Why would you not apply ED?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone seen good data on the advatage to applying ED? I do not mean the raw admissions rate, which is generally meaningless. It is hard to find any data comparing the likelihood of admission for a given student applying by different routes.
One problem with using the raw admissions data is that it neglects that the sample of ED applicants is very different from RD applicants. Trying to account for this leaves me with rates that are not nealy as different. For example:
Columbia University 2021
Total applications 60551
Total admitted 2358 3.8%
Total attend 1569

RD Applications- 54116
RD admissions- 1706 3.1%

ED Applications- 6435
ED Admissions- 650 10.1%

But, roughly 193 of the admitted students were recruited athletes, nearly all of whom use ED, leaving 457 non-athletes admitted ED.
Then there are legacy admissions who tend to heavily use ED. I cannot find exact data, but inferring from Barnard, roughly 14% of all attending students are legacies, which would amount to at least 220 students of the admitted pool. Even with the conservative estimate that only 50% of these admitted legacies applied ED, that leaves only 347 non-athlete, non-legacies admitted ED for a rate 5.3%. The advantage does not seem to be nearly as great as people make it out to be.

Assuming your numbers are correct, you'd still have a 40% better chance applying ED

Yes, and $0.02 is 100% more than $0.01, but still meaningless.

[Anonymous]

Admissions has proven much harder than expected. My kid is a superstar and has been admitted to 4, deferred at 2 and rejected at 1 - while that may not sound bad, only 1 offered him money and 1 offered honors. In this round I would have expected it from all of them - it was the easy round. We didnt do ED because he hadn't been able to visit and we thought he'd get into many of the schools. Now I am not that sure in regards to his ivy prospects. We would probably just randomly selected an ED from one of the top 5 schools if we had it to do over again. Certainly not sorting through an abundance of full-ride scholarships we would be missing out on. Lucky for him we are in a position to pay.

[Anonymous]

Quite a few posters here say ED is a huge advantage. Is it really? Based on what data? If you believe some admission statistics available in public space ED can improve your chances from maybe 10 to 20 percent. Not that much in my opinion. And half of it is probably legacies, athletes, etc

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Quite a few posters here say ED is a huge advantage. Is it really? Based on what data? If you believe some admission statistics available in public space ED can improve your chances from maybe 10 to 20 percent. Not that much in my opinion. And half of it is probably legacies, athletes, etc

That is double....

[Anonymous]

Obviously depends on the school and you can see the numbers in the common data sets. But if you hear enough presentations, you will come across schools that essentially say "DC won't get in unless they apply ED."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone seen good data on the advatage to applying ED? I do not mean the raw admissions rate, which is generally meaningless. It is hard to find any data comparing the likelihood of admission for a given student applying by different routes.
One problem with using the raw admissions data is that it neglects that the sample of ED applicants is very different from RD applicants. Trying to account for this leaves me with rates that are not nealy as different. For example:
Columbia University 2021
Total applications 60551
Total admitted 2358 3.8%
Total attend 1569

RD Applications- 54116
RD admissions- 1706 3.1%

ED Applications- 6435
ED Admissions- 650 10.1%

But, roughly 193 of the admitted students were recruited athletes, nearly all of whom use ED, leaving 457 non-athletes admitted ED.
Then there are legacy admissions who tend to heavily use ED. I cannot find exact data, but inferring from Barnard, roughly 14% of all attending students are legacies, which would amount to at least 220 students of the admitted pool. Even with the conservative estimate that only 50% of these admitted legacies applied ED, that leaves only 347 non-athlete, non-legacies admitted ED for a rate 5.3%. The advantage does not seem to be nearly as great as people make it out to be.

Assuming your numbers are correct, you'd still have a 40% better chance applying ED

Yes, and $0.02 is 100% more than $0.01, but still meaningless.

And the pools aren't identical--people choose their ED because they have a good shot there so candidates tend stronger. RD includes everybody (including those deferred from ED).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Quite a few posters here say ED is a huge advantage. Is it really? Based on what data? If you believe some admission statistics available in public space ED can improve your chances from maybe 10 to 20 percent. Not that much in my opinion. And half of it is probably legacies, athletes, etc

Statistical analyses from a few years ago have shown on average it confers a 1-2% advantage, but it can be higher at particular schools. People think that they can extrapolate from admissions rates ED vs RD in a straightforward way but it's way more complicated than that because of pool differences and the fact that every person accepted in ED will attend, but they have to assume something like 1/10 (or whatever their yield rate) of those accepted RD will attend. If you control for all the relevant factors, ED seems to confer a slight but consistent advantage. It's advantage may be in flux though as more people are opting to do it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Obviously depends on the school and you can see the numbers in the common data sets. But if you hear enough presentations, you will come across schools that essentially say "DC won't get in unless they apply ED."

