My son is at Williams and although there are many people who were admitted through ED who had hooks there were many who were not.
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I second the suggestion of Grinnell. Of all the SLACs, the approach to academics at Grinnell is easily my favorite. A positive in admissions at both Grinnell and the also suggested Carleton is that eac sponsors only about 20 sports teams, which means about 600 athletes (150 freshmen) rather than the 30-32 teams & 750-800 athletes (180-200 freshmen) typically found at NESCAC schools.
The downside of Grinnell is that the closest airport with a direct flight from London is Chicago, 300 miles away, which necessitates an additional 1.5 hour connecting flight to Des Moines, about an hour from campus.
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The question we would really want answered is how many of the unhooked ED admits would also have gotten admitted RD.
I can’t answer that question for sure, but I did once take a close look at the SCOIR data for S24’s HS, which could be used to report average GPA and test score data for RD versus ED admits. And I saw no statistical evidence that ED admits typically averaged lower numbers.
I did MAYBE see some evidence to support the yield protection story at SOME highly selective LACs, including Middlebury. Like maybe there were a few more high numbers RD waitlistings/rejections than you might expect given the general pattern.
But I saw no evidence of unhooked ED kids getting in at higher rates without numbers that would have made them competitive RD too.
So, I remain skeptical there is often an ED “boost” in the sense it will take someone they would not want RD and turn them into someone they do want ED.
That said, to be sure I can’t rule out the idea it will sometimes help with what can be seen as conditional hooks, like they want a kid from Montana so they can say they have a kid from Montana, but if they can find a kid from Montana to admit ED then they may no longer care about Montana kids who apply RD. Because none of the kids at S24’s HS were from Montana, and indeed for the most part any hooks they would have were of the normal sort (recruited athletes, legacies, and such).
But I will say I did come away convinced truly high level performing arts was nearly as effective sometimes as recruited athletes. And so I don’t personally dismiss the idea that, say, a top tuba player could benefit from applying ED to a college looking for a top tuba player. Again, that could be seen more as type of hook, though, as opposed to a generic “boost”.
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Yes, one nice thing about Northfield, MN (the location of Carleton and St Olaf) is that while it feels pretty out in the country, it is actually only about 45 minutes from MSP, a major international airport, including a nonstop to LHR.
Then again, a big merit award will easily cover that extra segment to Des Moines . . . .
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Do you always know this, though? It may be obvious for the athletes, but not for those with other hooks. (No one is presumably going to go around saying they got in because their family donated or they had a good academic connection, etc.)
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I generally agree with this, however, I can understand where @Wjs1107 is coming from, too. It’s hard to imagine a NESCAC that wouldn’t prefer a class full of kids who really wanted to be there rather than HYPMS.
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Of course there were.
Hooked admits are not the majority of ED admits at these schools. The point is that they have an outsized impact and therefore make the high ED acceptance rates misleading.
Let’s take Williams as an example. Last year they admitted 249 of 1067 ED applicants for a 23% acceptance rate, which is about 3 times as high as their overall acceptance rate. BUT if 120 of those ED admits we’re hooked - which is highly likely - that means that only 129 were normal applicants. And that converts to an ED acceptance rate for normal applicants of 13%. Still an advantage, but a much smaller advantage. If the number of hooked applicants was higher than 120, which would not be at all surprising, the ED acceptance rate for normal applicants decreases accordingly - and along with it, any ED advantage.
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I think for many of them it comes out quickly. I have always said that my son has a spike with music performance but he has friends who are “regular” excellent kids who were accepted ed
Different school, but just gonna point out that D19’s bf had excellent grades. His family also has their name on a building on campus. Now, donors may not always be so obvious, but it’s unlikely that that wasn’t taken into consideration in his admission to a competitive school.
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Here’s an example. One of my GS’s was a straight-A student from a top high school with a very rigorous curriculum, with a perfect 36 ACT, and with lots of ECs and played a sport but not a potential college athlete. He was rejected by both Amherst and Williams. If he was an athlete or otherwise hooked, he would have been in in a heart beat. He was accepted at Colby, Middlebury, and Wesleyan and landed at Rice, but just one of many examples of kids who have all the qualifications but are passed over at the super selective schools but with a lot of slots reserved for hooked applicants.
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I’m curious if the “regular” kids had any geographic diversity. Williams seems to value this highly.
@londondad1 My “regular” excellent D, who was unhooked from an overrepresented city and state, and had lopsided SAT scores (high Verbal, low-for-Williams Math) applied RD when test scores were required as a humanities major. She was accepted RD along with Middlebury, Colby, Haverford, and Vassar. She submitted her scores to test-optional Wesleyan and Bowdoin (RD) and was denied.
