Correct on Illini and Cal not having early decision.
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College Admissions Questions (1 Viewer)
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belljr
Footballguy
So looking for advice....
If we do early decision but feel the tuition is too high we can decline? The way I read the school website was if we don't put the early decision deposit it's not binding
You may apply to other colleges; however, you can only apply to one school as an Early Decision candidate. If you are admitted to Stevens under one of our Early Decision plans and accept our offer of admission, then you must immediately withdraw all other applications to other colleges. You may not submit new applications to other colleges after you have made this commitment to Stevens.
After you review and accept your financial aid award, you must make a $500 non-refundable deposit by your tuition deposit deadline to confirm your enrollment at Stevens.
"However, the Early Decision Plan is binding, meaning if you submit a tuition deposit as an Early Decision candidate by the stated deadline, you agree to: "
If we do early decision but feel the tuition is too high we can decline? The way I read the school website was if we don't put the early decision deposit it's not binding
You may apply to other colleges; however, you can only apply to one school as an Early Decision candidate. If you are admitted to Stevens under one of our Early Decision plans and accept our offer of admission, then you must immediately withdraw all other applications to other colleges. You may not submit new applications to other colleges after you have made this commitment to Stevens.
After you review and accept your financial aid award, you must make a $500 non-refundable deposit by your tuition deposit deadline to confirm your enrollment at Stevens.
"However, the Early Decision Plan is binding, meaning if you submit a tuition deposit as an Early Decision candidate by the stated deadline, you agree to: "
From my research there is no doubt ED helps; to what exact degree is the debate. Legacy students and athletes are often part of that increased ED acceptance rate. The true benefit for “unhooked” ED is likely somewhere in between.
That is about the only reason, and it still does not go over well with most schools (especially if they find out you ED more than one school).
Since most (not all) ED schools offer little to no merit aid you should go onto the cost calculator for each college and estimate your need based aid so the cost of an ED school does not surprise you.
scorchy
Footballguy
This. My son's HS went 2 for 2 at Princeton last year. Both great students, but still pretty shocking for a graduating class of 100. Looked them up and both were legacies.
El Floppo
Footballguy
The more I'm learning about these private schools...they have an almost unfair pipeline into the top schools, by rep, relationships, legacies, etc. My kids school had a pretty transparent list and info on exmissions last year...it was shocking. My wife has been deep into podcasts about admissions at places like Yale and MIT and with the former and other ivies, it sounds like they are looking for a "type" of student as well as a kid with high marks and achievements. From the podcasts at least, these private schools prepare kids in a way where the colleges know they're getting that "type". Again...right or wrong.
Senor Schmutzig
Footballguy
Have you looked into any Facebook groups for college admissions for your state or interested schools? There are a TON of groups out there and a lot of information. Most of the groups that I belong to are filled with what appear to be helicopter-moms but the information shared within those groups is still valid.
El Floppo
Footballguy
My wife is taking the lead on all of this. For now, at least, I think she's sticking to "horses mouth" info from people in admissions or college counseling. But I wouldn't be surprised if she was checking into other resources...I'll mention the FB groups- thanks for the recommendation!
I was an Ivy guy and went to a small private school for high school. Had a good reputation but there were good connections to Yale (professor’s kids, Bart Giammati’s wife was my English teacher). We had about about 1/3 or so kids my year that went Ivy. Yale was crazy, like 10-15%. The resources for SATs and other stuff is now well beyond back then but I do recall people telling me I might be disappointed because a kid in my grade’s dad was a big donor to were I went. I got in and he didn’t and I had no connections.
I can only imagine what private schools are like now and the costs, damn. My school is probably 6-8x what it cost my parents.
STEADYMOBBIN 22
Footballguy
My daughter has narrowed down the list to:
Maryland
Penn State
Wisconsin
Michigan
Arizona State (WTF?)
Towson
San Diego State
Dad wants Wisconsin or Penn State
Mom wants Maryland or Towson
Maryland
Penn State
Wisconsin
Michigan
Arizona State (WTF?)
Towson
San Diego State
Dad wants Wisconsin or Penn State
Mom wants Maryland or Towson
bigbottom
Footballguy
Does your school use Naviance?
El Floppo
Footballguy
Is that a drug? Then probably, yes.
Yes, you can decline an early decision admit, and cost is a valid reason to do it.
Is it safe to assume your child is thinking of applying Early Decision to Stevens Institute of Technology? My son applied there ED, was accepted, and currently attends. As you know Stevens is very expensive, and while my son received sizeable merit scholarships as part of the offer, it remains expensive. I would expect most Early Decision acceptances include a scholarship to try and seal the deal. I'm happy to share additional details if you are interested.
