ED is where this is all going as the competition ramps up.
Chicago is leading the pack in this regard with the highest SAT scores of any student body outside Caltech and a freshman class significantly larger than Yale and Princeton. Chicago’s yield is in the mid 70s now as a result… if reports on this board are correct (higher than Y and P).
would not be surprised in the least if Yale and Princeton join the fray
and later Stanford and Harvard.
While I am a UChicago fan, you cannot compare ED yields to EA or SCEA/REA yields.
For that matter, you cannot directly compare any yields unless the early process is the same AND the percent of the class admitted early is similar. As an extreme example, a college doing 100% ED will have nearly 100% yield.
can you compare yield rates on schools that admit half their class SCEA (HYP) with schools that admit 1/3rd(Stanford)? yet we compare yield rates all the time.
ED and SCEA are all part of the slippery slope of tactics used to boost yield.
as the competition ramps up it will pressure schools to ED. that’s where this is all heading.
There are some unwritten rules to keep in mind when comparing schools. First, get a list in your head of the best schools that you just know in your heart is true. Any factors that are consistent with your heart list should then be emphasized. Any factors which are contrary to your heart list should be ignored if nothing else but ideally criticized. And voila, your heart list is confirmed. Some people here are masters at that. Really is something of a kind of artistry. Carry on.
@hebegebe This isn’t a question about comparing yields, everyone knows that HYPS schools have the best name recognition in the world so they attract the most students. Many applicants literally apply to HYPS with no idea what the school really offers for their particular interest, they just wanted to be admitted for the sake of being admitted. If anything you can blame HYPS for ED. Penn had to figure out a way to stop admitting top students who had no intention of going to Penn if they could get into HYP. As we know, the school environment is a lot better if the students actually want to be there.
@DeepBlue86 I know how endowments work and to say that Harvard couldn’t increase its FA, is well, simply not true, especially for those who make $100-200k. BTW 30% of the endowment is unrestricted which is about 12 billion, more than almost any other universities ENTIRE endowment, so lets not poor mouth Harvard and there other expenses.
I know of no one nor do I believe that anyone who applies ED is lukewarm about that school. I’ll be frank, that is just dumb to apply to a school you don’t really want to be at ED, and I seriously doubt it happens very much. If their being “tactical” about it then it may not be there first choice but it will certainly be in there top 3 and they would be happy to attend, otherwise it doesn’t make any sense.
While I do believe that high income private school kids use EA/ED disproportionally can you send me to a study that support that assertion?
Again you make my point Harvard wants its choice in cohort (I never defined what Harvard wants exactly in a cohort, you did), which is what all universities want, but RD is certainly in Harvard’s favor.
I’m pretty sure I wrote this as an opinion.
“BTW, Princeton and Yale are following Harvard’s lead (wrt SCEA) because they don’t want to be seen as a step below the Harvard/Stanford duopoly. They are the two schools that may really have to consider ED in the future.”
My point is that Harvard is not being magnanimous by suggesting RD is fair.
All right that is all the fun I can have today. <:-P
I don’t have a study but I can tell you that at my kids’ well-regarded private school between 70-80% apply ED/EA each year. I am sure that other schools in their peer group sport similar numbers.
@sbballer: we’ll see, but I very much doubt that “ED is where all this is going” - not when Yale and Princeton are landing 2/3 - 3/4 of the kids they admit (and losing most of the rest to Harvard, Stanford and MIT). HYPS aren’t changing until and unless a meaningful number of the kids they really want start turning them down for UChicago, Penn or other schools (besides MIT and Caltech). I see very little evidence of this - particularly since HYPS offer better need-based fin aid than anywhere.
As I’ve noted on other threads:
It seems clear from where I sit that UChicago is consciously targeting high-stats (and preferably full-payer) kids who HYPS don’t have a clear reason to admit. Evidence suggests that the tippy-top academic cohort chooses HYPS the vast majority of the time over UChicago. The difference at the lower end of the SAT score ranges is frankly what you’d expect when you compare a school with D3 athletics (UChicago) to D1 schools that have close to twice as many teams (HYPS) and many more recruited athletes with lower stats.