She attended Williams and had a fantastic experience. Like your daughter, she grew up in a big city and was eager to go to college in a rural location with outdoors opportunities and excellent academics.
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He was rejected ED?
Maybe the takeaway here is that if she finds she has a clear favorite for which is is happily giving up the chance to know her full results, go for it. It won’t hurt, might help. But if there’s not a favorite, the overall advantage for a non-hooked, well-qualified applicant is not as high as the numbers may outwardly suggest. The demonstrated interest of ED may be a boost in some places but you are not leaving as much to chance as you might be led to believe. Do your assessment based on that overall understanding, not the “we fill 65 percent of our class with ED” metric
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Bowdoin has been TO since 1969, so that will not be a headwind there. I might say give that one a go for ED1 given that it has no real negatives. Then, if necessary, pick another for ED2 if you want – Midd, Bates – while expanding the list as suggested here.
The reality is that your D will have to have a top choice at some point, and doing it from afar will limit your revisit options even if you wait for RD.. If ED works out, it’ll save a lot of effort. Put differently, it’s not clear that seeing all the RD results would be significantly better in your situation, and that’s the main reason most have for avoiding ED.
I agree that Midd probably puts the heaviest thumb on the scale for ED applicants.
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Or any highly selective LAC for that matter. I think all of them would prefer kids who either knew they wanted an LAC, or at least were strongly considering them alongside some research universities without a strong preference for the research universities.
So I agree applying ED can eliminate this as a potential concern, but again if you actually DO prefer some research universities, AND you have a realistic chance to be admitted, then applying ED to an LAC to eliminate that concern seems problematic as an overall strategy.
One alternative is simply to have a robust list of research universities. Assuming you are competitive for the most selective research universities in the first place, it shouldn’t be hard to find multiple excellent ones to admit you, and indeed possibly offer you merit. If you actually aren’t really interested in LACs, maybe just don’t apply to them at all.
If you do want to seriously consider both research universities and LACs, you can apply to a robust list of both. Then if some particular LAC mistakenly pegs you as a kid who isn’t serious about LACs, that’s unlikely to prevent you from getting at least some great LAC offers to consider.
Of course if you are only interested in LACs, a robust list of those also should work.
And, of course, you can be serious about demonstrating interest in other ways as relevant. I think most if not all of the LACs considered strong candidates for possible “yield protection” also say they consider demonstrated interest. Like I think Amherst, Swarthmore, and Williams say they don’t, but I don’t know a lot of people who think that is a big concern at those colleges. I believe Bates, Bowdoin, and Middlebury, in contrast, do say they consider it. So, you know, be serious about that if you end up wanting to apply to those colleges, but not ED.
I also note that the domestic admit rate is also much higher at many “top” US colleges thanks to the International rate being much lower, which drags down the overall admit rate.
It looks like Williams has not been reporting the relevant stats, but Amherst did, so we can check that out. Amherst had an overall admit rate of 1222/15819 in their 2025-26 CDS, 7.7%, but it was actually 92/6346 International, 1.45%. Domestic it was therefore 1130/9473, 11.9%.
OK, so Amherst had a 22.2% ED acceptance rate in that same CDS. But if you took out the hooked ED admits, what would be the domestic unhooked ED admit rate at Amherst?
I’m not at all confident it would be much better than 11.9%. In fact, maybe not better at all.
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So these numbers are a little outdated (source: Faculty Vote To Release, Discuss Data on Athletic Recruitment Policies) but there are two types of recruited athletes at Amherst:
“Athletic Factors” are extraordinary athletes who are given “substantial” preference in the admissions process, and total 67 admits per year. “Coded” applicants are skilled athletes who also rank highly academically, and are admitted to the college at a higher rate than other academically-comparable applicants. “Coded” admits number between 60 and 90 per year.
Assuming these are all ED, that is very high - roughly between 120 and 160 - in the context of 216 admits via ED according to the latest CDS. And that is only the athletes, although Amherst does not take legacy into account and claims it does not take donor status into consideration. However it seems FGLI is a hook there.
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Definitely, it was 21% of the class of 2029. And don’t forget the 7% of the class that came thru Questbridge…so another 33 or so coming primarily thru ED, but some definitely come thru RD.
Afaik, those athlete numbers are still accurate, although some trickle thru to RD too.
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No, RD.
Just trying to back of the envelope this, suppose recruited athletes and FGLIs including in the form of Questbridge were like 150 ED admits. Pre-reads and such should eliminate too many recruited ED rejections, but FGLIs could have more.
Still, even if it was like 150/300, that would make it something like 66/671 for the remainder of ED, 9.8%.
Again, not looking promising for much of an ED “boost” for unhooked/advantaged applicants to Amherst.
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