Parents of Juniors: learn from us and ED if able

[Anonymous]

Any tips on a situation where your #1 choice doesn’t offer early decision? They only offer early action.

[Anonymous]

Next tier down is probably not the disaster you are portraying.

The alternative could mean your kid is accepted at school that they are not at all sure they want to attend. Or miss out on a generous, and prestigious merit award. You are really overvaluing rank.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Any tips on a situation where your #1 choice doesn’t offer early decision? They only offer early action.

DS's top choice has only RD, no ED or even EA. He chose to ED to another school (higher ranked BTW) that was a reach or hard target. He got in to his ED school. We'll never know if he would have gotten into that top choice school, but for him anyway, it seemed like a good choice because he only slightly preferred his top choice. That tiny bump of preference wasn't worth giving up his ED card altogether. He was less concerend about that and more concerned that he could easily get rejected from both of these schools if he didn't ED to his second choice. He's elated with his choice and outcome now, wears his tshirt all the time.

I think his decision was influenced by watching his best friend a year ahead of him get locked out of everywhere except his safeties last year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree that ED is worth a shot, if merit aid isn't a deciding factor.

However, it is far from a sure thing. If you pull recruited athletes and legacies out of the ED numbers, acceptance rates are better than RD, but not nearly as good as the raw numbers look.

One interesting example was that Vanderbilt accidentally published their ED1 numbers separately from ED2 (they usually combine them), and, if you did the math with the final numbers, you could see that the ED2 acceptance rate wasn't much, if any, better than RD.

Recruited athletes aren’t considered ED. They are in their own category.

Recruitment itself is a separate process, but at every school I’m aware of, recruited athletes apply ED.

https://www.collegezoom.com/early/early-decision-early-action/

Which matters A LOT at SLACS where varsity athletes make up 25-30% of the student body. But at mid sized schools like Vanderbilt and BC (just to name 2 that are mentioned above), varsity athletes make up, what, 6-7% of students. Even if the entire population of athletes are admitted early, it wouldn’t account for their disparate in ED vs RD acceptance rates.

But the question is not what % of the overall student body are athletes, it's what % of the ED pool are athletes? It doesn't make up for the disparate rates completely (and no one is claiming that). However, it does mean the disparate rates aren't as good as they may look.

Because Vandy released the EDI numbers separately, it's an interesting case study.

The overall Vandy ED acceptance rate was 17.6%
For RD, the acceptance rate was 4.7% (1,964 accepted out of 41,610 applicants)

That's a big difference.

However:

For EDI, Vandy had 2,700 applications and accepted 650 for a 24.1% admissions rate.
For ED2, Vandy accepted 250 students for a 10.3% acceptance rate

There's a bigger difference between the EDI and EDII admissions rate than there is between the overall ED and RD rates.

Vandy has about 400 varsity athletes in all sports. Assume they admit 100 a year (although that's probably low, since some athletes drop out of their sports as time goes on).
According to Vandy, the ED ##s also include Questbridge students, and it looks like there were 30 this year.
Vandy also admits about 55 students a year to the Blair Music school, which is by audition.

So, if you remove 185 students from the numbers for EDI, you have 2,515 students applying and 465 accepted. For those students, the acceptance rate was 18.5%.

That doesn't account for legacies. The best data I can find is that about 15% of Vanderbilt students are legacies. Vanderbilt admitted 2,865 students for the class of 2026, and 15% of that number would be 429. Of course, not every admitted legacy will attend, so the actual legacy admitted number would be higher. But how many apply ED? Who knows? However, if only half of the number of legacies that attend were accepted ED, that would make the non-hooked ED1 number 2300 applying and 250 accepted, which is 10.8%, which is almost exactly the ED2 acceptance rate. And that doesn't account for major donors, or any of the other "hooks" that are out there.

The ED rate is still better than RD, but not as much better as it looks, and for all we know, the ED pool may be better qualified, as a group, than the RD pool (and that would be my guess). So, it's worth a shot, but it's not a magic bullet if you're not "hooked."

Thankyou! Admissions to top schools will always be difficult especially for white/ Asian students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree that ED is worth a shot, if merit aid isn't a deciding factor.

However, it is far from a sure thing. If you pull recruited athletes and legacies out of the ED numbers, acceptance rates are better than RD, but not nearly as good as the raw numbers look.

One interesting example was that Vanderbilt accidentally published their ED1 numbers separately from ED2 (they usually combine them), and, if you did the math with the final numbers, you could see that the ED2 acceptance rate wasn't much, if any, better than RD.

Recruited athletes aren’t considered ED. They are in their own category.

Recruitment itself is a separate process, but at every school I’m aware of, recruited athletes apply ED.

https://www.collegezoom.com/early/early-decision-early-action/

Which matters A LOT at SLACS where varsity athletes make up 25-30% of the student body. But at mid sized schools like Vanderbilt and BC (just to name 2 that are mentioned above), varsity athletes make up, what, 6-7% of students. Even if the entire population of athletes are admitted early, it wouldn’t account for their disparate in ED vs RD acceptance rates.

But the question is not what % of the overall student body are athletes, it's what % of the ED pool are athletes? It doesn't make up for the disparate rates completely (and no one is claiming that). However, it does mean the disparate rates aren't as good as they may look.

Because Vandy released the EDI numbers separately, it's an interesting case study.

The overall Vandy ED acceptance rate was 17.6%
For RD, the acceptance rate was 4.7% (1,964 accepted out of 41,610 applicants)

That's a big difference.

However:

For EDI, Vandy had 2,700 applications and accepted 650 for a 24.1% admissions rate.
For ED2, Vandy accepted 250 students for a 10.3% acceptance rate

There's a bigger difference between the EDI and EDII admissions rate than there is between the overall ED and RD rates.

Vandy has about 400 varsity athletes in all sports. Assume they admit 100 a year (although that's probably low, since some athletes drop out of their sports as time goes on).
According to Vandy, the ED ##s also include Questbridge students, and it looks like there were 30 this year.
Vandy also admits about 55 students a year to the Blair Music school, which is by audition.

So, if you remove 185 students from the numbers for EDI, you have 2,515 students applying and 465 accepted. For those students, the acceptance rate was 18.5%.

That doesn't account for legacies. The best data I can find is that about 15% of Vanderbilt students are legacies. Vanderbilt admitted 2,865 students for the class of 2026, and 15% of that number would be 429. Of course, not every admitted legacy will attend, so the actual legacy admitted number would be higher. But how many apply ED? Who knows? However, if only half of the number of legacies that attend were accepted ED, that would make the non-hooked ED1 number 2300 applying and 250 accepted, which is 10.8%, which is almost exactly the ED2 acceptance rate. And that doesn't account for major donors, or any of the other "hooks" that are out there.

The ED rate is still better than RD, but not as much better as it looks, and for all we know, the ED pool may be better qualified, as a group, than the RD pool (and that would be my guess). So, it's worth a shot, but it's not a magic bullet if you're not "hooked."

Thankyou! Admissions to top schools will always be difficult especially for white/ Asian students.

Yes. None of that takes into account First Gen or URM “hooks.”