Sorry - didn’t mean to imply it never happens - and strategies by the school almost certainly shift over time.
Also if I’m wearing my tinfoil hat I do wonder how much merit they give out if a student checks off that they will not be submitting for financial aid. If a student is submitting an application for financial aid and the school has a position of “meeting need”, any merit is going to go into that aid pool and potentially doesn’t really benefit the student.
For example - $90K list price
Student applied ED by 11/1, CSS profile due by 11/15.
They see Net Price calculates to $50K
They award $20K/year “merit”
Financial aid award given lists $20K merit plus $15K grant and $5K loan option - net price $50K.
Without the merit, the FA award was going to be $35K grant and $5K loan option.
The merit award only really helps the situation if it gets the total picture below the calculated net price. I’m not suggesting it never happens.
Although not reflected in this table, I noticed that the 2023-2024 CDS shows the number of EA applicants and EA admits separately. This has not been the case in prior years (I’ve noticed it at some other schools as well - so maybe a change in the CDS reporting?).
But on the Tulane 2023-2024 CDS the numbers of admitted students don’t seem to add up correctly and I wondered if anyone had insight. According to CDS:
ED: 1752 applied, 1193 admitted (presumably all or virtually all enrolled)
EA 15,541 applied, 2614 admitted, 697 enrolled
These are very helpful numbers. Thank you. You’re right. They don’t add up. Its really hard to drop ED. It would be strange to have that many drop. I’m sorry I’m not adding insight just agreeing with you and thanking you for sharing. LOL
How do you think they might categorize someone who applies EA and then gets deferred to RD and then the person gets the email to switch to ED2 and they do?
Just saying there’s a methodology that drives the numbers they report on the CDS that we are not privy to… which drives some of the disconnect you’re seeing.
Yes I think that’s clearly true. But we just don’t have the information from the CDS to understand it. And regardless of how they count different applicants…I see 1890 enrolled (unless some ED reneged) in the first two rounds and a total of 1867 enrolled after all rounds were done. So regardless of how they count the various permutations of how people enrolled…the final number is lower than the early number.
I’ve never been concerned too much about the slight differences in number you point out. The CDS is driven by the College Board. I don’t know specifically with this but typically any type of benchmarking data template like this would have instructions behind it that would guide the school completing it what goes in the various buckets. The goal is usually to provide comparability among institutions.
For sure some ED don’t end up attending the school they ED to. Some families may underestimate the financial obligation or may instead decide to take a gap year or if an athlete that gets recruited they may decide not to “play”. Though rare some kids may tank their Senior year and have an admissions rescinded.
Wow that was a pretty quick turnaround. I wonder by when those decisions were made. Last Monday/Tues? Im assuming the office was completely closed most of Wed thru the holiday weekend.
