Anonymous
Post 04/25/2025 20:58     Subject: How would you do differently if DC is only interested in SLACs?
DS doing a mix of LAC’s and State Flagships + a few highly rejective for the “what if” factor.

ED’ing at the highly rejective school in a conservatory program that doesn’t have recruited athletes that I can tell (nothing against athletes!). Being male should also be a boost. We’ll see what happens.
Anonymous
Post 04/25/2025 20:53     Subject: How would you do differently if DC is only interested in SLACs?
Even If your kid is focused on SLAC’s early on in the process, it’s still a good idea to include visits to some larger universities and talk to people attending larger universities, so the kid can see and learn about both types of environments. Kids can change their minds by spring of their senior year. I would also try to visit SLAC’s is different parts of the country or on different parts of the political/social spectrum, if possible. Oberlin and Washington and Lee and both great but very different schools.
Anonymous
Post 04/25/2025 20:39     Subject: How would you do differently if DC is only interested in SLACs?
Anonymous wrote:
Math is the basis. For example, Williams is 30-40% athletes in the entire class, not just the ED round. And they are almost all admitted ED. Oh, look, your ED rate has just been cut by more than half! Then Questbridge and like programs -- also ED. If you do not get it by now, go back to 4th grade. Maybe you can apply ED...

Shame that your math stopped at the 4th grade. If you had progressed beyond, you would have learnt to adjust for athletes and discovered that the ED advantage after that versus RD is still significant. Don't bother applying for 5th grade though, ED or RD, nobody wants a boor.
Anonymous
Post 04/25/2025 17:26     Subject: How would you do differently if DC is only interested in SLACs?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Davidson and Haverford both offer solid bumps in ED, even accounting for recruited athletes. DS looked at both and chose Davidson.


Hi we are looking at those exact 2 for our DS. What moved Davidson above Haverford? And did you all do ED?

DS applied ED to Davidson. He visited and really fell in love with the school. He loved Haverford, too, but disliked Philly. He loves Davidson and has never looked back.


Thanks for your thoughts - our son is deciding between playing a sport at a Haverford vs not playing and going to Davidson.
Anonymous
Post 04/25/2025 12:41     Subject: How would you do differently if DC is only interested in SLACs?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:First, LACs are very small. Applying to five LACs is roughly equivalent to applying to one large national university: our school sends about ten students a year to Cornell, but typically only one to Williams. Additionally, the school limits how many applications each student can submit. I am not sure if it's wise to apply to LACs exclusively. Second, most SLACs do not offer an ED advantage—Middlebury is one notable exception. At the moment, Middlebury is not DC's dream school. So there is no ED strategy. I am also wondering if there is any consultant specialized in LACs.


This is just wrong wrong wrong. I don't know of a single SLAC that doesn't have an ED advantage. You can run the data and see.


If not hooked ED at WASP does almost nothing.


Nt sure what your basis is for this. I’ve heard it repeated here but don’t think it’s true. The admissions rate is much higher early, and in anecdotal experience, for example Williams, I have seen unhooked kids get in early. Our school does better in ED than RD.

Math is the basis. For example, Williams is 30-40% athletes in the entire class, not just the ED round. And they are almost all admitted ED. Oh, look, your ED rate has just been cut by more than half! Then Questbridge and like programs -- also ED. If you do not get it by now, go back to 4th grade. Maybe you can apply ED...
Anonymous
Post 04/25/2025 12:34     Subject: How would you do differently if DC is only interested in SLACs?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:First, LACs are very small. Applying to five LACs is roughly equivalent to applying to one large national university: our school sends about ten students a year to Cornell, but typically only one to Williams. Additionally, the school limits how many applications each student can submit. I am not sure if it's wise to apply to LACs exclusively. Second, most SLACs do not offer an ED advantage—Middlebury is one notable exception. At the moment, Middlebury is not DC's dream school. So there is no ED strategy. I am also wondering if there is any consultant specialized in LACs.


I would take the kid to a variety of bigger schools until they realized how much they would be missing by going to an LAC.

--Someone who grew up as a close relative of a Williams College staff member


It’s a trade-off either way.

Anecdotally, the trend I noticed with LAC kids is they liked it more each successive year while the opposite is somewhat more common with universities. Perhaps huge parties and big games are more exciting to 18/19 year olds, while meaningful faculty relationships are more exciting to 21/22 year olds. Also the universities where students move off campus after their first or second year become more isolating than the initial experience.
Anonymous
Post 04/25/2025 12:20     Subject: How would you do differently if DC is only interested in SLACs?
Anonymous wrote:I went to a small liberal arts college. Would never do it again. But my younger son is interested in one and this is fine by me. He is much different than I was at 17. He needs a smaller setting and will be fine with more limited social options. In hindsight I probably should have gone to Boston University.


I agree kids should make the decision.

