Yes, great tool for the colleges. But at the end of the day- a kid who is making a decision about where to attend based on an admission rate (yes, there is both a numerator AND a denominator, should have learned that in the fourth grade) really can’t be saved from his or herself. Does ND produce an inferior education vs. Vandy? A kid making a decision based on the admissions rate of these two schools- hey, some people can’t be helped.
I have a nephew who did ED to a “mega lottery” college and I worried it was a mistake- high need situation. His financial aid offer was within $5 of what the NPC for that college had indication-- his family had sat down with sharpened pencils before the application went in to decide “can we swing this or not”. Yes- they thought they could.
Did they give up the opportunity to compare and contrast? Yes. Would he have gotten a better need based package someplace else? Possibly, although this was by far the first choice college AND his family was on board that as long as the numbers came in close to the estimate they could afford it.
Did they give up the opportunity to compare merit packages? Of course- but there was little mystery there to begin with. Their state flagship would offer X for NMS- it wasn’t commutable, he’d be getting very little need based aid from them. A nearby state (also not commutable) would offer Y if he won their top merit scholarship. Still cost them more than the mega generous college’s need based package. And so on and so forth. At a couple of schools the merit awards seemed to have too many strings attached- major in X or lose a portion of the funding. Keep an unrealistic GPA or watch the award evaporate. Vs. Need based aid from the ED school- major in anything you want, don’t flunk out, keep your money.
So for a kid like this- with a simple family financial snapshot, no step parents, no big home equity calculation, no small business, what exactly is the “risk” or the downside to ED??? First choice college- check. An affordable need based package, entirely consistent with the college’s own estimate- check. An analysis of what merit aid would look like at a range of contenders- check.
It’s a first world problem for sure. Which is why I said “mildly” coercive.
We’ll give you a break on getting into here at Duke, but only if you swear off considering Vandy and Penn and Nortwestern. Deal or no deal?
If all the ED schools got rid of it, they would all wind up with the same enrolled classes as they get today. But their acceptance rates would go way up from where they are now. Oh the shame.
So Duke wouldn’t unilaterally disarm – they’d only get rid of ED if Vandy and Penn and Northwestern would too.
Not sure why everyone is so convinced schools are doing this all so they can report an inflated yield number. Last I checked, USNWR doesn’t even factor yield anymore. One thing early decision does is it ensures that you are filling your class with kids who really want to be there. Most schools would probably rather have a kid with a 3.8/34 who is totally smitten with the school instead of that 4.0/36 kid who is just there because HYP rejected them.
In the dark ages when I attended Michigan we had two very different groups of students. We had the in-state kids like me who were just ecstatic to be there. And we had several thousand displaced New Yorkers who didn’t make the cut at the Ivies. Just about everyone grows to love the school eventually but the initial experience is a lot different for the kids who are fired up to be there vs. the kids who feel like they had to settle. GIven the choice as an admission director, I would do everything I could to fill my dorms with kids who thought my school was their dream school.
ED helps a school predict its yield more accurately. So even if yield inflation is not a ranking benefit, locking in much of the class early means that an incorrect yield prediction for RD has a smaller effect on the size of the class.
“That kid with the 5% chance at HYP maybe has a 30-40% chance of getting a large merit award at USC but can’t apply in time for the deadline.”
uh, this is dead WRONG.
SCEA applications ALLOW students to apply to other schools early IF an early application IS REQUIRED in order to be eligible for scholarship consideration. That is the case with USC.
DS applied BOTH SCEA to Stanford AND to USC before their Dec 1 scholarship deadline.
I suggest you do research before posting false information.
Penn had a 23% acceptance rate for ED. They also have athletes, legacies, and hooked kids applying ED, so the “actual” ED rate is lower than 23%. The difference is that Penn has a larger freshman class than Harvard, yet all Ivy League schools are limited to recruiting ~200 student-athletes per year.
It’s less than 23% but it’s certainly still a better “bet” than the net 3-5% that HYP have after factoring in the same things. Sorry again @menloparkmom, already apologized upthread for using USC which was a bad example. But that doesn’t change the argument that there are a lot of really good EA schools you can’t go after and a lot of ED schools where ED really is a boost if you take the REA path.
It’s funny but if you read the H REA info online, they are practically begging kids not to do it. But that doesn’t stop the numbers from going up every year.
Well, if you want to decrease the proportion of recruited athletes in the ED pack, it makes sense to pick the largest elite school you can find. Thus, you’re better off applying ED to Cornell than Penn. Cornell is bigger.
You also need to take into account that recruited Ivy Athletes has already had an academic pre-read and have received a likely letter so the non-academically qualified candidates are already weeded out.
Yes, meaning that the recruited athletes have a nearly 100% admit rate. The results should be recalculated with their applications and acceptances completely removed from the pool.
