<p>Just a little stats and estimates to decompress during this year’s decision countdown. </p>
<p>Based on the following link from the NY Times, I estimated 50,000+ unique applicants have applied early to “top 10 + Ivies” colleges. These applicants presumably represent the strongest academic students in this year’s class.</p>
<p>Since students who applied either ED or SCEA are forbidden from applying early to other peer schools in this group, I came up with 36,616 by simply adding the numbers of ED/SCEA apps from all the Ivies + Stanford + Duke. MIT, UChicago and Caltech, which are all non-restrictive EA schools, are still not accounted for yet. I then estimated (pure conjecture) 5,000 unique applicants to MIT/UChicago/Caltech. This brought the total to 41,616, out of 3 million high school seniors – about 1.4%. Not quite what the title says, I know (made an error in my earlier calc, but it was too late to change to title).</p>
<p>One thing that always eluded me is the approximate number of students applying to these schools. To do this, we must account for the RD applicants that are not part of the EA pool. Unlike ED/SCEA, RD does not nicely sort out unique applications for us, hence the difficulty. We can play the what if game: if the early round represents 50% of the eventual applicants to these schools, then the total number of unique applicants would be north of 83,000 – about 2.8% of total high school seniors. Of course, this number will increase substantially once we include the rest of the Top 20’s, which by no means are inferior to the list of schools above. I’m interested in hearing other views on this.</p>
<p>Add in the following schools that also have Early Decision: Amherst, Wesleyan, Bowdoin, Williams, Swarthmore, Middlebury, Pomona, Haverford–add a couple other LACs, and that’s another 5000 or so kids. Easily 50,000 unique kids applying early to top schools, in my opinion.</p>
<p>An interesting parallel is that there are approximately 36,000 high schools in the US.</p>
<p>Of course, some schools most likely had several applicants to these colleges and others had none, but it’s interesting that it comes out in the wash as one per school.</p>
<p>And quite a few of the non-NMSF’s do end up with SAT’s, ACT’s and GPA’s that exceed the stats of many of those who made the NMSF cut (and this is before EC’s and outside awards are factored in), if our own high school is any indication.</p>
<p>My non-NMSF child had better SATs and GPA than my NMSF child. The former didn’t get the hang of taking standardized tests until after his 11th grade PSAT. Their school had maybe 5-6 NMSFs per class, and 30-40 kids applying early to a top-something college.</p>
<p>By the way, I think 5,000 is a ridiculously low number for unique applicants to Chicago, MIT, Caltech. Many students – perhaps most of them – don’t understand that they could apply EA to those schools and also apply ED someplace else. My wild guess for the number of Chicago EA applicants who are also applying ED somewhere Ivyish (and thus may be in the count already) is 20-25%, tops. That would mean that this year there are 6,500 EA applicants to Chicago who haven’t also applied ED to, say, Columbia, Wharton, or Brown (or Swarthmore). Some of those may have also applied to MIT or Caltech, but really there isn’t massive overlap between those schools and Chicago. I would guess something like 10,000 uncounted unique applicants to Chicago/MIT/Caltech.</p>
<p>(I do not understand how Chicago EA applications went up by 25%, given the resumption of SCEA at Harvard and Princeton, or how Chicago got twice as many early applications as Harvard. That would seem to suggest, at least, that being able to submit simultaneous EA and ED apps is important. But it hasn’t happened at MIT, which has essentially had stable EA applications for several years.)</p>
<p>My non-NMSF had better SAT’s but fractionally lower GPA than the NMSF also. In our case, that was kind’ve random–his PSAT fell just fractionally lower than hers in a high-bar-for-qualifying state. The non was the ED applicant of the two of them.</p>
<p>OK, sorry for bringing up NM. I didn’t mean it that way. just roughly to gauge if it is some kind of fixed number. Of course, they are not the only ones or better ones.</p>
<p>Dissecting data can be fun, especially when playing with various assumptions. I believe that the increases or decreases in applications reflect both the desire to maximize the possible applications and maximize the … change to earn an admission ticket. MIT has been stable for quite some time, but it is important to note the absence of early admission boost at MIT. Simply stated, chances in RD are just as good. </p>
<p>On the other hand, schools that are not yet as selective as their peers seem to offer (relatively) better chances of admissions. That has been the story at Chicago and will continue until it dips consistently in the world of single digit admission or low tens. Add the lack of exlcusivity of the admission, and you have a good recipe for increasing applications and a some headaches in terms of predicting the yield. </p>
<p>As far as the impact of the schools that reverted to early admissions, it simply tends to confirm the real composition of the overlaps in applications.</p>
<p>“I do not understand how Chicago EA applications went up by 25%”
I think its a combination of their jump in rankings in USNWR and other polls this year and the continuation of their successful efforts to get “less geeky”, “more normal” kids to apply there.</p>
<p>And the “less geeky” and “more normal” kids reading such simple numbers as 36% or 29% for EA admissions in the same rankings and publications. Odds are not only for gambling men in Las Vegas.</p>
<p>Chicago didn’t have anything like 36% or 29% EA admissions last year. It was 20% or 23%, depending on whose numbers you trust. Comparable to ED at lots of the Ivies. And this year, it’s likely to be in those low-teens overall. But I suppose there’s still an effect from out-of-date data people read. And it’s still a relative admissions “bargain” compared to Yale or Columbia. Still, it’s nothing like the good old days of a few years ago when, if you were smart enough to apply to Chicago EA, you had about a 50% chance of getting accepted.</p>