Unitiated Parent - SCEA vs. ED

Colleges & Universities Yale University
1

<p>I am unclear of the acronym SCEA and certainly am unaware of the difference/significance of SCEA vs. ED and and benefits or consequences thereof. </p>

<p>My daughter is particularly interested in attending Yale. She is a senior (Class of 2013) with an unweigted GPA of 4.0 and weighted 4.6; # 2 in her class of 450; 2310 SAT; 790 Math SAT II; 740 Chem SAT II; 34 ACT; she acheived National AP Scholar her junior year (9 AP Exams with all 5’s except for a 4 in Chem); Silver Medalist National Latin Exam; 216 PSAT; she currently works at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory as a lab asst./technician; Captain of the Girl’s Cross Country team junion/senior years (four year varsity letter); she is shadowing at a local hospital; volunteers tutoring; initiated clothing drive at hospital for discharged patients needing clothing upon departure.</p>

<p>Is she a viable candidate for admission to Yale, and if so, should she elect SCEA or ED, and why? Thank you in advance for your response. I am working on gathering as much information as possible and any help in the right direction is appreciated greatly. I can only afford, through her pre-paid college account, to provide around $8,000 per year. Does Yale have work study? I am just afraid that she/we will not be able to afford to attend.</p>

2

<p>SCEA is a “non binding” option and allows you to apply ED (binding process) to another university if the results are released after Jan 1 or to any EA program. If you choose ED at another school, if accepted you have to withdraw all other applications or petition to be released if the financial aid does not make the school affordable. Yale does have “work study” although they don’t call it that. See below:</p>

<p><a href=“https://www.yalestudentjobs.org/Cmx_Content.aspx?cpid=234[/url]”>2-Student FAQs: Work Study[234];

<p>Your daughter definitely has the credentials but with a 6% overall admission rate there are no guarantees. I would have her apply SCEA unless there is another private institution she felt more strongly about and wanted to apply there thru ED. See info below:</p>

<p>[Single-Choice</a> Early Action for Freshman Applicants | Yale College Admissions](<a href=“http://admissions.yale.edu/scea]Single-Choice”>Single Choice Early Action for First-Year Applicants | Yale College Undergraduate Admissions)</p>

3

<p>Thanks Kdog! Just realized I mispelled “Uninitiated.” Poop.</p>

4

<p>No problem. I can tell you that Yale has one of the “most generous” financial aid policies. Unless you are “uber rich”, you probably will get the best FA from Yale if admitted. The biggest worry should be getting in and NOT if you can afford it.</p>

5

<p>*Just realized I mispelled “Uninitiated.” Poop. *</p>

<p>This made me laugh - needed it. :)</p>

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<p>If you want to get an idea of your expected contribution you can work thru the calculator at the link below.</p>

<p>[Yale</a> Net Price Calculator | Yale College Admissions](<a href=“http://admissions.yale.edu/yale-net-price-calculator]Yale”>Estimate Your Cost | Yale College Undergraduate Admissions)</p>

<p>You should also read Yale Financial Aid 101 at the link below:</p>

<p><a href=“http://admissions.yale.edu/financial-aid-prospective-students[/url]”>Affordability: The Details | Yale College Undergraduate Admissions;

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<p>Glad to help. ;P</p>

8

<p>ProudPappa:</p>

<p>Kdog044 has provided you accurate and useful information but I am not sure it answered all your questions. At the risk of redundancy for the sake of clarity, I’ll give it a shot, too.</p>

<p>Yale does not use ED. ED is always a binding program for schools that have it. In other words an ED applicant is committing to attend the school to which s/he applies if s/he is accepted (with an exception for financial hardship). It is a way to signal priority interest in a school but requires the applicant to be certain of that the target school really is the one they want to go above all others and also to forgo the possibility of comparing future financial aid offers from multiple schools. In addition, of course, one can only apply ED to one school and, if an applicant is admitted ED, s/he is expected to withdraw any other pending applications, EA or regular decision (RD), to other schools.</p>

