College Admission's Best Kept Secret

Every year thousands of parents pay up to $25,000 and more to talk to “top” private college admission counselors.

And of all the services and advice counselors provide, the most valuable is the one we'll be discussing here, so get ready to save a cool twenty-five grand.

The advice? Apply early decision.

Doing so can often double—even triple—your child's chances of getting into a top college.

It is the single, most effective admissions strategy there is for most students—and the most under utilized.

Every sign suggests that this year’s college admission sweepstakes is going to be crazier than ever; and last year’s numbers were positively insane.  Six of the eight Ivy League schools had admission rates under 10%, as did Stanford, MIT, and a handful of very specialized schools.  But the truly scary part is that several dozen colleges had regular admission rates under 20%.

But take note of the intentionally placed adjective: “regular.”  Because the best-kept secret in college admissions is the dramatic difference in acceptance rates between early decision programs and regular programs.

A bit of nomenclature is in order.  Many – but not all – top colleges offer high school seniors two application deadlines:  a regular deadline (typically January 1^st.) And early decision, which often has a November 1 deadline.  (To complicate matters, some schools offer two rounds of early decision: what is known as EDI and EDII.)

High school seniors can only apply to one college early decision.  And if admitted, they must attend.  There is a contractual obligation that the student, the parent and the high school guidance counselor are bound to.  Only in the most dire of circumstances are early decision admittees relived of their commitment.  And it is never because they have gotten into a “better” school.

Early decision is different from early action.  A very small number of highly selective colleges offer an “early action” option: apply early in the senior year; we’ll notify you early; but it is not binding.  And you can apply to multiple schools early-action and regular-decision simultaneously.   Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford offer early action but not early decision.

So what’s the benefit of apply early?  (Besides getting the admission process over with early and not prolonging the wait for a decision?)

Your odds of getting accepted are far higher under early admission programs than under regular admission.  How much better?

Astonishingly better!

A couple of examples:  Brown reported an overall acceptance rate of 8.7% last year.  But that figure melds the two different applicant pools.  For kids applying under the regular deadline, their odds were actually worse than the 8.7% overall figure.  Only  about 7.5% of those kids got the nod.  But almost 20% of kids who applied early decision got a fat envelope.

Other Ivies were similar: Penn accepted just 11% of kids who applied under the regular deadline, but more than 34% of kids who applied early.  Cornell was even more dramatic: 16% of kids who applied under the regular deadline were admitted, but fully 36% of early decision kids got good news.

This difference was just as pronounced at highly selective colleges not in the over-the-top Ivy League:  Amherst took just 12% of regular applicants but 34% of kids applying ED.  Bucknell accepted 27% of kids in the regular pool, but 62% of early decision applicants.  And Midwest powerhouse Northwestern took just 26% of the regular pool but 39% of the early group.

forbes chart 1

Why the disparity in admission figures?  Are kids who apply early have significantly better qualifications than students who apply just a few weeks later?

Hardly.  In fact, it is often just the opposite.  Certain segments of the early decision applicant pool often have lower grade-point averages and SAT scores.  The most notable of those segments is college athletes.   Because the Ivy League and Division III schools are prohibited from offering athletic scholarships, the tactic favored by coaches at these schools is to build their teams by “encouraging” student-athletes to apply early decision.  Coaches can’t guarantee admission – that is the exclusive province of admission offices – but they typically have significant clout.

For the rest of the kids who apply early, the odds are noticeably better as well.  Colleges rarely break out the mean SAT scores of kids admitted early compared to kids accepted during the regular round.  But the observations of people like Mike Muska, my co-author of Getting In! and the long-time Dean of College Relations at Brooklyn’s Poly Prep are instructive.  “The early decision round is more forgiving than the regular round.  They won’t admit a candidate who is not in the ballpark.  But they will enlarge the sweet-spot.  Is it a 20% variability?  Absolutely.  30%?  Maybe.”

Why do colleges offer early decision programs?  Competition.  Every college is in competition with schools both above them and below in the rankings pecking order.  And every year they have to get “attractive” kids to apply – and then the harder part – get them to actually show up in September.  The percentage of students who choose to matriculate at a particular school – compared to the number who were accepted by that school – is known as yield.  The only way a college can guarantee that an admitted kid will actually matriculate is to have that early decision binding commitment.

The following chart shows the percentage of each class that was filled in 2010 by early decision kids:

forbes chart 2

Every college uses historical data and new factors to calculate its expected yield: did the school play in the Final Four?  Has a particular celebrity enrolled?  Was the new student center finally completed?  But it is still guesswork.  Early decision acceptances reduce that uncertainty.

Surprisingly, most kids don’t take advantage of the early decision option.  Last year, more than 245,000 applications were received by the eight Ivy League colleges.  But only 21,000 of those applications were under the early decision or early action umbrella.  Even smaller percentages of kids took advantage of early decision programs at Amherst, Duke, and Middlebury.

So why don’t more kids take advantage of an option that both improves their odds significantly and reduces stress?  Three reasons are commonly heard.

First, kids just don’t get their act together soon enough.  Way too many families begin the college admission process in earnest at the start of senior year.  For most families, that is too late to do any real investigation of individual colleges – and colleges are very different  -- and pull together the myriad pieces needed for the application.

Second, because of this late start, kids are hesitant to commit to a single school.  They are afraid they will “make a mistake; choose the wrong” school.”

And third, parents are concerned that they will receive a smaller – and inadequate – financial aid package.  Because the school knows that the family is locked into that place if the child is accepted, the school can low-ball the financial aid package that accompanies the acceptance letter.

Only one of these reasons is legitimate: kids start too late.

The most important piece of advice good college counselors – both school-based and private counselors -- give families is to start the admissions process early.  At most top private schools, the college selection process gears up in earnest early in the junior year.  That gives families enough time to visit colleges, do substantive research about various places, and engage in a thoughtful sorting process.

By contrast, most public schools don’t start the process with their kids until the beginning of senior year.  Moreover, many public school districts have cut back on the number of college counselors.  The result is a workload of 300 or more kids per counselor; far too many to be able to give kids adequate individual attention.

What is a family to do?  Don’t panic and don’t write off the early decision option.

Kids –preferably with a parent – should visit the three or four colleges they are most interested in as soon as possible.  Yes it can be costly; and no it will not be leisurely.  But setting foot on a campus is the single best way to know if a school is a good fit.

Second, making a wrong college choice is not the end of the world.  Very often kids visit colleges, do lots of research, and take their time to make an informed choice about which college to attend.  And then, after a semester or less, figure out the place is wrong for them.

The same can be true when operating on an accelerated early decision timetable.  But that should not be a reason to forgo the admission edge.

Third, schools are not inclined to squeeze families who have shown them loyalty by applying early.  Financial aid decisions are based on need, and the award package from one school shouldn’t be too much different from another school – at least not for early decision kids.  In the regular admissions pool however, financial aid offers can be affected as the total pool of money available gets depleted.

Finally, one of the little known secrets about financial aid is that the package offered to families is not engraved in stone.  Financial aid officers can exercise what is known as professional judgment.  They have some discretion in how much they award and how they craft financial aid packages.  So, fear of a reduced financial aid package shouldn’t be a deterrent to applying early decision.

The bottom line?  Kids who want to get into a selective or highly selective college should do everything possible to take advantage of the early decision option.

The Top 20 Colleges Which Love Early Decision Applicants

Shameless self-promotion: check out the completely revised edition of my best-selling Getting In!