I was going to ask if Brown upped their FA because when my D applied for 2017 it was by far the worse package by the NPC of all the schools she applied.
“Among top 20 elites, Brown, Rice & Duke came out as hot favourites among early birds this year.”
Shouldn’t be a surprise, the word on the street now as they say, is if a school is in top 3 or 5 and you can be close in affording it, apply as that’s your best chance of getting in. If you look at Brown, their ED rate was 21%, their RD rate was 3%, you’re definitely applying ED even if it’s not your top choice.
“Why do you assume colleges are “artificially inflating yield rates” through higher ED /EA admissions”
That’s exactly what it’s for. You don’t have to assume, Penn used ED to inflate yields, lower acceptance rates, and move up in the rankings.
Yep, ED is increasingly attractive as RD admit rates spiral ever downward.
Chicago admitted 80% of its freshman class through early admissions last year. Why apply RD if one can afford to apply early?
Boston College saw an increase from 10k to 16k this year. REA to a more of an honor code version of EA.
Following on from comments earlier in the thread about the difficulty of trying to read much about overall numbers from ED/EA ones, NYU (up 41% ED1) announced today its overall application numbers were up a comparatively small 12%. I’m guessing the other very strong ED/EA increases will show similarly more muted overall numbers. Of course for many of these colleges the application numbers have been rising steadily for years.
With 3 early rounds (ED, EA, ED2), this is hardly surprising–EA is basically just early RD.
familiar with Amherst and recruited athletes; so if 514 people applied ED and acceptance rate was 36%, BUT recruited athletes are strongly encouraged to apply ED. Does that mean acceptance rate for the rest was <10% ? the only published number of recruited athletes I’ve seen is ~200 for Yale. I know amherst has fewer varsity sports than Ivy league but also know about 38% of the class kids (475 per class) are recruited athletes. (showing my logic).
thoughts? (I guess a bunch of recruited athletes maybe didn’t apply ED?)
My opinion on the University of Chicago is that they inundated students with propaganda. My S goes to an average suburban high school where no one has ever been admitted to UofC. This school was never on most kids radar - this year, so many kids applied because they received so much correspondence and the application was free.
My high stat kid (we live in the Northeast) was absolutely inundated with mailings from Chicago. I bet he received at least 30 mailings from U of C, far more than any other school (the next closest was Vandy for some reason). As is often pointed out, schools like Chicago receive far more applications from highly qualified candidates than they can possibly accept, so the only reason for Chicago to do this is to increase the number of applications, decrease the acceptance rate, and basically game the rankings. Most high stat kids see these mailings for the scam that they are, but plenty of people fall for it as well. My son didn’t apply to Chicago or Vandy (neither would be a good fit), but if he did, he almost certainly would have been rejected by both notwithstanding his high stats.
@anon145 wrote:
That sounds about right to me. I’ve also heard that ~10% of all Amherst guys are recruited football players. That’s just one sport! If even half that number are needed to fill the roster for other helmet sports like lacrosse, hockey and wrestling, you can see how the hooked admit numbers begin to add up.
Yup. Chicago and Swarthmore were the worst offenders with mailers. It’s highly unlikely my D would have been accepted to either (though not impossible) but they were both just relentless with the mail and the email. Both are too intense to have attracted her desire, but I bet many kids get swept up in the persistent attention.
Relatively speaking, Georgetown is low key in its marketing. With schools like UChicago and NYU revving up their marketing to an ever higher level each year, schools like Georgetown may suffer a relatively small setback this year.
@circuitrider yes. My point is the way I did the math, looking at Amherst’s numbers if you subtract out ‘projected’ recruited athletes the rest of the ED pool would be about 6% acceptance ??? very different than first glance of ‘36%’ . I wonder how far off that is from reality… (That also would fit with Amherst filling 40-45% of their class through ED)
Chicago - yes they are super aggressive with emails and mailings to attract more applicants.
