Indeed. It works for HYPS just fine. Not for every applicant.
@mohammadmohd18 " but the fact is that ED does benefit those who use it."
Here’s my point - there is no benefit to the applicant for ED vs EA, they know they’re in to their top choice or one of their top choices with either one. And EA does not bind them and they can still apply to a couple of others and possibly figure out the best college in the spring after getting their FA packages or visiting the campuses. Whether you get in EA or ED, a spot is being reserved for you.
The only reason ED exists is for colleges to improve their yield and artificially lower their acceptance rate, while locking in the applicant.
“At the same time HYPS et al. are fantastically successful with their holistic admissions. What I don’t understand is why people seem to think HYPS et al should overhaul their highly successful model”
Well Harvard just rescinded ten acceptances after they found out they were posting a lot of racist and misogynistic content, not exactly working fantastically. I think most people don’t want colleges to change how they select their class, that’s their prerogative. The issue is more of openness and transparency - highly selective colleges should say or at least intimate that unless you have a hook, your chances of getting in are less than 2%. Or don’t say holistic when you’re not holistic - i.e. we look at test scores and rigor of transcript as 90% of the application, so if you don’t have 34/1500, you’re likely not getting in. You’d have to message it better of course, but the process is too opaque and stressful right now.
^^^ multiple agreeance with above. Of all the things to complain about in the current system, ED is the one that I think is the clearest for benefiting the universities at the expense of the applicants. I don’t mind SCEA as a way for universities to gauge how interested the student really is, but ED isn’t about the best way to select a class or anything else, it is about raising yield to look better.
@theloniusmonk I agree. For the student, EA is better than ED, of course. The only possible advantage to the student is if it is truly easier to get in as ED, with lower stats or whatever. Then, maybe, that can advantage the student.
I wouldn’t let mine apply anywhere ED. We had to compare financial aid packages, and they needed the extra time in 12th grade to refine their own preferences.
This has very little to do with why US colleges are holistic. No elite US colleges, with the possible exception of Caltech, wants to just admit academic geniuses until they run out of slots. There’s less compression on test scores than you think. Only around 600 students get perfect SAT scores each year, without super-scoring by the colleges, and the Ivies+MIT+Stanford have at least 16k slots between them.
I think there is heavy compression. The tests without compression at the top end are ones like the national tests to qualify for the national math, physics, and chemistry teams, even the first step. The SAT makes up for the ease of much of the material by making the wording challenging. The ACT does it by requiring you to do it really, really fast.
So I’d say the problem is no one thinks the SAT or ACT is great at selecting academic geniuses. It’s pretty much better than nothing, but not what Caltech for example would write if they were making their own entrance exam.
Having said that, I agree nearly all US universities choose to be holistic.
ED is a blessing or a curse.
The process is simple and can save money spent on the application process. One admissions fee, scores sent for free, no accepted students visits. Any academically talented student should be able to figure out the process from listening to the the 45 min. admissions speech. After acceptance, the last 6 months of highschool are enjoyable.
If rejected/deffered will they be able to have a one day pity party and finish the rest of their applications in 2 weeks?
Financial aid at all top tier schools is need based with no merit aid…a huge plus for students with low family incomes, often at a much lower price than their state flagships. For upper income students, once you make the commitment 70K at any top tier school really hurts but they are all equivalent. Each school has a financial calculator.
The big questions are: Does your son/ daughter have a no. 1 choice?
If so: Have they researched curriculum, department, spent time on campus, in a class, are other potential majors available, where do they fit in the common data set, are they more comfortable academically at the top of the student body or in the middle?
Being part of a student body where over half chose to attend that university over any other in the world has advantages.
I’ve pondered about a variant of this numerous times previously. If a top college that currently uses holistic admissions took the set of applicants that in the top quartile* of their ACT/SAT range with a baseline minimum GPA (I’d limit the amount of weighting to 3-5 classes for equity’s sake as well as sanity; or just use an unweighted GPA?) and randomly chose their class, what would be the outcome? My initial thoughts:
- you’d skew more heavily Asian and white than you do currently.
- more heavily male?
- coaches and band leaders would have crazy unpredictability as they couldn’t put a thumb on a scale.
- the financial aid office’s work would be cut dramatically as they’d have more full-pay kids.
- Yield? My initial thought was that it would drop due to the number of people playing the lottery just because they can.
Put more simply, MIT would look more like Cal Tech.
As an aside, making the SAT/ACT substantially harder to provide significant differentiation would probably do just that but we’d end up with or own gaokao prep industry.
*you could only do this a few times before you’d compress your set down to nothing.
