Ivy League Admission
The Ivy Coach College Admissions Blog

We’re often asked around this time every year why our students who were admitted via Early Decision aren’t invited to their school’s admitted students weekend. After all, they committed to attend their future alma mater over every other college. They sent in applications back in the fall, so sure that this was the college for them. So why don’t they get invites to admitted students weekend? That’s an easy one! Because the college doesn’t have to convince them to matriculate! They only have to convince Regular Decision admits to attend.

Yale, like many highly selective colleges, hosts students admitted via Regular Decision every spring (photo from the "Yale Daily News").

The point of admitted students weekend is for the college to boost their yield. They roll out the red carpet. They assign prospective students a current student who will house them. They serve prospectives lobster dinners and sing and dance. This weekend is, in no uncertain terms, the best marketing tool the college has — its own students. No flyer will have the energy of current students. No email will make you feel like this is the college that you must attend over all others.

So if you’re a student (like many of ours) who was admitted early and didn’t get the invite to admitted students weekend, don’t worry too much. Maybe you can ask the admissions office if you can attend. The answer is likely no, though, as they quite often simply don’t have the room to put you up with all of the other prospective students on campus. During this weekend, you’re just not the priority. They already have a binding commitment from you! One last thing — don’t forget to be on your best behavior during this weekend if you do end up going as the last thing you want to happen is get your admission rescinded. It happens each and every year.

Check out our Ivy League Admissions Statistics.

If you received an Early Decision deferral this fall, that doesn’t mean you have no chance of getting into the university to which you applied Early during the Regular Decision round. A deferral is different from being denied (duh!). But that also doesn’t mean that you have a good shot at getting in during the Regular Decision round. And it’s important to know this. At most highly selective colleges, the chance that an applicant who was deferred through Early Decision gains admission during Regular Decision is approximately 10%. 1 in 10 isn’t exactly the best odds.

If you are a deferred Early Decision applicant, there are things you can do in an effort to gain admission. But don't put all of your eggs in one basket because the data is against you.

So often, we hear from parents and students how badly they still want to get into the school to which they applied Early Decision. And it makes logical sense. Students applied Early to these schools for a reason. They made a singular commitment to these schools. They said to the schools that they want them, that they’re willing to forego applying to all other schools through Early Decision in the hope of gaining admission to their top choice. And colleges appreciate that.

But it doesn’t mean you should be putting “all your eggs in one basket” during Regular Decision. You’ve got to apply to lots of other colleges and not pin all of your hopes and dreams on getting into the school that deferred you. You’ve got to move on and create new hopes and dreams. There’s another school out there for you, we promise.

By all means, students should continue to try to gain admission to the college that deferred them. They should write a letter of enthusiasm. They should ask their guidance counselor to reach out to the college to see if there’s anything else they can do. They should update the college on new notable (with an emphasis on the notable) accomplishments. But, all the while, students must let other colleges know that they’re all the students’ first choice as well. Yes, you read that right.

Each and every year, students post videos on YouTube in the hope that it’ll help their case for admission to the college(s) of their dreams. Sometimes, the videos get quite a bit of traction online, though it’s the exception to the rule when such a video leads an admissions committee to change a denial into an admission. Remember Grace Oberhofer? She didn’t end up getting into Harvard, in spite of all of the hits to her YouTube video in which she sings to implore Harvard admissions officers to admit her.

YouTube music videos aren't always the best supplemental material in college admissions. Be mindful of what is included in these videos should you choose to post one!

This year, Yale applicant Jackie Milestone has given the YouTube music video a try as she tries to turn her Early Decision deferral into a Regular Decision greenlight. The daughter of an alumnus, Jackie has dreamed of attending Yale since childhood. In the video, she wears about a dozen Yale t-shirts and amusingly strips each one off (except the last). Her singing and lyrics are actually quite good (better than Grace’s for sure) and she’s definitely got some spunk to her. In a funny moment of the video, she called a local pizza place in New Haven to see if they’d deliver to her Philadelphia home. They wouldn’t.

Will this video that has attracted almost 12,000 hits already lead Yale admissions officers to admit her? Probably not. The video shows that she’s wealthy. Her bed is a king! And it’s a water bed. Her room is very nice as is the rest of her house. If anything, the video shows that she’s wealthy and privileged. A Yale admissions officer isn’t going to go to advocate for someone who sleeps in a nicer bed than he or she does. The fact is that many applicants do.  Take this lesson from Jackie Milestone. Also, one should definitely be proactive if deferred. And be strategic. Maybe she could have left out the fancy bedroom with the huge bed in the video after all!

