Parents of the HS Class of 2026

[co2mom]

@SpreadsheetMom

Mine considered it after loving our tour in Feb, but she just wasn’t ready to make a decision.

D26 would have preferred to wait it out for a bit longer. The UL giving a short time period for a decision threw us off! Though we had contingency plan on dragging that out- just feels better not having too.
She was also able to acknowledge that she would either have to make this decision now or later: so now it is.

@ali-ice

Excited for her! Sounds like she has many wonderful options!! Fingers crossed for RIT! (But also nothing wrong with UL!!)

UL could still be the one- have to wait for the decision to come in
(I feel positive she will get in- but no guarantees, so who knows)
I was ready (and still am) to make Ireland part of my entire personality - lol

[Wjs1107]

S26 is in his virtual alumni interview for his ED choice right now. I’m hiding in the back of the house with our dog. I can hear his voice but not what he’s saying. I know that’s for the best—too nervous to listen in but glad he seems to have a lot to talk about!

[sbinaz]

Fingers crossed for your son!

[SpreadsheetMom]

@Wjs1107

S26 is in his virtual alumni interview for his ED choice right now.

How did he think it went?

All good and positive thoughts for him!

[Wjs1107]

He said he thought it went well! He made her laugh a few times, they had a few things in common, too. She’s “mom age” and he’s pretty good with parents/adults, so I think he felt comfortable and able to be himself.

His ED is a big reach and he’s statistically a long shot like most people. I’m very proud of how he’s put himself out there and done everything he can to swing for the stars. He’ll be ok if it doesn’t work out, of course, but amazing if it does.

[ECCA2026]

I don’t want to necessarily start a whole new discussion of it since there is an entire thread on the topic that I’ve already weighed in on. However, today’s Your College Bound Kid podcast episode had a whole segment on Tulane’s decision to ban 4 schools from ED for a year because of students pulling out unexplained or without a sanctioned reason. I thought it was an interesting discussion. Here’s a link to the extensive thread on the topic in this forum. Thought folks here might be interested given that we are in the heart of the admissions process

P.S. I think this is the first time I’ve linked another thread on this forum and I’m proud of my Luddite self.

An Early-Decision Student Backed Out of Tulane. Tulane Punished the High School

Interesting article about Tulane disallowing ED for a high school in Colorado for a year after a student broke an ED agreement. Gives at least a little more grist to the lawsuit trying to end ED (or at least get some money out of it).

[sbinaz]

It’s an interesting topic for sure. While neither of my kids applied/are applying to Tulane, I respect Tulane for sticking to their policy on it.

At our high school, the counselors do big warnings to all the seniors & parents about how ED works. How if you do basically what that one high school student did w/Tulane, you will jeopardize future students from your high school from being able to have a chance at admissions to that college.

The counselors also said that if you (the student) or your parents tell the counselors that you’re planning on skipping out on the agreement if you decide you want to apply somewhere else, then the counselors will not support your application AND they will state so in the counselor letter of rec to the college.

[ECCA2026]

Tulane quickly moved off my kid’s early list as we were told if you are interested you need to ED. Probably wouldn’t have made the final list anyway, but it was the first school off.

[SpreadsheetMom]

I see both sides of the Tulane thing – first, I think a student should only ED if they are absolutely, without question ready to commit to a school if admitted, no matter what happens with merit aid. I believe the agreements that the student, parent and school have to sign back up that fact.

The only exception I can understand is if something unforeseen happens with the family’s finances to change them significantly between the time of application and commitment (job loss or emergency, etc).

But I don’t think it’s fair for a student to expect X amount in merit aid, then back out of ED if they don’t get it. That goes against the agreement.

It sounds like these students backed out of their ED agreements with Tulane without justifiable cause. Is Tulane in the right to “punish” the whole school for that? Meh, debatable. I don’t feel strongly either way about their action.

But second, I really dislike Tulane’s whole game of taking the majority of their incoming class in ED, and then the hard sell they give EA applicants to convert to ED. They seem to be so obsessed with their yield rate that it colors their admission policy overall.

It’s possible I’m still salty because of the experience D22 had, lol. She was genuinely interested in Tulane, toured the school, applied EA. She was a tippy top student but was hoping for some (rare) merit aid, so she didn’t feel comfortable applying ED. I can’t remember how many emails she got asking her to convert to ED – but it was at least one every couple of weeks, if not once a week.

She declined to convert, was then deferred in EA, and waitlisted in RD. (She did not accept a waitlist spot.) But another two or three kids in her class (small class of 137 in another state) got in EA. Their stats weren’t nearly as strong. I realize there could be a hundred reasons why these other students were more desirable candidates, but the whole thing just rubbed us the wrong way.

Tulane potentially had a lot of things to offer for D26, but after her sister’s experience, she opted not to apply.

[aewlmom]

I hear that a lot about Tulane (and several other schools), but I know bunches of kids who were accepted at Tulane EA and RD, including my oldest, who was accepted EA and his best friend from high school (deferred EA, accepted RD).