You cannot dispose of standardized SAT/ACT testing because there is no national standardized curriculum or grading scale. GPA variances are so great you can hardly use those as a determining factor anymore either. (Granted even the standardized testing is skewed at this point)
I still stand by my assesesment that one of the major precipitating factors in the ridiculous number of schools that kids apply to today is the fear, whether real or imagined, of rejection. They simply have no clue what the Ad Comm is looking for to fill any given class, if you fit in the 25th - 75th you have a shot. They throw 20 darts and hope one sticks. Does anyone have a figure as to what the average # of schools students are applying to these days and average # of acceptances?
One supplemental essay, which isn’t necessary, is sufficient. The write 5 short answer essays is just silly and the “Why us” essay is absolutely ridiculous. Recommendations are pointless, how many recommenders are actually going to say “Suzy is a sucky student don’t pick her!”
I don’t have a solution, other than limiting the number of schools that can be applied to (and how do you police that?), but I do believe that the admissions system is broken.
Exactly—it’s not your experience. Given that people tend to associate with those who are quite similar to themselves along multiple social axes, it’s unsurprising that your circle of acquaintances would have produced students who have applied widely. However, the actual stats on college applications show that the previous claim is correct—most students only apply to a very few schools (often just one), and the vast majority (usually all) of them are local to the applicant.
Relatedly, College Confidential is a weird bubble. Normal here is not normal overall.
"I’ve pondered about a variant of this numerous times previously. If a top college that currently uses holistic admissions took the set of applicants that in the top quartile* of their ACT/SAT range with a baseline minimum GPA (I’d limit the amount of weighting to 3-5 classes for equity’s sake as well as sanity; or just use an unweighted GPA?) and randomly chose their class, what would be the outcome? My initial thoughts:
- you’d skew more heavily Asian and white than you do currently.
- more heavily male?
- coaches and band leaders would have crazy unpredictability as they couldn’t put a thumb on a scale.
- the financial aid office’s work would be cut dramatically as they’d have more full-pay kids.
- Yield? My initial thought was that it would drop due to the number of people playing the lottery just because they can.
Put more simply, MIT would look more like Cal Tech."
I think they would also need to admit formally by major (or at least general area of interest), or, especially with SAT being 50 per cent math, you could end up with a classful of hopeful premeds all scrabbling for the same intro classes. Don’t the UCs admit mainly by stats and have a real problem with impacted majors?
@theloniusmonk We finally seem to have reached the same page. 
But:
That’s the exception and not the rule. The top colleges’ admissions process has worked fantastically for them.
Colleges do not seriously see a difference between someone with a 1600 or a 1560, or a 36 and a 35. Yes, only 600 students get a perfect SAT score, and only 2200 or so get a perfect ACT score, but it’s roughly 35k students that have a 35+/1550+. So you see the compression. 
I think it’s precisely because it’s so easy to apply that we have a problem. The Common App really started the whole admissions race. Before its advent, no student would apply to 20 schools simply because of the amount of effort involved. Now you hear of kids applying to dozens of schools. This makes each one that much more competitive.
If every school required the common app and each student was limited to 10 applications, I think things would calm down significantly, and kids would be a lot more rational about their searches.
How many kids are applying to more than 10 schools now? Outside of this site, I know very few kids who apply to more than 5-8. And a lot of kids apply to 1-3. Is there really a problem?
In a “click through” culture, no one gets reads by saying something works. You get it by saying something is broken. Even if its not. And if its a process that many people find frustrating, you can get them to click even if the supposed problem isn’t applicable to them.
Compared to other countries (e.g., Canada & UK) that have a relatively straightforward and standardized admissions processes based predominately on grades the US college system seems overly complex and perhaps broken. The Common App makes it easier to apply to many colleges but state universities often have their own admission portals.
In the UK, all undergraduate students apply using the UCAS (Universities and Colleges Admissions Service). Students are also limited to only 5 applications not 20 like the Common App.
I think to some extent we’re trying to solve a nonexistent problem, at least from the college’s perspective. Stanford would be thrilled if acceptance rates dropped even lower: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/30/opinion/college-admissions-shocker.html. If colleges wanted to make the process more predictable for the applicants, they could become less holistic.
^^^holistic isn’t the problem–discriminatory based on race is.
It is hard to overemphasize what a bubble the tippy-top world is. As noted above, the mode of the number of schools kids apply to is probably 1. For example, in Michigan, MSU has rolling admissions, and many students apply fairly early, get in, and are done. That doesn’t even count smaller local places, community colleges, etc. A different phrasing for the title of this thread could be, applying to highly selective schools with many more applicants than spots is stressful.
The problem with less holistic is that schools want the Siemens finalist or high scorer through the national chemistry exams who maybe got some Bs or in the low 700s on the reading/writing SAT. Or the national class musician, or multiple published writer, plus famous actresses, kids of powerful people, etc. They want a few people from the midwest and south and rocky mountain states, etc. The best way I heard it was that they don’t want a whole class full of future college professors. Some is great, but not all.