<p>In an EA process, by contrast, an applicant is simply applying early to a school in order to get an early admissions result. There is no expectation of commitment on the part of the applicant–if they are admitted they are free to apply elsewhere and to choose another school. Moreover they can apply to multiple EA programs, too, and have many admissions results in hand in December while still pursuing RD at other schools. Yale modifies this process only insofar as they expect that their EA applicants have no other EA or ED applications in play when they apply to Yale (with exceptions allowed for applications to public, non-U.S., and rolling admissions schools). A SCEA applicant to Yale is free to apply to any RD program after applying to Yale and can wait until April to see results (and FA packages) from other schools before making a final decision about where to go.</p>

<p>So, if your D is applying to Yale, the question is not ED vs. SCEA, but SCEA vs. RD. You’ll find lots of threads in this forum in which this matter is discussed extensively.</p>

9

<p>Thanks Descartesz. I will mine down the other threads. Is the only benefit of applying SCEA to know sooner than later whether you are accepted?</p>

10

<p>

That and making the RD applications at other schools less stressful if you get an acceptance. Also, it could give you two chances at admission as you could get deferred in SCEA and still possibly get accepted in the RD round.</p>

11

<p>Just to be clear, Kdog044’s answer above was wrong in one significant respect: SCEA stands for Single Choice Early Action. Yale does NOT allow you to apply to Yale SCEA at the same time you are applying to another college’s Early Action program that may provide a decision before January 1, unless it is a public university in the applicant’s state of residence. The same is true at Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton. Other colleges’ Early Action rules do allow students to apply to multiple Early Action programs simultaneously, and many allow students who apply Early Action to have one Early Decision application outstanding at the same time. But not those four colleges.</p>

<p>So part of what you are giving up if you apply SCEA to Yale is the chance to submit multiple early applications to colleges that you may consider almost as good as Yale. And other colleges seem to favor early applicants a bit more than Yale, Harvard, etc. do. I think many people overstate the advantage considerably, but it’s there to some extent.</p>

<p>Thus, for example, if you decided to not to apply SCEA to Yale (or Harvard, etc.), and only to apply RD there, you could submit EA applications to all of MIT, the University of Chicago, Georgetown, the University of Michigan, the University of Virginia, and Caltech. Or you could apply EA to all of the foregoing schools except Georgetown, and apply binding ED to one of Columbia, Brown, Penn, Cornell, Northwestern, Dartmouth, Williams, Amherst. Reasonable people can go either way, but some conclude that they would rather have a broad portfolio of EA/ED applications rather than just one SCEA application. </p>

<p>If they only submit EA applications elsewhere, they can still be admitted to Yale RD and choose Yale in the end. If they apply someplace ED and are accepted early, then it’s binding and they have to go to the ED college as long as it provides an acceptable financial aid package. So choosing to submit an ED application somewhere (and basically you can never have more than one of those outstanding with the same time frame for decision) means that you may not be able to go to Yale even if you find out that you would have been accepted there, if the ED college accepts you in December.</p>

12

<p>^Nice explanation. </p>

<p>I would add one thing about SCEA at HYPS, the exceptions of where you can apply early to do vary some. For example, S lets you apply early for scholarships:</p>

<p>[Restrictive</a> Early Action : Stanford University](<a href=“http://www.stanford.edu/dept/uga/application/decision_process/restrictive.html]Restrictive”>http://www.stanford.edu/dept/uga/application/decision_process/restrictive.html)</p>

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</p>

<p>And it seems that Y has loosened their rule about applying to rolling schools/publics this year, this is definitely a change back to the way it was a couple of years ago:</p>

<p>[Single-Choice</a> Early Action for Freshman Applicants | Yale College Admissions](<a href=“http://admissions.yale.edu/scea]Single-Choice”>http://admissions.yale.edu/scea)</p>

