Northwestern, WashU, Emory, etc etc. ED. Again, some were accepted to their ED choice, and some were not. All who were accepted ED rescinded their EA applications. Those that were rejected or deferred had choices to consider while they submitted their RD applications. I donāt get how this is even slightly problematic. (PS No longer an issue for me personally, as my younger kids are unlikely to apply ED anywhere but I am still extremely curious)
@coffeemomCO Welcome. DS19 and I are touring Clemson tomorrow for Spring Blast. Weāve been on campus many times, but this is his first time on a formal tour there. We live about 45 minutes from there so if thereās ever an emergency of something , feel free to PM me.
@ninakatarina one problem with submitting things early is that the schools wonāt have any grades from senior year on file. Some kids that want to improve their GPA and show some rigor wait until RD.
If you apply early Fall, you can still get your grades and scores added to the file later, it just doesnāt come over in one file at one time. Youāll need to ask your counselor to send in the grades, and you need to send in any SAT/ACT scores you get it you take them in the Fall.
The other thing, is your kid might get some awards in the Fall, and those wonāt be on the app either, so you need to be proactive and reach out to admissions office with updates to the kids file.
I think for safeties/matches there is no reason not to apply early if you have everything done, it looks good, kids grades are OK etc.
The process for my son was get the common app filled out and essay done in the summer. When he got back to school in the Fall, he requested his LOR and asked for them by October. Once they were all updated in Naviance, son submitted a bunch of his EA apps around 11/15 if I remember. He had a few schools that only did RD and we submitted those early too, just to get them out of the way. Those were the ones where we had to update a few things as the year went on.
Like you, my kids are really busy in the Fall, so there was little time to work on apps and essays. It was better to get them done early and let them focus on school and ECs in the Fall.
Just an aside, research how housing priority is done at the schools that your child is applying to. Clemson goes by APPLICATION date , not admission date. Thatās why so many students apply Aug 1 when the app opens up. They do not have rolling admissions or EA.
I am now in final planning stages of S19s big college tour/mon-son road trip over his spring break. I really canāt believe it is here and Iām not feeling particularly good at this but stumbling forward nonetheless. I havenāt reserved tours yet and we might be showing up without a reservation and begging ourselves onto the tour. That worked ok with D17. Early on weāll be visiting a variety of schools and then narrowing in if S rules out one type of school or another.
If you have any advice for things to see at these schools or other similar schools nearby, please share! Iām particularly interested in similar schools that have easier entry and more merit (or simply cheaper). We are full-pay. S19 is STEMy, high-stat, outdoorsy-mathematician-jock-opera-club-philosopher kind of guy. He is not set on any size yet. Strongly prefers to not have to declare a major on admission. Interested in engineering, but does not want to be required to apply as engineering major. Has no interest (yet I hope) in job stuff. Wants to spend 4-years thinking about things with other thinkers. We visited some schools with co-op programs and I thought heād find that exciting, but he didnāt like it. Doing research with a prof sounded much more interesting to him.
So hereās list
SoCal trip
Day 1: Pomona, Harvey Mudd
Day 2: Chapman? UC Irvine? Weāll be in Newport Beach area in the morning. Need to leave LA by 2pm. Not sure we could make it to USC.
Day 3-4: Some combo of UCSD (seen 3x but no tour yet), USD, SDSU. I think only UCSD is actually in the running.
NE trip ā I havenāt settled yet on the schools. Some combo of
Boston schools: MIT/Harvard ā because I am curious but maybe more realistic schools would be better. Northeastern? Tufts? I canāt really see nature-boy in Boston, but who knows.
Dartmouth ā will spend a bit of time here to talk with coaches
UVM
Middlebury
Williams ā high on Sās list
RPI + WPI ā definitely RPI
St Lawrence + Clarkson ā if we decide to road trip that far east.
Union? Maybe since merit is possible.
Hamilton or Colgate? Maybe. There are already a bunch of full-pay schools on the list.