Most college marketing materials are pretty generic. However, what was memorable about the marketing materials for Yale and Princeton was how much they concentrated on need-based financial aid, particularly aid given to families with EFC’s above $200,000. It was pretty clear that these two schools were pitching themselves to donut hole families who made too much to get any need-based financial aid at 99.9% of schools. They made it clear that they were the 0.01% of who would cut the tuition to families with high EFC’s. No other schools, including Harvard and Stanford, made pitches like this.
I suspect that Chicago also has fewer legacies vis-a-vis HYP applying which frees up more space in the class to target high stat kids. The major limit at UChicago seems to be that as a liberal arts college with a strong core and writing assignments, they cannot accept lopsided kids who are strong in Math/Science but weak at writing.
Chicago’s success in filling up its class with high stats kids… with the highest SAT scores in the country (according to USNWR
https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/slideshows/10-colleges-with-the-highest-sat-scores?slide=11
although Caltech’s SATs are the highest in the country I believe) \
along with a yield rate >> yale and princeton are some of the reasons it’s all going ED eventually.
Yale and Princeton are the most likely candidates to break the gentleman’s agreement of SCEA collusion. once that happens Stanford and Harvard will follow suit.
First, I never said that Harvard couldn’t increase its financial aid. What I actually did say was “Harvard (together with a very small number of peer schools) has the best need-based financial aid out there…Harvard has finite resources - they spend enough on financial aid to be leaders while directing other sums to teaching, research, facilities, etc.” Of course Harvard can increase its financial aid - it will just have less to spend on everything else - e.g., teaching, research and facilities - that it takes to be one of the top universities in the world. Since they already provide about the best financial aid out there, they devote additional resources to their other priorities.
Which leads to the next point: your statement notwithstanding, you may want to learn a little more about how the Harvard endowment works. Have a look at his article: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/9/22/endowment-returns-explained/. As it explains, every year the Harvard endowment has to distribute about $1.7 billion, to cover roughly a third of the university’s operating budget. If they don’t get enough unrestricted gifts, or achieve a high enough investment return, they have to raid the endowment in order to keep the place running (this happened as recently as last year). And that’s without funding any capital projects, such as the $1bn science and engineering complex they’re building in Allston in order to compete with the Stanfords and MITs of this world or the $1+ billion they’re having to spend in order to renovate their residence halls (some for the first time in 80 years) in order to compete with the Yales and Princetons.
No one’s suggesting Harvard is poor. It costs a lot to be Harvard, though, and if they start spending down their endowment, eventually the university will have to shrink.
@DeepBlue86 said:
UChicago had a yield of 66% for class of 2020, using unrestricted EA, and an admit rate below 8%. Its 2020 yield was already in the ballpark of Princeton, which uses restrictive SCEA. If UChicago wanted to make a case that HYPSM should be HYPSM+C, then it was on its way of doing so by putting together a class equally as strong without forcing people to come.
The move to ED 1/2 is a massive step backwards in this regard. For a small increase in yield, Nondorf made UChicago effectively much more restrictive, likely reduced future applications, and put its admission games in the category of colleges like Vanderbilt and Tufts. Was this a huge mistake by him, or was his hand forced by budgetary issues, since UChicago needs more full pay students that ED provides?
“I’m not bashing Harvard, but I just point out why things happen the way they do and its NOT due to some sort of altruistic based admission policies. Everyone university is interested in getting the best cohort possible and they use any and all means available to do so.”
Agree on the altruism, which is why ED is one of the unfair means to get and lock in applicants. You;re saying that colleges are not altruistic but they use a fair and altruistic mechanism in ED, which is a little contradictory, if I’m reading you right.
“While I do believe that high income private school kids use EA/ED disproportionally can you send me to a study that support that assertion?”
The Cooke Foundation study found that only 16 percent of high-achieving students from families with annual incomes below $50,000 applied for college admission on an early-decision basis in the 2013-14 academic year. But 29 percent of high-achieving students from families with incomes above $250,000 applied on an early-decision basis. Is it any wonder that so many more upper-income students gain admission?