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</p>

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<p>Your daughter definitely has great statistics and is clearly a competitive candidate! The only disadvantage about applying SCEA is that you’re competing against the brightest, most brilliant, highest achieving students who are all extremely eager about Yale. If your daughter’s app is great but not exceptional, it’ll look very mediocre among all the other amazing apps and will not appear as such a desirable candidate.
However, if she’s confident about her essays and extracurriculars, then I definitely suggest she apply SCEA because statistically, more students get in through SCEA.</p>

14

<p>JHS - Great explanation and nice pick-up by entomom about this change:</p>

<p>

since you were restricted to your in-state public in the past. I wonder what made them loosen this up?</p>

15

<p>What constitutes as great extracurriculars? Does being Captain of the Cross Country team her junior and senior years? She is alos a member of Mu Alpha Theta; Latin Club; National Honor Society. Is her job at the National high Magnetic Field Laboratory considered an extracurricular?</p>

16

<p>YGD,</p>

<p>Not sure, maybe to keep up with the Jones since H&P also allow rolling schools:</p>

<p>[Harvard</a> College Admissions § Applying: Early Action](<a href=“http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/apply/application_process/early.html]Harvard”>http://www.admissions.college.harvard.edu/apply/application_process/early.html)</p>

<p>[Princeton</a> University | Single-Choice Early Action](<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/admission/applyingforadmission/single-choice-early-actio/]Princeton”>http://www.princeton.edu/admission/applyingforadmission/single-choice-early-actio/)</p>

<p>Being the only SCEA school to restrict OOS rolling publics might have put Y at a disadvantage in the arms race. Also, they used to allow all rolling (D1 applied to an OOS rolling public in 2007) but changed it to only your IS public a few years ago IIRC.</p>

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<p>There have been small changes in the rules over time. I know when my last kid applied to Yale SCEA, you were allowed to apply to any rolling admission program at any public university. At the time, Harvard may have restricted you to your in-state public. Yale adopted the in-state restriction a few years ago, and I believe had it in place last year, but when Harvard and Princeton reintroduced SCEA last year they didn’t include that limitation.</p>

<p>Meanwhile, what really changed the landscape was that the University of Michigan replaced its rolling admissions program with an early action program. Michigan rolling admissions used to be a meaningful threat to HYPS, because Michigan would accept people starting in late November/early December, and would offer significant merit scholarships to HYPS-quality applicants. And in terms of academic resources and reputation Michigan was really the only rolling admission public that was a true peer to HYPS. Michigan was thus a popular place for Yale SCEA applicants to apply, and many of them were not from Michigan. I believe the in-state restriction was adopted as an anti-Michigan measure, and in all likelihood Michigan’s abandonment of rolling admissions is why the restriction was no longer necessary.</p>

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<p>^Exactly what D1 did. She had an acceptance in Nov, about a half tuition scholarship plus another smaller one (no longer offered) by early Dec., and it later turned out to be a full tuition, R&B scholarship. That was when H&P were still ED and a year before the middle income initiatives at HYPS.</p>

19

<p>

U-M still has rolling admissions for the RD process. Their EA is “non binding” so one could still apply EA to U-M and SCEA to Yale.</p>

20

<p>

Whether or not it is called an “extracurricular” a job is a very good thing to include on an application (on the Common App it would go in the “Activities” section.)</p>

<p>Here is an earlier qualitative assessment of the credentials of successful Yale applicants, especially of extracurriculars, based on an analysis of about 200 CC results posted in this forum.</p>

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<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/7579507-post3.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/7579507-post3.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>BTW, regarding SCEA vs. RD, most of the threads on this debate whether or not SCEA applicants enjoy increased probability of success. It is true that the SCEA admission rate is around 14% while the RD rate is closer to 5% but, as has been pointed out, the SCEA pool is considered to be more highly qualified in aggregate. Thus it is difficult for an outsider to determine how any randomly selected application might fair in either pool. Yale admissions usually says the two factors balance out and that the decision to apply SCEA should be made on other grounds (such as those already mentioned).</p>