Can Early Action Hurt You?

hey guys are you up against a deadline and wondering whether you really need to apply early or not or maybe you're just curious as to whether applying early could actually hurt your application chances rather than help them in this video i'm going to talk about early action and early decision and when you maybe shouldn't do them [Music] my name is brooke i've been an independent college consultant for almost two decades i've also been coaching the sat in the act for a long time you can check out our courses at supertutortv.com if you're interested to know what we offer in terms of test prep we've also got tons of free tips right here on our youtube channel so be sure to subscribe if you haven't yet and if you totally for free want to plug into the multiverse that we have going on check out supertutortv.com subscribe cool so when it comes to applying early a lot of college consultants and counselors say hey if you apply early you're going to significantly increase your chances of admission and there is some truth to the fact that admission rates are higher early right people might say hey if you apply early to harvard you have a seven to eight percent admit rate but if you apply regular decision you'll only have like a 3.3 admit rate right or maybe you've heard that for the class of 2025 if you applied to dartmouth early you could have gotten in with a 22 admit rate but if you apply regular you'd only have a four and a half percent admit rate and when you look at statistics like that it's easy to say huh look at those admissions rates my probability must be higher if i apply early but there is another story behind the numbers and the numbers don't tell a complete truth okay the first thing that i'm going to do is talk about who should not apply early and then i'm going to explain why those numbers that i introduced at the beginning of this video while they show the rate of admission you have to understand that the rate of admission is not the same as your probability of admission and i would argue that these statistics that are being thrown out do not accurately reflect the probability of you or any individual student getting in early versus regular they're not the same and i will discuss why they are not the same and how if you are freaking out because you're like oh my gosh i wanted to apply early and i don't think i can well you shouldn't worry too much okay cool so first group that should not apply early is people who have terrible essays if your essays are not your best self on paper if you have not put the time into your application that you should have and you know that that is not the most stellar awesome unicorn amazing rainbow heart you that exists because i know that you exist it's in there somewhere you all have it if that awesome you is not on the page beware and be wary and i would say you are better off if you're applying to really competitive schools not applying early now if you're applying to state schools or you're applying to schools with rolling admissions or you know you're applying to a big university where the admin rate is over 30 over 50 over 70 and you just want to get some safeties or some fit schools under your belt and you know what your essays are perfect fine you know what to ease the tension to make yourself have some peace of mind go ahead and apply to those schools even if your essays aren't perfect early it might be worth it if there's scholarships that you need to qualify for and it's a state school and you know you're going to get in whatever don't worry too much okay i'm not talking about that i'm talking about super competitive schools anything kind of top 20 i really want your essays and your application overall to be awesome all in all having a great application is far more important than applying early in the grand scheme of how much something contributes towards your probability of getting in your probability of getting in is most heightened when you have a very strong application no matter when you send it in that is the best tool to getting in with whoever you are and whatever you have okay so making your application as awesome as possible is a number one priority i want you to think of that first and foremost and not worry too much if that is not in place okay number two reason that you might want to wait and not apply early is that your grades are on an upward trend now the thing about having grades on an upper trend this is something that can be corrected in the sense that you can send your transcript after you've already applied early you can send your transcript later and update it if you happen to get deferred but that relies on the idea that you will at least have to get deferred inevitably your first chance is probably your best chance of getting in by the time a school starts to roll you into the deferred pile it's going to be harder to get out of that deferred pile and into the admit pile than if your application up front was as amazing and wonderful as it is or as it could be the first pass so there might be some risk there even though you could early and then shove those in later another point that might make it a better fit for you not to apply early if your classes are far more challenging in senior year than they were in previous years so if you weren't able to challenge yourself as much in classes in years that weren't senior year and i know with covet this is especially potentially an issue if your classes 10 and 11 did not show a lot of rigor and this year you are piling on the rigorous course load and you've got honors you've got aps you've got a lot of things that you could use to prove yourself but you weren't able to take those courses earlier for whatever reason it could be a stronger application if you wait the fourth reason that you might want to put things off as if you're developing a wow factor now having some kind of wow factor can be really important for kind of your top 10 schools once you get down into like top 20 top 30 top 40 top 50 that wow factor doesn't matter as much and this isn't something that i would worry about once you get into those schools it's more about your gpa your test scores just being kind of proficient if you kind of get to the schools that are top top 30 top 40 top 50 you don't have to worry about this as much but if you're applying to one of these really elusive schools it's super hard to get into and you know what i'm talking about sub five percent admit rates having that wow factor could be the thumb on the scale that helps you get in if you don't have it yet you can't write about it yet but if you just give yourself two more months you'll have it you might want to wait finally if you're retaking the sap or the act and you think you can do better that's another reason to hold out or taking it for the first time obviously because of covid some of you might not have a test score a great test score will improve your chances of getting in somewhere i realize that all these schools are test optional but that doesn't mean that having a great test score