I think parents talking tend to overstate the facts ….Here’s what the Tulane CDS stats actually show:

2024-2025: 4558 kids accepted, of which 1156 were ED (so roughly 25% of acceptances came from the ED pool, presumably that includes both EDI and EDII)

2023-2024: 4077 kids accepted, of which 1193 were ED (so roughly 29%)

To me, this does not suggest you have to apply ED to get admitted to Tulane. The majority of acceptances come from EA and RD. While Tulane does consider applicant interest (listed as important on the CDS), there are plenty of ways to express interest without checking the ED box.

EDITED TO ADD: Of course, the overall percentage of ED kids accepted is much higher than the overall percentage of EA/RD kids accepted. (This is true everywhere to some extent, which is why some kids try to play their odds with ED.) But that is a different stat – and does not mean a majority of Tulane’s acceptances come from ED.

[SpreadsheetMom]

Where are you seeing this? I can’t find it in the CDS – maybe I’m looking at the wrong thing?

[aewlmom]

Section C1 shows the first time, first year admits (for 2024-2025 its 1830 men and 2728 women, so 4558 total admits) and Section C21 is early decision numbers (for 2024-2025 1946 received and 1156 admitted)

So 1156 out of the 4558 admits came from the ED pool

Common Data Set | Office of Assessment and Institutional Research

[SpreadsheetMom]

Ah, okay. I missed the C21 section! I went back and looked at 2022-2023 to see if I could glean anything. It doesn’t look like Tulane reports the EA and RD numbers separately, but going by CDS and an article from Inside Higher Ed, it looks like for fall 2022, they admitted 35% in ED, 62% in EA, and 3% in RD. And they offered 6,232 kids a spot on the wait list and admitted 3.

Their acceptance rate for ED was 68%, while overall acceptance rate was 11%.

So it seems like the more recent numbers aren’t quite as extreme.

I don’t love the “yield protection” thing. It seems that Tulane prefers kids with lower stats who check every possible demonstrated interest box over kids with very high stats who only tour and interview but might not have opened every email. (I find it kind of creepy that schools actually track that.)

Which is okay – I guess every institution has different priorities.

[aewlmom]

I totally agree that acceptance rates for ED vs EA/RD are considerably different. My only point was that does not mean most students who are accepted come from the ED pool. If they only received 10 ED applications and accepted all 10, the ED acceptance rate would be 100% but those 10 kids would be a very small percentage of the overall acceptances… If that makes sense??

Tulane is known for tracking demonstrated interest. They are super up front about it, though.

[SJ2727]

Interestingly, our Maia shows Tulane has admitted exactly the same # of students EA and ED… and RD is only waitlist or denial.
One of the ED’s stats make me think it was a recruited athlete, so in that sense EA actually came out slightly ahead.

I can’t remember exactly what our counselors said about pulling out of ED without cause but I think they notify other schools what’s been done. They take it very seriously.

[aewlmom]

I was told by a school counselor back in 2020 (when my oldest graduated from high school) that pulling out of ED negatively impacted the school and its students in the future. She was vague about how (I didn’t really ask), but I think colleges have been “punishing” high schools when their students renege on ED agreements for years. Tulane just got called out on it… I personally have mixed feelings on the whole thing. I certainly understand why colleges need ED to have teeth (for lack of a better word) for the system to work. On the other hand, the ED system primarily benefits the school.

[SpreadsheetMom]

Our school, too, is adamant that ED is to be taken very seriously. I don’t have a problem with a college penalizing a school whose students are backing out of ED agreements. In Tulane’s case, I think people don’t love its admissions policies, and that might be influencing how they feel about this particular situation.

All that said, I’m not a fan of ED – I think it gives too much power to the college and not enough to the applicant.

[ali-ice]

Mine EA’d –and I know it’s a long shot -but they do take some EA. They said on their website don’t bother to RD so I took their word at it.

We can’t visit -but she’s opened every email. I don’t know what else she is supposed to do really.

[ECCA2026]

@aewlmom

I think parents talking tend to overstate the facts ….Here’s what the Tulane CDS stats actually show:

2024-2025: 4558 kids accepted, of which 1156 were ED (so roughly 25% of acceptances came from the ED pool, presumably that includes both EDI and EDII)

2023-2024: 4077 kids accepted, of which 1193 were ED (so roughly 29%)

To me, this does not suggest you have to apply ED to get admitted to Tulane. The majority of acceptances come from EA and RD.

To be clear, I was not intending to suggest that the only students who get into Tulane are via ED. Also, my statement was not based on parents talking, it was my D26’s excellent college counselor telling us and her, what she had to do if she wanted to go to Tulane based on Tulane’s practices and her and her school’s profile. It was specific guidance I was referring to.

[ECCA2026]

As I mentioned in another response, my statement was not intended to be generalizable. It was specific advice for my kid based on her profile from her counselor. Please don’t read it to assume your kids chances at EA are slim or something. They take plenty of kids EA and predictions for my kid are irrelevant for yours. Hope they get in!