<p>Can someone please explain this phenomenon to me?</p>
<p>Regular Acceptance Rate: 48%
Early Decision Acceptance Rate: 44%</p>
<p>Why is the ED rate lower than the regular decision rate?</p>
<p>where did you get these figures? over the last 2 or 3 yrs the admission rate have hovered around 42% (haven’t been over that figure) and the numbers you provided above don’t add up to that.</p>
<p>For the class of 2013 even though they have not officially released it yet, they had more than 12,500 applicants and they accepted 38%. I highly believe that they give preference to ED applicants. Maybe it might just be that many more people that are not really qualified to get in do ED to try to make their chances better.</p>
<p>the ED applicant pool is typically less competitive statistically by very slight measures… the acceptance rates for ED and RD are very comparable though, both hovering around 40% each year</p>