@liska21 Next week? A late spring break? Iām not sure when most schools nationally have spring break. My junior is off this week and we just got back from a 3-day trip. The morning info sessions ranged from 300-600+ people (the larger one broke up into nearly 20 tour groups). Even if you canāt officially register, I think it would be pretty easy to sit in on the info session and tag along a tour at most places. The caveat is that for schools big on demonstrated interest Iād try to get the visit recorded somehow.
@carolinamom2boys Thank you! Itās hard being so far away from college kidsā¦ but I just had birthday cake delivered to my clemson son on campus today, so Iām a happy mom! Enjoy your Clemson tour! My D19 likes Clemson as well and will likely apply. Great school.
As you mentioned, housing priority at Clemson is based on application date. In addition, they do offer priority admisisons notifications to those submitting all materials by December 1. From their website: āWe encourage applicants to submit materials early in the fall of their senior year. In mid-February, decisions are mailed to students who applied before Dec. 1; students who applied after Dec. 1 will receive their decision at this time or shortly thereafter.ā
In my S17ās experience, he submitted materials in August and was sent acceptance and merit scholarship in December. They effectively do seem to have an early action program.
@liska21 - We did the tour/info session thing at Harvey Mudd. I personally found the Mudd info session very valuable in terms of the admissions director (yes, it was the director) making clear what they cared about and what they didnāt in an application. It was a fairly large tour, so Iām not sure if that makes it easier or harder to slip by. The tour was fine, the school buildings are nice, the dorms areā¦ not so much. We didnāt do anything official at Pomona (we have a daughter, so itās literally harder to get in than into many Ivys for her), but wandered around the campus while waiting for our Mudd things to start. The campus is beautiful, so worth walking around even if you donāt take a tour. The Village of Claremont is right next to campus and I found it to be a nice place to hang around if you are bored of the campus.
Hello everyone. I have been reading the last few months of posts and thought I would jump into the conversation and join the group.
My kids were/are homeschooled. Once D19 graduates high school, not only will the nest be empty, but I will be out of a job I have loved. Yikes
My two older kiddos are still in college. One is at MIT and the other is at Williams. Both are having great experiences.
My D is done with testing and we are in the process of putting together her list with plans to visit once AP Season is over.
@BorgityBorg We are signed up for the Pomona info/tour but the Harvey Mudd is full. Thatās the one weāll try to crash. Hope it works since I am very keen for S to see Harvey Mudd. If he is dead set against this techy school, which is more LAC than others, then I think I can scratch all the polytechs off the list.
@evergreen5 All the schools in our area have their spring breaks in the first 3 weeks of April. The rest of the country does it early!
@ninakatarina We visited Amherst with D17. With Middlebury and Williams on the list, Iām thinking maybe Union would be better to add since it is easier to get into so closer to our match category rather than another reach.
Yāall, itās a disservice to say to someone that āED allowsā (or disallows) anything with regard to applying to other schools. You can only say that it is likely to allow or disallow anything, because every school has its own rules.
Some ED programs allow other non-binding applications (that must be withdrawn if an offer of admission is made), others only allow other applications to be RD (or rolling, since thatās effectively year-round RD), a few odd ones only allow other applications to be made to public colleges, and some donāt allow any other applications to be submitted until a decision has been made by the ED school (which kind of implies a quick turnaround on ED applications).
And there are other schools with other rules. Therefore: If you want to apply ED (or SCEA), read the fine print for that specific school. Carefully. Then read it again.
People talk about ED, but there is no ED, there are rather a lot of different EDs.
@evergreen5 said, āMy feeling, reading over the 2022 stats, is that at the highest level of selectivity there are certain schools for which not applying ED is virtually the same as not applying at all because the RD rates are so low.ā
Chicago definitely falls into this category. Which other schools have you found that also fall into this category?
@liska21 ā Having visited Caltech the day before we visited Mudd, I totally agree that if your S doesnāt like Mudd, he is highly unlikely to like the more tech-y schools. While I havenāt specifically asked my D the question, I think Caltech (which had been her greatest interest, setting aside the possibility of actually getting in) sunk and Harvey Mudd rose, just because the Consortium offers a lot that Caltech doesnāt in the non-STEM realm.