If you applied to a college via Early Decision and you were deferred but still seek to gain admission, make sure you do something about it.  In college admissions you’ve got to be proactive. Does that mean calling admissions officers every hour on the hour? No. That would be harassment. Does that mean sending freshly baked pies to the office of admissions? No, that’s just plain weird. If you are one of the deferred applicants, the trick is to be proactive in a smart, tactical way.

Deferred applicants must be proactive if they hope to beat the odds and get in during Regular Decision.

If you become an Intel Science Talent Search semi-finalist, that is information that you should absolutely share with admissions officers at the college that deferred you. That’s the kind of information that can absolutely turn a deferral into an acceptance. If you publish a book that makes the “New York Times Bestseller List,” you should definitely share that important information with admissions! By the way, if you happen to write a book that lands on the “Bestseller List,” there’s a very good chance you’ll have an offer of admission in your inbox later that day. That’s the kind of tidbit that admissions offices can brag about. We’ve got a “New York Times” bestselling writer in our incoming class! We can hear it now!

In addition to updating the admissions office at the college that deferred you with your significant accomplishments (note: this does not include updating them on every little accomplishment in your day to day life — don’t do that as it’ll only hurt you!), you should write what we call a “letter of enthusiasm.” In a creative way, write to your regional admissions officer and let them know how much you still want to go to the school that you committed early to and write why you would be an integral component of the incoming class. This letter can go a long way! And so can a call from your guidance counselor so speak to your guidance counselor. Cultivate a great relationship with him or her so that your guidance counselor will go to bat for you!

Check out our newsletter on Deferred Applicants or this blog on Advice for Deferred Applicants.

There’s an article in “The New York Times” today about applying Early to college, particularly about the rise in Early Decision and Early Action applications at prestigious colleges across the nation. In the piece written by Richard Perez-Pena and Jenny Anderson, it’s stated that, over the years, the Early applicant pool has become more and more diverse. While if you’re a regular reader of our blog, you know that the applicant pool that applies through Early Decision or Early Action programs is markedly less diverse than the Regular Decision pool, it’s still interesting to note that the Early pool’s diversity is on the rise.

The Early Decision and Early Action applicant pool is getting more diverse at prestigious universities like Duke.

One trend in the Early Decision / Early Action pool is that more and more students are applying from around the country and around the world (especially from China) with the percentage of students applying from the U.S.’s East Coast decreasing. According to “The New York Times,” “Duke, for example, received 400 early applications this year from California or overseas; in 2005, it was fewer than 100. Haverford College, outside Philadelphia, saw early applications from abroad double this year from last. And at the University of Chicago, there were double-digit rises in the percentage of early applications from black and Hispanic students.”

In the article in “The New York Times,” many parents of Manhattan private schoolers lament the tough odds their children now face as prestigious colleges seek to diversify the Early applicant pool (in addition to the Regular applicant pool). Over the years, in line with attempts to diversify the Early pool, the percentage of students admitted Early to prestigious colleges from private high schools has decreased as the percentage of students admitted from public schools has risen.

Want to read more about applying Early to college? Check out the article in “The New York Times” on the subject. And check out our blog on the Harvard and Princeton Early Admissions Spin.

Let’s share with you some Stanford Early Action stats! 755 students earned admission to Stanford University this fall via the school’s Early Action policy. Stanford’s admission rate for this Early cycle thus stood at 12.8%. How does this compare to last year’s Early Action stats at The Farm? The numbers aren’t quite as strong. So much for the “most competitive class ever!” Last year, Stanford received 5,929 applications. This year, Stanford only received 5,880 applications. By our complex calculations, that means that 129 fewer students applied Early Action to Stanford this year!

Fewer students applied to Stanford University via Early Action this fall. But more students applied to Stanford through Early Action than they did to Harvard or Princeton.

According to a statement by longtime Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Richard Shaw as quoted in the “Stanford Daily,” “We continue to attract an exceptional number of highly competitive candidates and we are honored by the interest they have shown in Stanford.” And how does Stanford’s Early Action stats compare to their peer institutions like Harvard University and Princeton University, two schools that restored their restrictive Early Action programs this year? Well, Harvard received 4,245 applications this fall while Princeton received 3,547 applications. So Stanford received more applications than both Harvard and Princeton.

Does Stanford receiving more applications through their Early Action program than Harvard and Princeton surprise you? Does it surprise you that Stanford received fewer applications this year? Or what about Yale’s applicant pool falling dramatically this year…likely a result of Harvard and Princeton restoring their Early Action programs? Let us know your thoughts by posting below!

Here’s some advice for deferred students: write a letter of enthusiasm to the school that you applied Early to that didn’t give you an offer of admission. Why write a letter of enthusiasm? Because you want to show that school that you still love them, that they remain your first choice even as you now apply to other universities. We often hear from parents that their child’s teachers will be sending in additional letters of recommendation, that the child’s guidance counselor is going to put in a call to an admissions officer. And that’s all great but, ultimately, colleges want to hear from the students themselves. This is where a letter of enthusiasm comes in.

