CHAPEL HILL, NORTH CAROLINA - JUNE 29: People walk on the campus of the University of North Carolina ... [+]
Below is a list of the nearly 30 colleges that fill over half their class through binding Early Decision. This is an application process where the students commit to attend a college if admitted. Given that the average total cost among this group is around $80,000, this is a commitment of over $300,000 in total costs for those admitted without needing financial aid.
Colleges accepting half or more of their class Early Decision.
Let’s dive into the numbers. Almost all of these colleges agree to meet 100% of the financial need as determined by the CSS Profile, have endowments over a billion dollars and are highly selective. The majority are small liberal arts colleges, most give financial aid to nearly half or more of their applicants, and all but one are highly rated by organizations such as Niche and U.S. News & World Report. The operating expenses of these elite universities are huge, especially when factoring in the generous financial aid they provide.
Most of these schools give partial statistics of their financial aid, but what they do tell is instructive. At Hamilton, $55 million is spent on financial aid. At Colby, 95% of families making $200,000 or less qualify for aid and families earning less than $75,000 have a $0 financial contribution. Swarthmore puts no loans in its packages and at Vassar, two-thirds of the student body is on aid. The average financial aid package at Haverford is over $62,000. These numbers are relatively consistent across most of the schools on the list.
Because students who go early decision do not have an opportunity to compare offers of financial aid, students who do not need financial aid are more likely to apply for binding early decisions than those who need substantial aid.
The majority of colleges in America gap students, meaning that they meet only a percentage of the financial need as determined by the FAFSA or CSS Profile. Most of these colleges on this list have agreed to do the opposite, meet all of the students’ financial needs despite the cost. This commitment is based on the ideal of providing access and opportunity to any student who applies. It allows the college to accept and fund under-represented students on their campuses, including students of color, economically disadvantaged students and students from urban and rural areas.
Sometimes it is not always obvious who benefits most from early decision. Even at these mostly smaller schools, coaches are generally given a finite number of recruits who can be locked down through early decision.
The University of Pennsylvania, until this year, had the following on its website: “...an applicant’s affiliation with Penn, either by being a child or grandchild of alumni, is given the most consideration through Early Decision." Jared Mitovich, writing for the UPenn student newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian, noticed that the language had changed to “Legacies who apply to Penn—like all applicants—receive thorough consideration in the application process." “Penn,” Mitovich noted, “no longer implies that legacies should apply through the Early Decision Program to have the best shot at getting in.”
According to Ron Lieber, writing in Your Money in the New York Times, the far majority of these high-priced, liberal arts colleges are “need-aware”. “So they sometimes consider financial need when deciding whether to admit a student,” he writes — “even though they will often meet the full need of every admitted student. It’s like a twisted, real-world SAT logic problem: You can get help if you’re admitted, but you might not be admitted if you need help.”
So let’s talk specifically about the “full-pay” kid, who is rarely spoken about in admissions literature but is of great interest to enrollment managers and college presidents. Some of the statistics on the table give an idea of the advantage of early decision, particularly for full-pay kids. Just being on the list tells you that these schools admit over half their class through early decision. Those on the list with the highest percentage of their class admitted through ED include Tulane (68%), Claremont McKenna (68%), and Middlebury (68%).
Of equal importance is whether the college’s admission rate for ED students is markedly higher. For this we would compare the admissions rate for ED students to that for regular admitted student. This is the ED/RD ratio in the chart above. The colleges that admit ED students at the highest ratio compared to regular admits include Tulane (8.6), Grinnell (6.4), Colby (6.1), Duke (4.7), and Columbia (4.6).
It is useful to view other statistics to determine the advantage of Early Decision. More tuition-driven colleges are likely to need more full-pay students. The Net$/Student column tells the average of the overall cost of the college minus any discount such as financial aid. Those on the top of this list include (in thousands) Pitzer (45), Bates (42), Colgate (41), Bucknell (39) and Tulane (38). Colleges with smaller endowments are also likely to give an advantage to ED students. These include (in billions) Pitzer (.2), Bates (.4) Franklin and Marshall (.4) and Haverford (.6).
Lastly, it is instructive to look at the yield rate or the percentage of accepted students who choose to attend. Those with yields over 60%, such as UPenn and Duke, do not need ED to entice students to enroll. But those with lower yields, such as Lehigh (23%), Denison (24%), and Bucknell (26%) are likely to put a much heavier thumb on the scale for students applying for ED.
It is tough to determine why some colleges may utilize early decision more than others. In certain cases, like Grinnell, Middlebury, Bates, or Colby, they are in relatively remote locations and seem to have highly self-selected student bodies. More liberal colleges, like Pitzer and Haverford, are less likely to have graduates in the financial sector which may contribute to their smaller endowments. Some of the colleges, like those in Eastern Pennsylvania, are recruiting many of the same students. And some of the colleges like Columbia, Swarthmore, and Duke have incredibly low regular decision acceptance rates.
Whatever the reason, it is useful to know which colleges are most likely to give an advantage to students applying for Early Decision, and why.
Corrected, June 19, 2024: An earlier version of this article erroneously reported Pomona College's Early Decision data. Pomona's 49% acceptance rate falls just below the 50% threshold for inclusion in the chart.