Both of my kids applied Early Decision and it worked out well for us. I think if your kid is considering competitive schools and you have "flexibility" on cost, it is absolutely the way to go.
What I didn't realize until later in the process - competitive schools have plenty of applications of qualified students (and they have more and more each year). Yes, they first choose who meets their acceptance criteria. But next they look to "build" their freshman class. Where you live, your demographic, major, legacy all play a part in building that class. As pointed out above, the colleges relationship with the high school matters in some cases. Another factor considered is the likelihood the applicant will accept the offer. In this case Early Decision helps the college as it improves the schools rate of acceptances/offer.
Good luck to all in the process. Finding a great fit where your kid will thrive is most important IMO.
belljr
Footballguy
Please do I did the online calculator and her 3.98 and 1380 was still projecting to make it like only 12k in scholarship. We don't meet the need based criteria
I think this is all good advice/info. I'd add the following. Evidence is all anecdotal, but I'm still fairly convinced of all of these:
- Colleges definitely care about likelihood of candidate accepting offers. That's how you end up with stories about kids with great GPAs and 1600 SATs getting rejected from good-but-not-great state school. Kids shouldn't do anything to tip off a school that they're not really interested except as a safety.
- In recent years, colleges have moved away from looking for the most well-rounded candidates and prefer 'spikier' candidates who have a passion for something and major accomplishments related to it.
- Along the same lines as the above, I think kids should focus on 'telling a story' with their application...if their extracurriculars, planned course of study and essay are all part of the same story, I think that's a huge plus and can create an impression of passion/accomplishment even with relatively normal accomplishments.
- Also related to the above...an admissions officer should finish reviewing a candidate's application with a clear understanding of:
- What is unique about this specific student that makes them a must-have for our incoming class?
- AND
- What is unique about our college that makes us must-attend for this particular student?
- There's usually a "Why this school?" essay topic that gives room for the latter. Good to be REALLY specific on this...like pick a specific professor and talk about how working in their lab will help the student achieve their goals, or pick out something unique that the school talks about a lot on their web site and talk about how exciting that is.
bigbottom
Footballguy
Awesome post. I agree 100% with all of these. On the first point, I once heard advice regarding sending test scores to schools. I don’t know if this is still the case, but I was told that if you have your test scores automatically sent to a list of schools, the schools can see the schools on your list and will make note of the order in which the schools are listed (assuming the applicant will be more likely to list their top choices first). Accordingly, we were told to list the schools in alphabetical order to hopefully avoid schools at the bottom of the list writing you off. In any event, we were told not to have scores automatically sent at all. Wait to see what the scores are, and then determine whether you will send them in to each school individually (or take the test again).
Also you are correct that schools want to admit students that will accept. For the most selective schools, the goal seems to be to get that acceptance rate as low as possible as for them, selectivity = prestige. To get that rate low, they want to offer as few acceptances as possible while still being able to fill the incoming class. They accomplish this through ED because with just a few exceptions, they know that it’s a near 100% yield. The college consultant we hired (yes, we are one of those parents) was in admissions at Brown and Rice University among others before becoming a consultant and she couldn’t stress enough how much ED is a no brainer if you have a clear top choice that offers it and you can swing the cost. She basically told our son don’t even bother applying to Duke or Vanderbilt if he didn’t apply ED. He had zero chance. (He dropped a flier anyway at Vandy RD and was rejected.) I’m not trying to pressure folks to go the ED route, but if the above criteria fit, it would be sort of crazy not to if you want to maximize your chances of admission.
And one other note for those who have a top choice that does not offer ED. This is something my son chose to do (in consultation with our consultant). He had a very clear top choice and it did not offer ED. It was also the last school he heard from (and we knew when the results were going to come out). That school, like many schools, had a regional admissions contact - a person that applicants could reach out to with questions. Well, several weeks before the scheduled date for admissions responses, my son sent an email to that contact - telling her in no uncertain terms that this school was his top choice and that if he were to be extended an offer of admission he would 100% immediately accept. We have no idea whether that email made any difference. But if he was on the bubble, and the school could be assured of an insta-accept, it might have been the thumb on the scale he needed. Not saying that others should do the same thing. It could perhaps land negatively. But several weeks later, our son did receive his acceptance.
