With the exception of Dartmouth, which saw a decrease in its applications of ~12.5% (which we hypothesize is due to the relatively recent bad press that the school received about its Greek life), and Cornell, who has not reported final numbers, yet, the balance of the Ivy League schools saw an increase in early applications over last year.  Harvard, for example, reported a whopping 15% more applications for the Class of 2017 than for the Class of 2016.  Other highly selective schools such as MIT (up 9%) and Northwestern (up 7%) also saw a significant increase in their early application numbers year over year.

While many schools haven’t reported their early results, here is a chart that we pulled together to give you a flavor of what’s been happening out there.  It details selected highly competitive schools and their early admissions acceptance rates.  If you follow overall admissions rates at these types of schools, you’ll see that the Early Admit Rates noted below are significantly higher than each school’s historic overall admit rates.

In doing my research, I also noted that a number of the schools deferred a significant portion of their early applicants to the Regular Decision pool.  Yale, for example, deferred over 55% of its early applicants, Brown seems to have deferred around 70% and Dartmouth 35%.  Anecdotally, it seems that MIT has also deferred a tremendous number of its applicants, but we don’t have any firm numbers.
These deferral numbers indicate that the schools are getting early applications from large numbers of qualified candidates, and the schools are not prepared to say “no” until they see what the Regular Decision pool brings.  Still, the schools are also not prepared to say “yes” to these applicants, either, and historically, the number of deferred applicants who ultimately get admitted are few.
The schools that offer an Early Decision plan seem to be filling an unbelievable 40%+ of their freshman class from their early applications.  This means that students who apply Regular Decision to these very selective schools will have an even tougher go of it simply because there are fewer slots to fill.  A while ago, I wrote a blog post trying to answer the question:  Is it easier to get in if you apply early?  Many of the points in that post are relevant here.  Essentially, early applicants most definitely benefit from indicating that a school is their top pick and applying early, but only if the candidate meets the admissions standards of the school in the first place.
The sad part about this current situation is that because qualified students appear to have an advantage if they apply early to these highly competitive institutions, candidates are using early application plans as a strategy to gain admission, even if they are not sure that a given school is actually where they want or ought to go.  Especially if they apply as part of a binding ED program, then whether they are sure or not, if they get in, that’s where they will have to go.  These dynamics are forcing students to make their decisions about college several months earlier in their high schools careers when, perhaps, they haven’t had time to fully explore their options and figure out what is best for them.
The lesson is that if students believe that they might be interested in applying to highly selective schools, they should start their research early.  Applying early can be advantageous, but don’t apply early to a school simply because it is a name brand.  In doing so, other options might be shut out that would ultimately be more suitable.
Andrea Aronson
College Admissions Consultant
Westfield, NJ

The post Early Application Results for Selective Schools first appeared on Great College Advice.

Mark Montgomery
Educational Consultant

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TRANSCRIPT:

Okay, I’m on a new campus and I want to just play a little game. I want you to take a look with me here and I’m going to walk around the campus, I’m going to show you different aspects of the campus and I want you to tell me where we are. What state are we in? So as we are looking around, we can look at the architecture. Notice the red brick, sort of Neo Georgian architecture with the rectangular windows and the columns in the Doric style.

Hmm, I wonder where we are. And here we have some of the practice fields and a really nice athletic facility and business center and beyond that is the track and some more playing fields. Hmm, nice big trees too. I wonder where we are. Hmm, where are we?

Look, a stately old building, built in the last century and behind it, a beautiful chapel on a hill; a beautiful location. I wonder where we could be. And on every campus we always find the ugly building. This is the ugly building on this campus. Hmm, so that doesn’t really tell us much, if every campus has an ugly building. I wonder which campus we are on now.

And over here we have the little New England like Protestant Chapel, red brick and white steeple, and then over here we have the grand monumental church, not exactly a cathedral, still probably called a chapel. Where are we?
Behind me we have the library; it’s a little more modern than most. But notice that at least architecturally it’s trying to blend in with the surroundings of its other buildings on this nice pedestrian mall. Again, the red brick buildings, the white trim, the Doric columns. Wow, it’s just so New England.

So, yes, here we are at Cornell; not Cornell University however, Cornell College . Not in Ithaca, New York, but in Mount Vernon, Iowa. You know, it’s so amazing. Sometimes I will recommend colleges to students and say, “It’s in Iowa, it’s in Wisconsin, it’s in Michigan,” and students would look at me like, what planet are you from? I have in my mind the Amherst, the Harvard Yards, the Williams of the world. I want to go to school in Massachusetts, New England or Upstate New York.

Well, it really amounts to is geographical chauvinism in many ways because here at Cornell College you have all the same kinds of feel that you would have at a New England College, right here in Iowa. The beautiful trees, the fantastic wonderfully harmonious architecture and built on a hill and you call it Little College Town and first class education.

So before you make snap judgments about whether Iowa or Michigan or Indiana or Ohio is right for you, ask yourself whether you’re really being fair. Ask yourself whether you’ve been there. Ask yourself what you’re looking for in a college. If you’re looking for the bucolic sylvan environment of a Cornell College, you might just find it in a place you least expect.

The post Ivy Covered Campus – Can You Guess Where We Are? first appeared on Great College Advice.