Which group of schools will HC be in?

From the article: With the exception of large public schools and the country’s most elite private colleges, many colleges are seeing a decrease in applications.

I suspect a reduced number of applicants RD and ED at HC this cycle.

We've already sent out the ED I letters. If we can land 400 qualified students out of ED  (I and II) as we have the last couple of years, the decreased applications for RD may be more of a statistical distinction than an impactful difference. 

FWIW Last year (Class of 2024) our applicants were down (slightly) and our acceptance rate was  up (from 34%-38%) and our yield was down (34% to 27%). 

Couldn’t find HC but Colgate (FWIW) announced a 6.4% increase in Early Decision I applicants and selected 324 of 531 for the class of 2025.

www.colgate.edu/news/stories/early-decision-students-admitted-colgates-class-2025

Colgate, like HC, offers an ED II. Those kids find out late FEB as I recall.

/\ That is remarkable. I’m guessing Colgate’s significant applicant overlap schools (BC, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell) will also see an increase (but over 100% is almost beyond belief). Tufts announced 1 week ago they were 35% over the previous year.

Has their basketball success contributed to this ? - although only marginally, I'd think
My other thought is that the SAT was not required for this admissions cycle and therefore many students who otherwise would not have a chance with average scores, decided to apply

From the announcement on the Colgate website

Ross said a number of factors have led to the increase, including changing how Colgate seeks out prospective students early in the college search process, moving to a pilot test-optional policy, introducing a No-Loan Initiative for families with an income of $125,000 or less, broad national media coverage of how the University has handled a return to in-person learning during the pandemic, and a new partnership with QuestBridge.


This is an amazing result, especially since, as hcpride posted a few weeks ago, they only had a 6.8% increase in ED1 applications.  

I know that many here have criticized HC for going test optional in the past.  If I am not mistaken, many schools have gone test optional for this year due to the pandemic.  I imagine that many will keep it that way. 

I like the "no loan for family income under $125,000."  

I look forward to seeing how HC does.  As we know, they tend to be slow to release this information, even when it shows improvement so I am not holding my breath that we will know soon. 

Yes, I think you subtract the estimated family contribution from the cost of attendance and get the rest in grants and work study.  Normally, a $5000? loan goes into the package before the college's grants.   I would think that unless they have subsantial savings, a family with an income of $125,000 is likely to get a need based financial aid package that covers a large portion (maybe all)  of the costs of attendance. 

It looks, upon quick research, that colleges expect that parents will use 5.6% of their savings each year for college.  So, if a parent has $300,000 (outside of retirement accounts) they would be expected to use about $$16,000.  For assets in the kid's name, 20% is to be used each year. 

Harvard received more than 57,000 applications. So many that the decision date has been pushed back by at least a week.

“The College received roughly 42 percent more applications than last year, when 40,248 students applied for admission to the Class of 2024. This year’s record-high number of applicants comes two years after the Class of 2023 set the previous record with 43,330 applicants.”