won't help you it will and if you think you can get that great test score or you're working toward it and it's after the early deadline like i said colleges want to look at your application and figure it out and make a decision and oftentimes if you think you can get like a perfect you know score on your sat or a near perfect score or something like that and you just never got a chance to take it because it kept getting canceled because of covet and then you randomly got a cold the day before your test in august or october depending on your circumstance if you're retaking a standardized exam that could be again something that improves your application you might just want to wait to put your best foot forward all at once um it might not hurt you that much depending on where you're trying to apply it really so there you go who should not apply early people whose applications or credentials are in the midst of improvement or whose essays just aren't ready if that's the case these schools are so darn hard to get into you guys you don't they are crazy hard to get into your application has to be the best application that you are capable of creating and if you're not there yet and a little more time would help you get there wait so the next thing that i have to say is that the rate of admission is not the same as the probability of admission for any one given student and these numbers that these schools are throwing out are not the whole story when we look at sort of oh the percentile for early is four times what the percentile for regular is or it's two times what it is i would argue that when it's two times it might not be much of a differential at all in terms of probability and here's why there's three reasons why the rate of emission is not the probability of admission that are really big that i know about and there's also some intricacies to this that we can talk about as well in terms of strategy so first many of the good students get plucked off in rea or ed admission rounds let's say a student has near perfect gpa right they're ranked in the top one or two percent of their class at high school maybe they have a near perfect test score they've got a 36 on their a.c.t or a 1590 on their s.a.t and maybe they got phenomenal activities they could be the captain of the debate team and they won national tournaments and then on top of that they've started their own non-profit for children in uganda or whatever it is right they've done amazing things they're fabulous that candidate is more likely to get in to any of these colleges period right so if you take those really stellar students and you say hey you might be able to find out early whether you got into your first choice college and then you can like quit the game early and you don't have to apply to as many schools that's a really enticing deal right and that's what a lot of them do so that's the first benefit is those great students that are the easy admits for colleges and universities get plucked off first and then the regular pool doesn't have as many strong applicants in it because the great students got plucked off by some ed program or rea program and they're less likely than to apply in the second round so that's the first reason that these probabilities aren't exactly telling the whole story the second reason that the percents aren't exactly the whole story is legacy admits a lot of the time universities like penn or harvard will tell their alumni if you want to get in as a legacy you must apply early okay so what that means is there are more legacies in the early admit pool and as you guys know legacies are admitted at a rate that is you know four or five times as high as a regular person getting in but because of that kind of legacy situation you have a lot more legacies generally in the early pool and those legacies are enjoying higher admit rates and schools feel pressure to admit those students more than other students so if you are not a legacy and you apply early you might think oh i'm doubling tripling my chances of getting in but in fact the legacies are getting four five x the chance of getting in and your chance of admission might not be going anywhere okay so that's the second reason why these statistics don't always tell the whole story my third point in terms of probability is a bigger pool means naturally a lower admit rate but it doesn't necessarily mean more competition okay so remember all the rejects from our first round of application all those people who got rejected now are going to turn around and they're not just going to apply to one school like they did the first round the first round they could only apply to one school if they applied rear ed when we get to the regular admit rate at these schools that have early decision that have restrictive early action we have so many more students applying right because all those kids who got rejected from that one school turn around and they apply to ten schools so just because those numbers go up right a lot of times the people who are strategically applying to early to other places and then get rejected from those places who are weaker candidates know that they shouldn't waste their early card on they're really tough to get into school because chances are they're probably not getting in any way and that's not going to convert that much advantage because their application's probably not strong enough to get in but they will still buy the lottery ticket in the regular round and that's part of why that percentile drops is that everybody floods the application pool at that point so i don't want you to freak out and think that early is the only way that i have no chance whatsoever if i don't apply early the more competitive the school the less the advantage tends to be harvard and stanford the advantage is going to be lower in my mind a school like dartmouth though you might actually start to confirm more of an advantage if you apply early again early decision also tends to confer a little bit more value because then schools know they're going to get yields from you they know that you're committed to that school that offers a little bit of value if you're applying to schools ranked anywhere from about 15 to 50 that idea of yield really comes into play the idea of early decision can weigh in more and that might be more valuable so hopefully that helps you guys out so that's about all i've got for the numbers for today i hope you guys found that helpful if so please give this a thumbs up subscribe to our channel if you haven't yet and watch more videos we have lots more college tip videos for you guys whatever way you're applying good luck let us know in the comments what your thought process is and i'll see you guys soon take care

Channel: SupertutorTV

Views: 66,819

Keywords: SAT, ACT, Brooke, Brooke Hanson, Hanson, prep, SAT prep, ACT prep, college, harvard, princeton, yale, supertutortv, tv, super tutor, admissions, high school, learning, tutor, tutoring

Id: F86hWTifByQ

Length: 12min 39sec (759 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 30 2021