No, CDS only gives ED app and admit #'s. Not stats and does not break out athletes, legacy etc. The data does not allow comparison.

[Anonymous]

If a kid can improve their grades senior year (such as by taking a have AP load), I think that kid can benefit by waiting for RD if applying to a college that admits primarily based on numbers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Obviously depends on the school and you can see the numbers in the common data sets. But if you hear enough presentations, you will come across schools that essentially say "DC won't get in unless they apply ED."

No, CDS only gives ED app and admit #'s. Not stats and does not break out athletes, legacy etc. The data does not allow comparison.

Agreed it does not break it down but it is useful to see what percentage of the class is admitted ED. And if one were really interested, it would be possible to take a rough cut at the athlete admits. Agree you could never get precision this way. But when a school is admitting up to half its class or more ED, that tells you something.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone seen good data on the advatage to applying ED? I do not mean the raw admissions rate, which is generally meaningless. It is hard to find any data comparing the likelihood of admission for a given student applying by different routes.
One problem with using the raw admissions data is that it neglects that the sample of ED applicants is very different from RD applicants. Trying to account for this leaves me with rates that are not nealy as different. For example:
Columbia University 2021
Total applications 60551
Total admitted 2358 3.8%
Total attend 1569

RD Applications- 54116
RD admissions- 1706 3.1%

ED Applications- 6435
ED Admissions- 650 10.1%

But, roughly 193 of the admitted students were recruited athletes, nearly all of whom use ED, leaving 457 non-athletes admitted ED.
Then there are legacy admissions who tend to heavily use ED. I cannot find exact data, but inferring from Barnard, roughly 14% of all attending students are legacies, which would amount to at least 220 students of the admitted pool. Even with the conservative estimate that only 50% of these admitted legacies applied ED, that leaves only 347 non-athlete, non-legacies admitted ED for a rate 5.3%. The advantage does not seem to be nearly as great as people make it out to be.

Assuming your numbers are correct, you'd still have a 40% better chance applying ED

Yes, and $0.02 is 100% more than $0.01, but still meaningless.

And the pools aren't identical--people choose their ED because they have a good shot there so candidates tend stronger. RD includes everybody (including those deferred from ED).

Agree with all of this. And you forgot URMs and those applying via Questbridge. I actually wonder if it’s harder for an unconnected kid without any hooks to get in ED.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Obviously depends on the school and you can see the numbers in the common data sets. But if you hear enough presentations, you will come across schools that essentially say "DC won't get in unless they apply ED."

No, CDS only gives ED app and admit #'s. Not stats and does not break out athletes, legacy etc. The data does not allow comparison.

Agreed it does not break it down but it is useful to see what percentage of the class is admitted ED. And if one were really interested, it would be possible to take a rough cut at the athlete admits. Agree you could never get precision this way. But when a school is admitting up to half its class or more ED, that tells you something.

But not as much as you think--what you really need to do is do a comparison of the stats of the people admitted in both ED and RD. If there's a big difference there, that tells you an advantage. Because for that remaining 50% they need to accept a lot more than are slots left because everybody who is accepted doesn't choose the school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Obviously depends on the school and you can see the numbers in the common data sets. But if you hear enough presentations, you will come across schools that essentially say "DC won't get in unless they apply ED."

No, CDS only gives ED app and admit #'s. Not stats and does not break out athletes, legacy etc. The data does not allow comparison.

Agreed it does not break it down but it is useful to see what percentage of the class is admitted ED. And if one were really interested, it would be possible to take a rough cut at the athlete admits. Agree you could never get precision this way. But when a school is admitting up to half its class or more ED, that tells you something.

Sometime all it tells you is that it is a very small school with lots of varsity teams. This is why a school like Williams has such a large percentage of their class admitted via ED.

[Anonymous]

OK, here's another one with more data publicly available:
Dartmouth 2021

Total applicants- 28357
Total admits- 1749 6.1%

RD Apps- 25693
RD admits- 1183 4.6%

ED Apps- 2664
ED Admits- 566 21.2%

Athletes- 225
15% of ED admits were legacy (85)
Non-=legacy, non athletes admitted via ED- 256 9.6%

Might be a slight advantage, or it might be stronger apps. With numbers this close it is really hard to say.

[Anonymous]

ED 1 results come back in the fall and you're done. No chance to consider other options while all the other kids are weighing their options. Your child is still developing as a person and grows a lot in their senior year. For this reason your child must be absolutely sure this school is the TOP choice. There is no going back once you are in. That kind of binding decision should not be made lightly. ED is a nice option but to answer your question it is certainly not for everyone. Kids should be in the driver seat about whether they do ED because they have to live with outcome.