I respect G Town for requiring 3 subject tests and not gaming the system. Also, taking a tiny percentage of EA despite potentially hurting yield. Maybe it’s the religiousness seeping in but kudos to them for not trying to reject even more than the 90% of applicants they will reject as is.
The schools that allow non-binding non-selective EA (MIT, Chicago, etc…) seem to benefit from that too by encouraging those kids to apply to all EA schools
Williams received 584 ED applications for the class entering in fall 2016 and 688 this year. That would mean that over a 3 year period early applications were up 18%. I haven’t checked the other schools, but year to year fluctuations are common.
@Sue22 Williams is also super rural. So I’d imagine the market of kids is capped compared to urban or suburban feel schools.
Come to think of it, we were also swamped with Chicago material. The next most unsolicited stuff was I think Nebraska (much of it implying automatic scholarships) and Missouri… we also got a lot from American, but my D had signed up for info from them. Not sure about the comment above about marketing from NYU, my D had also signed up but they were restrained in what they sent us, as were others she’d signed up for (including Gtown, GWU, Fordham and BU), certainly a lot less than many unsolicited colleges. Brandeis suddenly ramped up marketing materials in Nov and Dec.
Colleges that get applications in the hundreds like Williams (rather than thousands) could certainly see big swings year to year because it doesn’t take that many applications to change to cause them.
@anon145 Sure. A school like Williams will always appeal to a certain segment of the population. That said, there’s no evidence Williams is “losing its charm.” When your ED pool is fewer than 700 applicants small fluctuations in absolute numbers can result in large percentage changes. Does a one year drop of 65 or so applications really warrant hand-wringing?
"the only reason for Chicago to [send direct mailings to students] is to increase the number of applications, decrease the acceptance rate, and basically game the rankings. "
Neither number of applicants nor acceptance rate are part of the most commonly referred to ranking system - US News and World Reports. So a college gets zero increase in ranking for increasing applicants or acceptance rate.
What a college does gain through increased applications is access to great students that previously didn’t know about a program or wouldn’t have applied. A famous joint study between a Harvard and Stanford researcher determined that most low income, high achieving students didn’t apply to any top selective schools. Since many of those students are in places with low population density, they’re difficult to reach by traditional means such as sending AOs or alums. The study specifically recommends that top selective colleges actively recruit these students by direct mail campaigns. Heck if Harvard and Stanford researchers recommend more direct mailings for colleges with as much name recognition and gratuitous mention in the media as Harvard and Stanford, why would it be surprising that colleges that historically had equally high quality academics but little name recognition might need to also get the word out so to speak? Appears UChicago is following that script and trying to reach a greater pool of students who previously might not have been aware of the college.
Links to how the USNews and World Report rankings are calculated and to the Hoxby/Avery study on how to recruit low income, high achieving students:
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/articles/how-us-news-calculated-the-rankings
I think Duke was also trying to build early applications numbers by constantly emailing. So many schools had record numbers applying to Duke because of their intense email campaign. But in the end, they pulled the rug out from qualified students, even highly qualified legacies in order to admit more international applicants. They call this a “factor outside the student’s control.” Well, we have a well qualified student legacy deferred who is still really hoping to get in RD but the parent alum is not happy about what they were told over and over at alumni admissions forums and how much they value the commitment and want the well qualified legacies to be in the next generation at Duke versus what Duke did to the legacy pool of well qualified applicants. I still hope the student gets in RD but the ED experience was not great. I agree with the Georgetown admissions person who said ED is only good for the university. I’d never recommend anyone legacy or not go through the ED process. It’s stressful and gut wrenching when a student does everything they can to be qualified, and “factors outside of their control” lead to a rejection/deferral. In Duke’s case the factors seem like an intense email campaign to get as many applicants as possible so they could announce they broke a record while making an internal decision to increase international admissions by more than 6% in a single year. That’s a big slap in the face to people who’ve given the school massive commitment over many years, and whose kids worked their butts off and also showed that same commitment.