Deferred students should write letters of enthusiasm to the colleges that didn't give them offers of admission.

In your letter of enthusiasm, you should express what you can add to the university to which you applied. Express what you love about the school and why you’d be a perfect fit for the college. Share what you’ve done since you applied if you’ve done something significant. Write a compelling letter, one that appeals to the human beings reading your letter. Don’t beg. Don’t say how they made a mistake (boy, would that be a mistake!). Don’t tell them they’ll regret it. That’s one way not to ever get in (and yet you’d be surprised how many students do this every year).

But here’s some additional advice for deferred students: don’t get your hopes up! The fact of the matter remains that very few deferred students to highly competitive colleges end up gaining admission in the Regular Decision round. In the Ivy League, the percentage of deferred students who gain admission in the Regular round typically stands at around 10%. But sometimes it’s quite a bit lower!

So if you thought your admissions chances were tough in the Early round, they’re only tougher unfortunately in the Regular round. You’re writing the letter of enthusiasm because you obviously loved the school enough to apply there Early so you might as well keep at it. Keep showing them how you love them. But your focus now should primarily be on the schools to which you’re applying in the Regular Decision round. While the truth may hurt, it’s still the truth.

Check out some of the Early Decision statistics at highly selective colleges around the nation.

We thought we’d share with you some Early Decision stats as they trickle out from highly selective universities around the nation. We’ll be updating our annual Ivy League Statistics in short order but until we do that, here’s a little tease of what went down in the Early round. So get out your calculators because here are the numbers for an assortment of non-Ivy League colleges:

Babson had 267 applications this fall of which 141 were admitted. At Davidson, 371 applicants applied and 194 earned admission. At Colgate, 398 applied of which 225 were admitted. At Hamilton, 413 applied and 180 were offered admission. Of NYU’s 3,182 applicants, 1,454 were admitted. At Oberlin, 241 applicants applied and 161 were admitted. Pomona received 297 applications and 75 got in. Vanderbilt had 1,769 applications and 553 got accepted.

At Northwestern, 2,450 student applied and 804 earned admission. At Middlebury, 645 applied and 270 got in. At GW, 1,530 applied and 585 got accepted. At Sarah Lawrence, 91 applied and 77 got in (hey, it helps to apply Early)! Finally, at Williams, 566 applied for admission and 239 earned a spot in the incoming class.

Brown University will be notifying Early applicants of their decisions tomorrow. Harvard will do so on Thursday.

It’s Early Decision notification time. And Early Action notification time, too! If you applied to a school through their Early Decision or Early Action policy and you’re wondering when you’ll hear back from them, here are some dates that might be helpful. Many of you have already heard back but we’ll list those dates anyway just in case you’re curious when other schools notified their applicants of their decisions. You might already know these dates as if students were wearing Big Red hoodies on December 8th, it’s likely because they just got into Cornell that day through Early Decision.

On December 8th, Cornell University and Columbia University notified applicants of their decisions at 5 PM EST. On December 9th at 3 PM EST, Dartmouth College notified applicants of their decisions, while at 5 PM EST, the University of Pennsylvania sent out their decisions. Tomorrow, on December 13th at 5 PM EST, Brown University will release their decisions. And on December 15th at 5 PM EST, Harvard University will send out their Early Action decisions.

Check out the Early Decision and Early Action Stats for the Class of 2015.

Admission to Princeton is the most highly competitive among East Coast universities, according to a data analysis.

A new study by “On The Numbers” concludes that Princeton University is the most selective university in the Eastern United States. Utilizing 2010 admissions data including the percentage of applicants who were admitted, the 75th percentile score on college entrance exams, and the 25th percentile on college entrance exams, Princeton University tops the list. With an admissions rate of 8.8% and a 75th percentile score of 1,580 (the score was converted to a 1,600 point scale), Princeton bests its Ivy League foes. So who placed second after Princeton? That would be Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University, and Columbia University.

If you haven’t had a chance yet, you should check out our Ivy League Admissions Statistics. We compile and analyze them every year for both Early Decision / Early Action and Regular Decision. It’s a good way of seeing just how competitive a university is to which you’re considering applying. Check out the overall acceptance rate, the Early Decision / Early Action acceptance rate, the percentage of the class filled by Early applications, etc. It’s a good way of strategizing which university you should use your Early card on.

But we encourage you to only use this as one component of your decision…you shouldn’t apply to a university through a policy like Early Decision if you don’t love that school and aren’t committed to attending because you can see yourself there. That doesn’t show up in the data!

Check out this post on Princeton University Admissions.