The_Man
Footballguy
One of those kids is my neighbor. Actually a double legacy. Smalltimore lol
And yes a very good student. But every kid who gets into one of these schools has to have an extra something special that sets them apart from all the very good students who get rejected. In this case, legacy status was that extra something
The_Man
Footballguy
This Twitter thread has screen shots from a big study about Early Decision that has extremely eye-opening info about RD vs ED admission rates as well as what % of schools’ incoming classes are admitted via ED
bigbottom
Footballguy
Ha no. It’s a software portal that aggregates admissions data specific for your school. So you can look back over the last year, or the last five years, and see how many kids applied to a particular college, how many were admitted, rejected, or waitlisted, and the GPAs and Test Scores for each applicant. It gives you an idea of what grades and scores are needed from your particular high school to gain admission at a particular college. It really helps you refine your safety, target and reach school designations. And when you look at the data, there will always be an outlier - someone with an unusually low GPA or test score that gains admission at a particular school. That could be attributed to scholarship athlete status, or some particular achievement that is not reflected in the data sets. But overall it helps give you a sense with respect to your kid’s admission chances. It also helps identify trends where certain schools seem to become increasingly more selective over time.
bigbottom
Footballguy
Interesting and echos some of the various perspectives hypotheses mentioned here in this thread. A couple notable excerpts:
When a college has already filled half or more of its freshman class before the deadline for regular decision applications, it is no surprise that applicants who apply ED have a significant advantage. The pool of ED applicants is much smaller than the pool of RD applicants but they might be competing for the same number of spots in a freshman class.
Additionally, the power of a binding commitment removes the qualms that admissions officers might have about admitting a highly qualified student they suspect will enroll elsewhere, which also increases admit rates. At Brown and Duke, the odds of being admitted under ED were more than four times what they were for RD. At Dartmouth and Columbia, the odds of getting in were more than three times as large. At some colleges, tens of thousands of applicants are effectively wasting their time and money applying through regular decision since so much of the class has already been admitted under ED.
Some of the boost in the acceptance rate for early decision students likely comes from the fact that the students who apply early tend to be very desirable to admissions officers and often include athletes and legacies. Furthermore, students who can commit to a college without seeing how much it will cost them also tend to be students who have invested heavily in becoming competitive applicants.
Still, even taking these factors into account, a 2001 study of early decision found that the binding power of ED provided a boost by itself, equivalent to 100 extra points on the SAT. Twenty years later, as some colleges have leaned into early decision to fill classes and secure tuition revenue, the impact of applying ED could well be larger.
With increased odds like these, it is no surprise that some high school students decide they are going to apply ED long before knowing where it will be. The strategy is to get into some dream school, any dream school, even if it is not their dream school.
scorchy
Footballguy
Funny. Glad I didn't talk smack about her.
Definitely hoping my kid gets that tie-breaker boost from the Michigan triple legacy, but UM isn't particularly transparent about how much benefit it provides.
El Floppo
Footballguy
This is all exactly the info my wife has found out.
We starting looking when her brilliant gpa, sat nephew from top HS didn't get in to the top schools a couple years ago. He had no story or compelling interests outside of doing well in school and ticking off some extracurricular boxes that didn't show passion or commitment to any of them. He was waitliated at Uof Chicago and pushed to get in there.
Senor Schmutzig
Footballguy
Whew…one down. Our son got his first acceptance letter today to Loyola University - Chicago. He was super excited and a little bit relieved to know that he was going to be able to go somewhere. That may sound strange, but I think high schoolers these days are dealing with a lot more pressure when planning for college than we ever did growing up so getting that first one is a big milestone.
Picked up another acceptance from my alma mater, University of Evansville. So far he is 2 for 2 on the Midwest schools he applied to. Wonder if that trend will continue with the larger schools (IU and Ohio State).
Picked up another acceptance from my alma mater, University of Evansville. So far he is 2 for 2 on the Midwest schools he applied to. Wonder if that trend will continue with the larger schools (IU and Ohio State).
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BeTheMatch
Footballguy
Man, my kid is dumb
Edwin A. Stevens Scholarship $22,000 /year
Presidential Scholarship $3,000 /year
Need based aid $0, lol
These are good for 4 years as long as he maintains his grades, which thankfully has not been a problem.
My son’s grades/scores were pretty much in line with your daughter’s. As Stevens is a tech school, male applicants outnumber female which should help your daughter and may improve the offer.
I recall seeing identical numbers for the scholarships on online forums that year. Hopefully year to year they are tweaked higher with inflation - but after you get them they won’t be.
The college is still crazy expensive, but I was pleasantly surprised when the offer came though.
