Anonymous wrote:I don't think feeder schools are working well at all this year. My kid goes to one in DC and we know others in NYC and results at the elite universities are way down this year. Tons of deferrals. The pool of schools that the elite colleges are taking kids from is wider each year.

OP, I have a kid in a similar spot and I'm not feeling particularly optimistic. If prestige is important to you I would 100% take the Chicago spot. That is what our college counselor advised as well. my kid is not (she is fine with a school ranked 40).

Disagree with this 100%. OP's kid is clearly a standout (Yale only defers maybe 15% of applicants). If your kid isn't in love with Chicago, don't do it. They WILL have other amazing options. Worst case Cornell, Georgetown, or Duke (hardly a worst case...).

FWIW I have a kid w similar stats who did ED1 Chicago and will go there in the fall. In a best case scenario he would have loved to take a shot at Penn and Yale but he genuinely loved Chicago too. So it made sense to take the bird in the hand, and he's thrilled to be done. But if he hadn't loved Chicago, we wouldn't have done ED for the prestige.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The reality is that even though acceptance rates are much higher ED, the vast majority of acceptances are offered RD, even at Ivies. Mathematically has to be true. Even if a class is filled ED, remember there is 100% yield ED. So to fill the other half of the class, even if RD yield is as high as 50%, a school needs to accept 2x as many applicants in RD vs ED.

Outside of the tippy top (HYPSM), RD yield is usually in 30s to 40s.

The T20 yields are pretty high these days. RD yield at Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Penn is ~50%.

There is waitlist manipulation compared to others. Cornell takes about 10% of
class off waitlist compared to other top privates which you know has significantly higher yield than a regular rd admit. You’d have to investigate this for other ivies too.

For most other top privates that dont take much or any off waitlist, it is about 30-40%.

Compared to others? Chicago is the yield and waitlist manipulation king...they hide their ED and waitlist stats for that reason. Columbia also hides their waitlist stats.

Yes, they are examples too. Cornell is far from the only outlier

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Mine - UVA

Mine too. Now at Oxford for grad work. Worked out amazingly well

There you are! Knew it wouldn't be long.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The reality is that even though acceptance rates are much higher ED, the vast majority of acceptances are offered RD, even at Ivies. Mathematically has to be true. Even if a class is filled ED, remember there is 100% yield ED. So to fill the other half of the class, even if RD yield is as high as 50%, a school needs to accept 2x as many applicants in RD vs ED.

Outside of the tippy top (HYPSM), RD yield is usually in 30s to 40s.

The T20 yields are pretty high these days. RD yield at Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Penn is ~50%.

There is waitlist manipulation compared to others. Cornell takes about 10% of
class off waitlist compared to other top privates which you know has significantly higher yield than a regular rd admit. You’d have to investigate this for other ivies too.

For most other top privates that dont take much or any off waitlist, it is about 30-40%.

Compared to others? Chicago is the yield and waitlist manipulation king...they hide their ED and waitlist stats for that reason. Columbia also hides their waitlist stats.

This was me and I landed at Tufts.

https://irp.cornell.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/CDS_UNL2_2023_2024-v11.pdf

cornell source

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The reality is that even though acceptance rates are much higher ED, the vast majority of acceptances are offered RD, even at Ivies. Mathematically has to be true. Even if a class is filled ED, remember there is 100% yield ED. So to fill the other half of the class, even if RD yield is as high as 50%, a school needs to accept 2x as many applicants in RD vs ED.

Outside of the tippy top (HYPSM), RD yield is usually in 30s to 40s.

The T20 yields are pretty high these days. RD yield at Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Penn is ~50%.

There is waitlist manipulation compared to others. Cornell takes about 10% of
class off waitlist compared to other top privates which you know has significantly higher yield than a regular rd admit. You’d have to investigate this for other ivies too.

For most other top privates that dont take much or any off waitlist, it is about 30-40%.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The reality is that even though acceptance rates are much higher ED, the vast majority of acceptances are offered RD, even at Ivies. Mathematically has to be true. Even if a class is filled ED, remember there is 100% yield ED. So to fill the other half of the class, even if RD yield is as high as 50%, a school needs to accept 2x as many applicants in RD vs ED.

Outside of the tippy top (HYPSM), RD yield is usually in 30s to 40s.

The T20 yields are pretty high these days. RD yield at Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Penn is ~50%.

