My S applied ED. Of the ten schools he’s looking at, it has the best academic reputation and lowest acceptance rate. After an overnight athletic visit, he declared it the best fit for himself as well. He was told by the coach that he would not be a competitive applicant if he didn’t apply ED so he decided to do it. He started the college process insisting he would not Ed anywhere so we were all very surprised!
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Oh my heart hurts for you and S. I have been there as well. My D is still does not have it together when it comes to time management. She has been spending 99% of her time on schoolwork for the last 3 years, so there wasn’t much competition for her time. This year she has a part time job and a (sigh) boyfriend and between those and the siren song of YouTube and Insta, she just cannot get a handle on what needs to be her priority. I would like to give you advice but I don’t have it. Just wanted you to know you’re not alone! 
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I so hear you on this. Two thoughts spring to mind. 1) We had amazing luck with an executive function coach for one of my kids. D would become paralyzed with fear when she had a long list of tasks. She is doing great now and still uses a lot of the skills she learned from those EF sessions. 2) My son had a terrible junior and senior year as far as completing work. He’s now in college and just so so so responsible. We weren’t sure if he was going to be able to handle it, but he has and more. So hold on… he’ll figure it out! But it’s hard to watch as they flounder.
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Both C25 and I are getting very impatient for ED results. I’m predicting they’ll come out on Friday the 13th. While C25 is amazing, their ED school has single digit acceptance rates. So fun.
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Coach let S know this AM that ED results are coming out Friday or Saturday and wants to get a group text going with commits. This is a good sign, right??
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S25 has three schools that are supposed to come out on 12/15. I’m guessing that’s probably really 12/13. Trying not to be superstitious!
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That is a different calculus though. The coach was saying that he could not give support in RD and the athlete would not get otherwise. It is not they were more competitive in ED. The vast majority of recruits at elite schools have to ED to receive support, leading to the false impression that ED admit rates are significantly higher for unhooked applicants.
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The train of thought would have been the same for him even without athletics — favorite school + low admission rate = ED for higher chance of acceptance. For this particular college, and I know it really depends on the school, but with this one I believe ED helps your chances. Last year, over 60% of students came from ED and only 25% of students play a varsity sport.
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Without getting into the weeds too much on this, but while 60% of the students may have been accepted ED, I suspect that if you look at the numbers, the majority of the admissions were still in RD. The point being that for those who either cannot ED or do not want to ED, there is still a lot of admissions being granted at ALL schools in the RD round, even if the admit rate looks small: viz, do not despair if you do not ED.
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that isn’t necessarily true, a number of schools take 60% of their incoming class through ED (I don’t mean they accept 60% of ED applicants). Check out this list (sort by ED admits as % of class).
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I feel you on this! We have two C25s, both applied ED to their top choice schools. While both of the schools are great for each of our kids, the D25 ED school is an Ivy with a low acceptance rate regardless of when you apply! She is unhooked (ie not legacy or an athlete) and is one of many students from her school that also applied ED, so we shall see. For S25, making the decision to ED was hard as he thinks he can see himself lots of places but felt this was the best overall fit.
Gonna need some strong will on the 15th…each child has said they will be alone to log-on to the portals 
both are at different boarding schools so any consolation or celebration or whatever is going to be done via FaceTime 
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I attended a BS and when things came in the mail it was SO awkward going to mailboxes–admittance (or not) rumors spread like wildfire! The “big envelopes” were dead giveaways and people ended having to (whether they wanted to do not) celebrate (or be sad) in public!
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No — read it again. 60% of 2028 incoming class was accepted ED. The acceptance rate is 50% for ED and 9% for RD. Bottom line for OP — look at the admissions stats and see if it makes a difference for the schools your child is looking at. It does for this one.
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Thankfully, maybe? things have evolved but…yeah my spouse was also of the envelope era at BS. Mailroom was THE place! Oh and the hall telephone… man the 80s/90s 
It will be interesting to see how it all goes down with the portal checking, I’m curious as to the “by 12/15”, a Sunday, which I think is preferable to a middle of the week email where you are told there is a portal update! Either way we have been sending the message you’ve done everything you can, and no matter what- you are gonna be just fine!
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I think (this is where we get into trouble) we are not in disagreement - and two things can be true at once: the majority of the incoming class is admitted ED, but the majority of the admits was not ED.
So, for example, Davidson College shows that 68% of the incoming class was admitted ED. However, that was only 353 admits out of a total of 1,064. Or, another way of phrasing this is that they admitted 711 non-ED or about two-thirds were admitted in non-ED.
Assuming my math and understanding of this is correct, while the majority of the incoming class at Davidson was admitted ED, the majority of the admits was non-ED. Thus, my point that one should not fret about not applying ED - schools still give out LOTS of admits non-ED. This is a result of nearly 100% yield from ED, but far less than that in RD that the school must account for.
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The Ivies used to all do April Fool’s Day as their decision day. lol
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Also worth remembering in the ED* discussion: ED is in the mix at only a very small proportion of colleges in the country, and at a notably higher but still relatively small proportion of selective colleges.
*Given, um, certain types of ads currently appearing in my social media feeds, I keep initially misinterpreting ED when I pop over to CC. This is being way more amusing for me right now than it probably should be.
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It is not just athletes. Fly-in and QB kids, and faculty kids, legacy, donors. It all adds up. A school may be 25% varsity athletes but 90% of them are accepted early.
All I am saying is the numbers are not as favorable as they look. I think everyone who has a clear favorite and can afford it should ED (the slightest tip can make a difference after all) but it should not be users as a strategy.
Still, there are schools where, from our HS, you have to ED to have any real shot at it. Not because it makes you more competitive but because these schools tent to yield protect the strongest students. But I would not make a general statement for all HS/students. Historical data on Naviance/Scoir can be helpful here.
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Ok, you just gave me heart palpitations. I just double checked and think it’s due at 11:59pm tonight, 11/2, in case there are any other late submitters out there.
ETA: And, the UC app is submitted! Hurray, hurray! I want you to know that this >7 hour buffer is the longest before the deadline D25 has submitted anything this application season. One more hurray!
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I’m sorry! I struggle w/ AM vs PM stuff.
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