But a % of a % is a yuuuuuuge increase in chances. from 3% to 5% is a 66% increase! (yes, they are still really small odds)
OTOH, since we’re talking “bets”…the fact is that a couple of those SCEA schools have the most generous finaid. Thus, the potential $$ reward is higher than other need-based aid schools.
Full disclosure: one of my kids was successful in ED (the other was not ready to commit to one), and the need-based aid was such that attendance of the ED school was less expensive than attending our instate public flagship.
I don’t think so. One can apply SCEA to Yale for example and also submit their RD app into USC by Dec 1 for merit consideration. Yale’s website is clear that SCEA prohibits you from applying to other EARLY programs, but you are welcome to apply to any school’s RD process at any time.
Because the S in SCEA is for single and the R in REA is for restrictive. Meaning you can’t apply to any other private schools until you get a decision. Stanford apparently has an exception but not sure about the others.
You are confused @notveryzen. SCEA does NOT mean you can’t apply to other private schools until you get a decision. It only means you can’t apply to other ED/EA programs.
From the Yale website: “Yale’s Early Action plan is unlike many other programs in that if you apply for Single-Choice Early Action at Yale, you may not simultaneously apply for Early Action or Early Decision to any other school with a few exceptions”.
And Harvard: Early Action is a non-binding early program, meaning that if you are admitted you are not obligated to enroll. If you apply to Harvard under our Early Action program… you are restricted from applying to other private universities’ Early Action and Early Decision program"
In other words the idea that you can’t apply to any other private school before a decision from the SECA school is flat out wrong. You just can’t apply ED/EA.
You should be careful that the advice you are giving is correct.
Ok USC was a bad example. But that high stat kid who really wants to go to a top school, become an investment banker, and not spend his/her entire senior year wondering where they are going has two choices:
Apply to Penn ED, UChicago, UM, ND, and a couple other EA schools and have a 30-50% chance of getting in somewhere before Jan 1st.
Or
Apply to Harvard with a 5% chance, wait for your deferral in December, then spend a month cranking out apps, then be miserable all Spring waiting for answers.
Mine didn’t do ED because it wasn’t an option at his top choice (UChicago). But he refused to do HYPS because it would have closed him out from doing EA anywhere else.
With accurate net price calculators, I don’t think ED is a problem for students who need financial aid. When my eldest was applying the internet was not as developed. There were no online methods of estimating how much $ he’d get other than the FAFSA EFC. Even with an EFC and a general concept of the school’s generosity, you couldn’t predict institutional merit aid because that depended on your kid’s strength relative to the applicants in the pool that year. Therefore, because we needed to compare FA packages, he applied EA (was deferred) and then RD. We’ll never know if he missed out on a better admissions rate by not applying ED. Now there is far more disclosure about FA policies than there was then, so it’s a lot easier to assess affordability in advance.
My other two were recruited athletes and as such were basically required to apply ED if they wanted the benefit of coach support. Before doing so, they were offered financial aid pre-reads. D just got accepted ED, and her FA is exactly as promised. So we were able to go in with our eyes wide open, and it was great to be once and done.
The article failed to recognize the fact that Harvard and Princeton once abandoned their early action for 4 years to give low income applicants a “fair” chance. They were burn, and then brought SECA back. Now, what does the author want? It is much easier to say/write than to deliver.
Right. When one of my kids applied SCEA (and was deferred), he had also applied to Michigan, which had a rolling admissions program at the time that looked suspiciously like EA. Now, there may be lots of significant differences between Michigan and Harvard, Yale, or Stanford, but faculty strength and academic quality aren’t really among them. That wasn’t a terrible deal at all. I’m not going to say that the Michigan acceptance made the HYPS deferral not matter to him, but it certainly made a difference. He ultimately chose another college, which accepted him RD, and which was always his third choice behind a couple of the SCEA schools, but Michigan would have been a great choice, too.
The woman who sits next to me at work just had her second kid admitted to college ED. First kid had the same experience two years ago.
They family is thrilled and relieved for the second time. But the mom says that the only reason why it worked is that Grandma and Grandpa set up a trust fund that pays for the kids’ college expenses, so there’s no need to consider financial aid – which ordinarily would have been a major concern for a family with their income.
Yes, the ED system is unfair. But right now, it’s the system we have, and I can’t fault my colleague’s family for doing what worked best in their family’s specific situation.
[Full disclosure: One of my own kids double-gamed the system by applying ED to a school where she was a legacy. And I think there’s nothing wrong with that, either. You play the hand you’re dealt.]
I think restricted early action as done by Georgetown and Notre Dame is a reasonable compromise and a good system.
You can apply to multiple schools non-binding early action, but you can’t apply anywhere binding ED. So they don’t waste their early time/resources on candidates that might not be free to consider an offer if made.
There’s no advantage admissions-wise – the goal is that you’ll get in (or not) the same regardless of when you apply. You just find out a decision sooner which definitely is a help in moving the decision-making process along.
I do think the schools that are heavy users of ED (filling 40-50% of their seats through ED) are doing it as a mildly coercive numbers manipulation designed to keep their yield numbers artificially high and their admissions rates artificially low. So they can appear to keep up with their Joneses (HYPS).
I’m talking about you Penn, Duke, Dartmouth, Northwestern, Vandy, Hopkins, Emory, Tufts, Brown…