@BorgityBorg What did you think of Caltech? Iād love to get there for a tourāfor my sake not Sās. Iāve never been there but it is so famous that Iād love to tour it. Given Sās non-STEM interests, Caltech would be a non-starter I think.
@liska21 ā ehhhhhh? I guess I was expecting something that was a lotā¦ shinier. There is one new building that looks lovely from the outside, but oddly enough our tour never went in. (I did wander in because my daughter attended a class in the building.) Like ā and I think youāll appreciate this ā St. Olafās science facilities were nicer and newer.
I understand that itās not just buildings, that the professors and the entire culture are important, but if you didnāt know you were visiting Caltech, you probably wouldnāt be that impressed. The tour guide was very good, but maybe they generally figure that people already assume their education is top-notch, so they need to sell the rest. Anyway, the campus is OK (prettier than Mudd, to be sure), but the Scripps and Pomona portions of Claremont are far lovelier to my eye. (As is St. Olafās campus, albeit in an entirely different way.)
@shuttlebus That link is Class of 2021. It might be useful for building a comparison to the new, Class of 2022 rates.
On the low RD rates, Chicago is what I had in mind, though HYP and probably S and the rest of the Ivies are right there along with it, along a continuum on down the line to Northwestern taking half of their class ED, and so on.
@liska21 your NE trip actually has a lot of NY area schools on it, some of them way out in NY like St Lawrence and Clarkson.
I would suggest something like RPI/Union and UVM/Middlebury. St Lawrence and Clarkson are a few hours of crazy driving through the Adirondacks to get to from the RPI area.
The Boston schools are a total crap shoot at the moment. If I was a parent that was going to pay a bunch of $$ to fly into a city to look at schools that my kid might have a chance of getting into, Boston would be low on my list. You know the acceptance rates, at MIT/Harvard itās slim pickings, and across the river at BU/Northeastern itās better but still no sure thing. Tufts, good luck! So if you have a ānature boyā and you think he wouldnāt want to be in the city, Iād save my cash and go visit the other schools first.
You could easily do a Dartmouth, Middlebury, UVM trip. That way youād see an Ivy, Nescac and public university in a nice setting. If Willams is high on the list, you can add that to. Iād fly into Burlington VT, which is way easier than Boston. See UVM, and then work your down.
You said your son wants engineering but Willams, St Lawrence, Middlebury Hamilton,Colgate donāt offer that, as far as I remember.
RPI/WPI very good engineering, but not in nature either.
UVM has engineering with a new engineering facility, and itās OK. Not regarded as good as RPI/WPI, but the school itself is nice and has access to nature.
@RightCoaster We are flying in/out of Boston. I have good friends there and we might base out of their house for part of the trip.
S doesnāt necessarily want a school with engineering. He doesnāt know. Hopefully visiting schools like Williams along with schools like RPI will help him decide if that is important. Definitely he wonāt be applying direct to engineering wherever he goes.
Yeah, they are on the list as small schools & safeties with nordic xc teams in nature and near-ish Montreal/Great Lakes. Not sure what my stamina for crazy driving will be. Sometimes it is high; alas S19ās is much lower. Iāve havenāt spent much time in the Adirondacks, so seeing more of upstate NY could be interesting. 'course weather in early April might be rotten.
I think we will do one day of ācollege tourismā in Boston. So ok to visit schools that it is impossible to get into, if the school itself is interesting to see. Iām leaning toward Harvard, but maybe MIT. Last go round, our ātourismā school was Yale. That was one of the best tours we did and we had a blast wandering in and out of the various buildings and ogling the architecture after the tour. Re Tufts, top students at Sās school (uw gpa > 3.9) do pretty well getting into Tufts. Maybe regional diversity hook? Northeastern has been like 75% acceptance RD/EA for students with uw gpa > 3.5 from Sās school. Nobody gets into MIT/Harvard from Sās school, so visiting would def be for the tourism factor.