But if half the class is filled ED, that means twice as many RD acceptances are issued, even with that very high yield.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The reality is that even though acceptance rates are much higher ED, the vast majority of acceptances are offered RD, even at Ivies. Mathematically has to be true. Even if a class is filled ED, remember there is 100% yield ED. So to fill the other half of the class, even if RD yield is as high as 50%, a school needs to accept 2x as many applicants in RD vs ED.

Outside of the tippy top (HYPSM), RD yield is usually in 30s to 40s.

The T20 yields are pretty high these days. RD yield at Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Penn is ~50%.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think feeder schools are working well at all this year. My kid goes to one in DC and we know others in NYC and results at the elite universities are way down this year. Tons of deferrals. The pool of schools that the elite colleges are taking kids from is wider each year.

OP, I have a kid in a similar spot and I'm not feeling particularly optimistic. If prestige is important to you I would 100% take the Chicago spot. That is what our college counselor advised as well. my kid is not (she is fine with a school ranked 40).

I wonder if some of that isn't a reduces preference for legacies.

Yes, and just a reduced preference for elite high schools and social media making the world a smaller place each and every year. It used to be that a smart kid from 80% of the high schools in America would never even think to apply to Yale. I went to one of these schools. I had a top SAT score and top grades at my rural public but had really never heard of Yale and certainly never knew anyone who attended it. As such, I didn't even contemplate applying--it wasn't even on my radar as a possibility.

Now kids from every inch of the US and abroad are watching the acceptance videos on TikTok and think "why not me?"

My kid was deferred from any Ivy from a private that is usually a feeder. this year they took one kid whereas in the past they often took 2+ ED (sometimes up to 4!) Meanwhile, if you look at the 2025 DMV Instagrams (found in another post) they took one kid from almost every school on the list. a far, far wider swath than ever in years past.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid has 1590/4.0 top rigor (school doesn’t weight or have AP classes but took three APs 5/5/4). I think essays show kid’s strengths, ECs are strong but not amazing. White, not legacy or big donor. Deferred at Yale early. College counselor says if kid doesn’t ED2 at UChicago there’s a strong likelihood of ending up in RD only having options at a large public or a school that’s a lot lower ranked than kid’s hoping for. Is college counselor being overly conservative? Kid likes Chicago well enough but would prefer HYSPM.

Yale is possibly the least impossible admit out of HYPSM.
Your test scores and GPA are there but it's almost always a crapshoot for HYPSM without a hook.

Every single top 15 is a crapshoot without a hook. Getting into Harvard for instance does not mean you will clean sweep the other lower ivies or top privates.

Anonymous wrote:I don't think feeder schools are working well at all this year. My kid goes to one in DC and we know others in NYC and results at the elite universities are way down this year. Tons of deferrals. The pool of schools that the elite colleges are taking kids from is wider each year.

OP, I have a kid in a similar spot and I'm not feeling particularly optimistic. If prestige is important to you I would 100% take the Chicago spot. That is what our college counselor advised as well. my kid is not (she is fine with a school ranked 40).

I wonder if some of that isn't a reduces preference for legacies.

Anonymous wrote:My kid has 1590/4.0 top rigor (school doesn’t weight or have AP classes but took three APs 5/5/4). I think essays show kid’s strengths, ECs are strong but not amazing. White, not legacy or big donor. Deferred at Yale early. College counselor says if kid doesn’t ED2 at UChicago there’s a strong likelihood of ending up in RD only having options at a large public or a school that’s a lot lower ranked than kid’s hoping for. Is college counselor being overly conservative? Kid likes Chicago well enough but would prefer HYSPM.

Yale is possibly the least impossible admit out of HYPSM.
Your test scores and GPA are there but it's almost always a crapshoot for HYPSM without a hook.

I don't think feeder schools are working well at all this year. My kid goes to one in DC and we know others in NYC and results at the elite universities are way down this year. Tons of deferrals. The pool of schools that the elite colleges are taking kids from is wider each year.

OP, I have a kid in a similar spot and I'm not feeling particularly optimistic. If prestige is important to you I would 100% take the Chicago spot. That is what our college counselor advised as well. my kid is not (she is fine with a school ranked 40).

Anonymous wrote:The reality is that even though acceptance rates are much higher ED, the vast majority of acceptances are offered RD, even at Ivies. Mathematically has to be true. Even if a class is filled ED, remember there is 100% yield ED. So to fill the other half of the class, even if RD yield is as high as 50%, a school needs to accept 2x as many applicants in RD vs ED.

Outside of the tippy top (HYPSM), RD yield is usually in 30s to 40s.