The Z Machine
Footballguy
It seems like this only goes one way. I have to wonder, which are the schools that have gotten less selective over the years?
bigbottom
Footballguy
The Naviance data is specific to a particular high school. I no longer have access to the portal, but I’m sure there were schools that went the other way over say five years (meaning they identified my son’s high school as a target for increased admissions).
scorchy
Footballguy
Last year, you told me that Naviance access was gonna be like crack for a data junkie like myself. You couldn't have been more right. I hope the school wasn't keeping track of how much time I spent running the numbers in a million different ways.
bigbottom
Footballguy
Too funny. I was sad when I found out I no longer had access. No doubt I would have been running numbers for future classes just to satisfy my curiosity!
El Floppo
Footballguy
this scares me. but I'm sure we'll be dialed in if the school uses it.
Senor Schmutzig
Footballguy
Here is another site I just came across that has some good compiled data.
College Navigator - National Center for Education Statistics
College Navigator is a free consumer information tool designed to help students, parents, high school counselors, and others get information about over 7,000 postsecondary institutions in the United States - such as programs offered, retention and graduation rates, prices, aid available, degrees...
nces.ed.gov
Galileo
Footballguy
There are others besides Naviance. Our school switched from Naviance to Scoir.
The Z Machine
Footballguy
Lol, what'd you find out?
Don’t see either listed by my school, do I check with the guidance counselor?
Galileo
Footballguy
I suspect if your kid's school were using these you would already know...or at least your kid would know. They would be requesting teacher recommendations and submitting common app material through them, but yes, you can ask the counselors.
bigbottom
Footballguy
Yeah, they would have also been asking you to submit your kid’s data on which schools he has applied to and what responses he’s received.
bigbottom
Footballguy
Best of luck!!!
Jealous of everyone who has this
.
scorchy
Footballguy
Nothing too illuminating, just reinforcement of what a crapshoot the whole thing is.
- You could definitely see the difference Early Decision made at certain schools (e.g., his high school went 6 for 6 during ED at Northeastern but just 1 for 6 in RD even though the students didn't have markedly different stats).
- You could also tell that yield protection can be a real concern, as kids in the top right corner (highest grades and SAT/ACT) were regularly rejected at certain colleges while students below them on the scatterplots were accepted.
- His HS seems to perform way above expectations at some schools while being well below average at others. Like only 1 out of 30 kids in the last 5 years have gotten into USC or Vandy, but they are like 4 of 10 at Stanford and similarly good at Penn.
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El Floppo
Footballguy
I thought you were a pro goth club kid.
scorchy
Footballguy
That's my weekend job.
The Z Machine
Footballguy
So you were tying in external data that you knew about students to effectively unmask them?
Well I guess submitting Restrictive Early Action for Princeton is their version of ED and we are not supposed to apply to any other school with binding action, in our case Brown. According to charts this will increase his chances by about 10%.
We are actually good with this, and it takes some pressure off. We are giving our best shot for an elite admission for Math, but if, in the rare chance he is admitted, we are not “bound” to attend and can compare merit offers from other schools. This is different then Brown which is binding. Hear from Princeton by Mid-December.
We can continue to apply to early action schools that are non-binding (Michigan, Illinois, UC schools, etc).
What does he want to study?
Lehigh98
Footballguy
The poor kid has a mechanical engineer for a dad and a chemical engineer for a mom so he never had a chance.
Both our boys are leaning to math and science, not from pushing them but they are probably just gleaning it from mom and dad's jobs and interests. We've even tried to get them to look into other options business / medical / etc but math / science seems to be their comfort zone and they're sticking with it for now.My older son has enjoyed chemistry so far so he's thinking of chemical engineering. Our college consultant just recommended him doing a chemistry / engineering camp type thing over the summer at a college to see how he would like it (and get a little college experience of living in a dorm for a week or two and also an experience to mention in essays / interviews). He also had liked some of his government classes but may be backing off of that because he's not really enjoying AP Gov so far this year.
bigbottom
Footballguy
The poor kid has a mechanical engineer for a dad and a chemical engineer for a mom so he never had a chance.
My older son has enjoyed chemistry so far so he's thinking of chemical engineering. Our college consultant just recommended him doing a chemistry / engineering camp type thing over the summer at a college to see how he would like it (and get a little college experience of living in a dorm for a week or two and also an experience to mention in essays / interviews). He also had liked some of his government classes but may be backing off of that because he's not really enjoying AP Gov so far this year.
For what it's worth, my son did an engineering camp at Notre Dame during the summer before his senior year and really liked it. Definitely got the feel for dorm living and navigating the campus.
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