Rick Chen ‘24
This year has proven to be one of the most competitive years in admissions history at EA. According to the Admissions office, by late January, the Middle School’s admit rate was between 20% and 30%, and the Upper School’s admit rate was at about 32%. In a normal year, the admit rate is at around 40% in both the Middle and Upper School. These abnormally low rates are a result of more applications without increasing the number of spots to fill.
Photo courtesy of Gianna Trala ’23
Admissions decisions for the 2022-23 school year have recently been finalized. Carolyn Totherow, Interim Director of Enrollment Management and Admissions, explains, “Our deadline for the main admissions for Middle and Upper School is December 15. There is a whole committee that looks at files and scores the files. We take the first two weeks of January to get the final decisions made for financial aid and new admissions and all that. In the Spring, we also go into rolling admissions.”
Application numbers are high this year for multiple reasons. Totherow believes that one of the main explanations is “a combination of the pandemic and the benefits of independent schools being highlighted.” She says that “the flexibility of independent schools became more attractive choices with regards to safety during the pandemic,” as schools like EA have the resources and ability to quickly adapt to changing restrictions. For example, EA was able to set up temporary heated tents for lunches and activities all around campus, while public schools in the area might have had a more difficult time being able to meet the needs of their larger student population.
Many members of the community are grateful for EA’s versatility. Anika Kakarla ‘23 says, “I can totally see why people would want to switch to private schools during this time if they are able to. We were really lucky last year because EA had the resources and the space to have us in in-person school when I know a lot of schools had more difficulty doing that. We got new lounges with more space for social distancing and there were two cafeterias.”
Furthermore, the increase in applicants is most considerable in the Middle School. According to Totherow, the Admissions team has seen a drastic increase in “the number of students applying for seventh and eighth grade” due to parents wanting to avoid the growing competitive nature of the Upper School admissions process.
However, Totherow explains that “EA generally doesn’t admit new students in those grades, only to fill the spots of students who have chosen to move on.” The amount of spots available is solely based on the attrition rate, or the rate at which students leave each year, so class size does not increase. She continues, “Generally the attrition rate at EA is 3%,” and this year is the same; the influx of applicants paired with the same amount of spots opening up has led to a higher rejection rate.
Even with the increase in applications, EA does not plan to add spots to the incoming class or any class in the future, as Totherow says the admissions team likes to “keep it in the same zone of enrollment each year” due to physical space and class size restricting the maximum number of students on campus and in each form.
Many new students this year believe that the in-depth nature of their application process was due to the competitiveness. Jenny Bui ‘23 says, “For me, the admissions process at EA was long, but I appreciated the amount of detail that EA asked for because it showed that they really look at the entirety of a student’s application. I think EA’s application requiring several parts like an interview and testing shows that EA wants to accept quality applicants.”
She continues, “I had the option of choosing between a FlipGrid and an interview with a faculty member on the admissions committee. I chose to do a FlipGrid, so that everyone on the admissions team could see it. Because of Covid, I didn’t have the right resources at home to take the SSAT or ISEE, so EA waived the standardized testing for me, but I did prep a bunch for those tests (before it was waived). The process was definitely nerve wracking.”