The blatant unfairness of early admissions was obvious even before they became as widespread as they are today. In 2006, Harvard University, Princeton University and the University of Virginia eliminated early admissions to give all students a fairer chance of being admitted. But unfortunately, they later had to reinstate early-action admissions to remain competitive when essentially all other colleges and universities offering early admissions refused to drop the policy.
@sbballer - I don’t believe many of these schools disclose average SATs, so I very much doubt that that article is accurate or complete. Apart from that, as you say, it’s strange that Caltech isn’t on it; I also find it strange that Yale and Columbia aren’t either, while WUSTL, Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Penn and Brown are, in that order. I think this is just a sampling of schools based on incomplete information.
@sbballer HYPSM are not going ED any time soon. They have no reason to. The absence of ED reaffirms their top position amongst elite schools. They are not threatened by any other school, have a bigger brand than any other school, and can outspend every other top school by orders of magnitude. ED is a hallmark for the next tier of top schools, used in their effort to appear more selective and desirable. HYPSM will never deign to use it.
@hebegebe While i agree that the new EA/EDI/EDII policy is a major step back for Chicago, saying that its yield in 2020 was equivalent to Princeton’s yield is not really accurate. Numerically the two numbers were close, but Princeton loses its cross admits almost exclusively to HYSM. This is not true for Chicago. Comparing yields (even RD yields) between HYPSM and non-HYPSM schools is not really meaningful.
Cal Poly suspended ED last year:
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/education/article81223567.html
http://mustangnews.net/cal-poly-to-suspend-early-decision-option-for-applicants/
Cal Poly ED was kind of odd anyway, as it gave no advantage in admissions, and did not give decisions early enough for students to know before the regular deadline to apply to other California public universities (none of which have ED or EA). The stated reason for suspension was to make it less disadvantageous for students from low income families (Cal Poly has the lowest percentage of Pell grant students of all California public universities).
well I think the same case can be made for SCEA… harvard and princeton attempted to get rid of it. they failed.
if one of these schools goes ED they all go.
U of Chicago may be the impetus for one of them to break rank as they ascend in getting a stronger stats class along with higher yield.
10 years ago no one ever thought Harvard would lose its status as the most selective university in the US.
It did to Stanford and no one saw that coming.
times are changing and UofChicago is leading the charge.
@sbballer still there is no way any of the HYPS schools will go ED. SCEA is vastly different from RD. It requires a school to be prestigious enough to have the very very top students apply early only there and also prestigious enough to be sure that these top students will almost certainly attend if admitted. Only HYPS fits than bill.
UChicago is not threatening HYPS, not even close. No school is. HYPS compete almost exclusively with each other. The yield at Uchicago is manufactured by taking 70-80% of the class ED, cannot be compared to HYPSM or even other ivy yields at this point. The same is true to a lesser degree for the other top ED schools. Times are not changing that much.
The Stanford rise is a completely different situation. Stanford was already considered part of HYPSM. In the past 10 years or so it has just moved from being top 5 to top 2.
SCEA is a way to game yield… ED is a better way to game yield. they all game yield.
one of these schools goes ED they all go.
times are changing rapidly and traditional pecking orders are being disrupted.
UofChicago is just one example. Stanford another.
I find it interesting that we’ve gotten into trying to figure out why colleges play the ED game, but seem to have lost sight of the claim made in the original post on this thread (reminder: “It seems that I have read quite a bit about how unfair ED is to low and middle income applicants. I find that these arguments don’t hold a lot of water with me.”), which is a shame, because it was a bold claim, and deserves proper discussion.
@Penn95 You realty can’t help yourself. The cumulative effect of the USNWR and World university rankings for boht UChicago College and its graduate divisions has an impact. Your deterministic approach that no matter what HYPSM are forever destined to be the top dogs is both flawed and self serving given your Penn issues. MIT , like lCal Tech, are sui generis and don;t really belong in this discussion. While I would agree that folks would invariably take Harvard over UChicago. the same is not always true for Yale. I personally know cross admits who took UChicago over Yale (and Stanford).