Updates on Early Admissions

Early admissions continue to be a fraught experience for students and families.  Students wonder if it’s their only chance of being admitted anywhere, let alone their number one choice.  Here are some recommendations based on what we’ve been hearing from students, families and admissions experts:

-if you want to apply to a reach (Google tried to autocorrect this to "rich") school, your best chance is still to apply early.  For its class of 2025, Penn admitted 14.9% of early applicants and only 4.4% of regular applicants.  

-legacy only counts if you apply early.  If your student doesn’t want to follow in their parents’ footsteps, that’s completely fine - but if they do, legacy will only be relevant during the early cycle.  If a student applies to a legacy institution during the regular cycle, the admissions committee will take that as a sign that the student actually wants to go somewhere else - and may reject or waitlist them in order to preserve their yield percentages, even if the student is a qualified applicant.  

-applying to early action schools is a great way of having an admission offer (or several) while still being able to decide later in the spring - this is especially important for students considering financial aid offers.  

To sum up, early admissions is still a crucial opportunity for students - let’s talk about it!