I think there’s another issue involved. A lot of the kids who get into HYPS would get into more than one; some would get into all 4. Yale and Princeton want to know which of the top kids really want to go to Princeton and not just “one of the schools at the top of the chart.” SCEA means that the kids applying to, e.g., Yale or Princeton SCEA PREFER them to Harvard and Stanford.
So SCEA lets the colleges know which of the top applicants have their college as FIRST choice.
A kid who really wants to go to H and gets in in December is less likely to apply to YPS. That’s especially true for kids who aren’t applying for FA. I don’t think it’s about rankings. I do think the YPS admissions offices would just rather not spend the manpower—peoplepower?—necessary to read a lot of applications from and schedule interviews for kids who already know that they want to go to Harvard but feel that once they’ve paid the admissions fee they are “entitled” to know whether they would get into YPS too.
As it is, a lot of kids seeking FA who get into HYPS and other colleges early apply to additional colleges RD aiming to see if they can get a better aid package which they can use to bargain with HYPS. I’ve seen a kid use a UPenn financial aid package to get more $ from MIT. I saw a URM get Harvard to up an award by using the FA offered by one of the top LACs. I’m sure that offer was unusually generous because the LAC really wanted to up the percentage of URMs in its STEM majors.
IME, URMs/poor kids/ and first gens aren’t hurt by ED. The top colleges are fighting tooth and nail to get the best qualified of these kids. They know they want to compare FA packages and don’t hold it against them.
The kids who get hurt most? Legacy kids at colleges just below the top.
UPenn is most open about this. If you’re a legacy, it ONLY helps if you apply ED. So, lets say a kid who really wants to go to Princeton is a legacy at UPenn. He has to decide whether to apply SCEA to Princeton, forfeiting his legacy tip, or ED to UPenn, thus giving up his chance to find out if he can get into Princeton, which he prefers to UPenn.
If he applies to Princeton and doesn’t get in, he will have lower odds of being accepted to Penn RD than he would have had if he applied ED. Not only has he lost the legacy tip, but in the regular round, assuming he’s a white or Asian upper middle class kid, especially one from the Boston to DC corridor, he’s going to have even lower than “advertised” odds. And, everyone in the UPenn admissions class will think “we weren’t his first choice.” If he applies to UPenn and does get in, he’ll always wonder “Could I have gotten into Princeton?”
I don’t expect anyone to feel all that sympathetic to a “first world” problem, but for legacy kids passing on the tip that ED gives you at Penn or Brown or Cornell to apply to a higher ranked college is a very difficult decision…even harder than the same choice with no legacy involved.
Your timeline isn’t quite right. For ED, you have to know your #1 school in November. Otherwise, you don’t have to decide on your #1 at application time, instead you have until 5/1. That’s 6 or 7 months, which IMO is huge to a teenager.
In 6 months of junior year, my D went from hating CS to wanting to major in it. You can see that I’d want that feeling to stick for as long as possible before having to commit to it… So for us, the 6-month-earlier decision would have been a deal breaker by itself.
You would say “wise / unwise” if it was similarly beneficial to most people. You would say fair/unfair if there were groups of people that had trouble taking advantage of it.
ED is clearly unfair to families that are sensitive to the financial package.
Unless you think it was “unwise” for them to need financial aid.
Not necessarily. The kid simply has to make a choice between two options:
Do I want to have a chance at one of the most selective schools in the country (say, Princeton) even though it means giving up my leg up at a slightly less selective/desirable school (Penn) and therefore increasing my chances of going to a significantly less selective/desirable school (say, State U)?
Or do I want to maximize my chances of not going to State U by giving up the possibility of going to Princeton and maximizing my chances at Penn?
Different kids will make different decisions, and there actually are kids out there who will choose Option 2.
This was my published comment when I saw Bruni’s article in the NY Times a few days ago-
Early decision was a wonderful option for our daughter. She is home with us now, having just finished the first semester of her freshman year at the school she felt the most aligned with after visiting several others. Her school was on the short list of small, well endowed liberal arts colleges that are need blind in the admission process and meet 100% of need. By using the institution’s own Net Price Calculator we knew that if accepted, she would receive a generous yearly grant that would bring her room, board and tuition in line with our own public state college fees. Yes, it was stressful pulling everything together, including my own job of filling out dozens of pages of financial aid forms by November 15, but by Dec 12 she had been accepted into a school that she loved then and loves even more now. Getting accepted early decision was the best holiday gift she ever received and allowed her to relax and enjoy the rest of her senior year. Slacking off was never even a thought as all colleges require accepted students to submit their year end grades in June.
@Marian Yes, different kids make different decisions. However, IME, a significant # of kids in group 2 who get into Penn in December will then regret having made that choice. It happens every year.
Again, YMMV, but in some of the cases I am most familiar with parents successfully lobbied the kid to take the second option and the kid was less than enthused, but reluctantly agreed. When the thick letter arrives, the kid is resentful rather than happy.
So for us, the 6-month-earlier decision would have been a deal breaker by itself.