(I went to a large, highly ranked university and would pick an LAC if doing it all again.)
Anonymous
Post 04/25/2025 12:19     Subject: Re:How would you do differently if DC is only interested in SLACs?
My kid did ED II at Swarthmore and it worked out well for them. They are essentially non binding because they recognize the privilege that is associated with Early Decision and do not want to discourage students from applying ED. That's the route I would suggest.
Anonymous
Post 04/25/2025 11:35     Subject: How would you do differently if DC is only interested in SLACs?
I went to a small liberal arts college. Would never do it again. But my younger son is interested in one and this is fine by me. He is much different than I was at 17. He needs a smaller setting and will be fine with more limited social options. In hindsight I probably should have gone to Boston University.
Anonymous
Post 04/25/2025 11:24     Subject: How would you do differently if DC is only interested in SLACs?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:First, LACs are very small. Applying to five LACs is roughly equivalent to applying to one large national university: our school sends about ten students a year to Cornell, but typically only one to Williams. Additionally, the school limits how many applications each student can submit. I am not sure if it's wise to apply to LACs exclusively. Second, most SLACs do not offer an ED advantage—Middlebury is one notable exception. At the moment, Middlebury is not DC's dream school. So there is no ED strategy. I am also wondering if there is any consultant specialized in LACs.


I would take the kid to a variety of bigger schools until they realized how much they would be missing by going to an LAC.

--Someone who grew up as a close relative of a Williams College staff member

Ignorant comment, particularly for this thread. My kids saw large, medium and smaller colleges and universities. After many tours, they both chose SLACs.
— Duke alum whose kids were admitted to Duke but elected to attend top SLACs
Anonymous
Post 04/25/2025 10:49     Subject: How would you do differently if DC is only interested in SLACs?
Anonymous wrote:First, LACs are very small. Applying to five LACs is roughly equivalent to applying to one large national university: our school sends about ten students a year to Cornell, but typically only one to Williams. Additionally, the school limits how many applications each student can submit. I am not sure if it's wise to apply to LACs exclusively. Second, most SLACs do not offer an ED advantage—Middlebury is one notable exception. At the moment, Middlebury is not DC's dream school. So there is no ED strategy. I am also wondering if there is any consultant specialized in LACs.


I would take the kid to a variety of bigger schools until they realized how much they would be missing by going to an LAC.

--Someone who grew up as a close relative of a Williams College staff member
Anonymous
Post 04/25/2025 05:34     Subject: How would you do differently if DC is only interested in SLACs?
Anonymous wrote:Fit matters a lot more, so visit— and start early to get an informed list. Many SLAC are excellent at a few areas, but not all areas.

Demonstrated interest can matter more, because they know that fit is important.

IDK what your 5 applications for every one state U thing is about. They have a smaller applicant pool and take fewer kids and end up with an admit rate on par with larger privates. Smaller numerator AND denominator. Same admit rate.

ED can matter a lot. Some SLACs take as much as 80% of their class ED. Bates was on DD’s list so it comes to mind. The year before she applied, they took 80% of the class ED and had a 50%+ ED admit rate. And then like 10% RD admit rate (or lower) for the other 20% of the class— which totaled like 80 seats. They are not the only SLAC that does this.

Figure out what a SLAC is and is not. Smaller environment, small classes, campus centric (kids often stay on campus all 4 years), many are rural. May require a more broad based classic liberal arts set of classes no matter what you major in.

Figure out of you are chasing merit/ need merit or not and whether you kid is more comfortable in a midwestern SLAC environment or a NESAC environment.


+1. All of this. We found that by the time the college preferences around cost, location, size, potential fields of study were factored in, to get to a balanced list, they had to expand beyond their preferences. For financial reasons they added two in-state and an OOS public university and they had a private LAC that was further away. If we had been in a financial situation to ED and include NESAC schools, the list would have been different but the process would have been similar.

In the end, they ended up at a school that was a low reach that was 100% match to what they were looking for when they used one of those high school tools to help find colleges. They had strong essays and demonstrated interest along with being academically competitive.

Anonymous
Post 04/25/2025 02:16     Subject: How would you do differently if DC is only interested in SLACs?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Davidson and Haverford both offer solid bumps in ED, even accounting for recruited athletes. DS looked at both and chose Davidson.


Hi we are looking at those exact 2 for our DS. What moved Davidson above Haverford? And did you all do ED?

DS applied ED to Davidson. He visited and really fell in love with the school. He loved Haverford, too, but disliked Philly. He loves Davidson and has never looked back.
Anonymous
Post 04/25/2025 00:06     Subject: How would you do differently if DC is only interested in SLACs?
Anonymous wrote:Davidson and Haverford both offer solid bumps in ED, even accounting for recruited athletes. DS looked at both and chose Davidson.


Hi we are looking at those exact 2 for our DS. What moved Davidson above Haverford? And did you all do ED?
Anonymous
Post 04/24/2025 23:37     Subject: How would you do differently if DC is only interested in SLACs?
Anonymous wrote:Can everyone agree on that there is no ED advantage for Bowdoin? Saw in another thread their ED acceptance rate @ 13%.

Well , that is double the RD acceptance rate of 6%. You are not going to get everyone to agree that double is not an ED advantage.

On a separate note, leaving the ED/RD argument aside, what you should be looking at is also not just acceptance rates in total, but acceptance rates for your kids stats. If they are high stats it could go up to 30%-50% in their quadrant of performance. But even here is is 1 in 3 or 1 in 2. In such a shootout, I think ED helps.