Although the stats might lead one to assume EA
gives an applicant a better chance of acceptance, those stats are misleading because so many EA slots are filled by recruited athletes, other hooked applicants, and no-brainer admits who set themselves apart even in this ultra competitive pool.
Harvard admissions office says EA confers no advantage to the applicant.
I think: Apply EA if you have a compelling story and essays - in short, an application that needs a little extra consideration to pop out. Surely first screeners have a more leisurely pace to consider the EA applications vs the throng in the RD round.
The most important factors are 1. Are you academically qualified to go (depends on school (3.8+/32+ for most top schools, but the higher the GPA/scores the better) 2. Are you hooked (athlete/URM/FG/legacy in that order, multiples would be super hooked) 3. If not 2 then do you have anything that sets you apart (National competition placed/won, unique abilities/EC). If you don’t have 2 or 3 than forget about SCEA/REA at HYPS, give yourself the best shot by EDing somewhere.
I do know one person who didn’t have 2 or 3 above but made it in. She was deferred SCEA, admitted RD. Stats 35/4.0UW/4.5W/state champion in her sport although not a recruited athlete, plus numerous other ECs. You can see that just with this sample size of one how difficult it is to get in on the SCEA round.
If you think your app will be in the best shape it can be by the application deadline, based on your stat’s, I’d go for it even if you don’t have a hook. If you get in, you can drastically cut your app list for RD, maybe even down to 0. If you get deferred, no harm, no foul. If you get rejected, especially from Harvard which only rejects a small percentage of applicants in the early round, there is likely something really amiss in your LoR’s and/or essays and you have time to maybe address the defect. I would only apply ED to an absolute first choice school and financials aid is not a big deal.
^For the Class of 2022, there were only 611 out of 6,630 student who were rejected in the REA round, or 9.2%. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/12/964-gain-early-admission-to-harvard-college-class-of-2022/ The low reject rate in the REA round for Harvard has been pretty consistent and was not an anomaly limited to last year. Given OP’s stellar objective stat’s and relatively strong list of EC’s/awards, I highly doubt she/he would go into the reject pile in the REA round absent something really wrong in an LoR(s) or essay(s). Whether she/he will ultimately get accepted is another matter as I was just referring to the possible REA outcomes.
You don’t need to win a national competition and you want to stand out for the quality of your full app, not someting unusual.Just having the stats is no pull, on its own.
OP, what major and what’s 8 hrs/wk at the gym? Exercise or job? Honor societies and tours aren’t pull. How do your ECs relate to your academic goals and how would you say you show you stretch? And any comm service besides via clubs? That can matter. Are you aware of what H looks for? It’s a fierce competition.
While I agree with @BKSquared , I also think that there is little that can be done to improve the application between the SCEA and RD deadlines except the applicant’s essays (and maybe a standardized test score).
Nothing is going to change in 2 months which will make a LoR writer pen a glowing letter vs. a ho-hum letter. No GPA will climb that drastically. No outstanding EC will miraculously emerge. So if the application ended up in the reject pile in the SCEA round, odds are it would end up in the same pile in the RD round.
^Yes, an LoR writer is not going revise their LoR, but I think it is wise strategy to tee up an extra LoR (try to get 3 teacher rec’s instead of 2). Maybe that teacher from whom you got a “B” but who you thought was going to write about how hard you worked damned you with faint praise, or the professor of the local college from whom you took an impressive sounding class wrote a weak generic letter because he/she did not really know you. I do agree though it is very hard to control for LoR’s compared to rethinking your essays. A reason I am such a big fan of EA (besides narrowing your list if you get in) is that the outcome can give you some feedback on the strength of your application. Maybe you can shoot higher or you might have to shoot lower. I am also a big fan of applying to some good public U’s honors type program on a rolling or EA basis, again to potentially cut down on the RD app’s and to get some feedback on your relative strength.
It would stand to reason. Nevertheless, back in the olden days when Harvard’s admission rate was 8% rather than 4% it was not at all uncommon for someone deferred SCEA to be admitted RD. Each of my kids had at least a couple friends to whom that happened at Harvard or Yale. Also kids who were deferred SCEA then rejected RD at one, yet accepted RD at a peer. It’s certainly the case that for the most part the admissions staff at colleges this similar view applications consistently – i.e., the vast majority of applications are not accepted by any of the SCEA colleges, and a small group is essentially accepted anywhere they have applied – the cases where the outcomes differ one to the other are not trivial, and probably represent a meaningful percentage of the class at all such colleges.
What’s more, notwithstanding the accurate observation that if your application is outright rejected rather than deferred SCEA, there’s something fundamentally wrong with it, in my kids’ cohort there was at least one case of a woman who, a fourth generation Princeton legacy with a sibling enrolled there, was rejected outright at Princeton SCEA, and accepted RD at Harvard with all of the same recommendations, etc., and no known hook. Anecdote isn’t data, of course, and you are not going to see that often.
^ Perhaps Princeton actually rejects much more than 9% of SCEA applicants (does not appear Princeton publishes that data at least recently in a quick Google search) as compared to Harvard. Princeton may be closer to Yale at around 30% or may even approach Stanford which seems to be pretty digital in the SCEA round with very few deferrals. In those cases, it is more likely that some very high quality app’s get turned down that result in acceptance(s) at peer college(s).
@lookingforward This is super helpful thank you! The 8 hours week at the fitness club is my job - I do laundry, clean bathrooms, answer phones, etc. Also the volunteering is not a club - it’s a separate organization in my town. In my application I am trying to show my political science/social science focus with my volunteering with a political organization, participating in student government, and mock trial. I’m interested in how political science and fields like bio/chem interact with public health policy, and I want that to come across in my app. I know the competition is fierce - and it scares me haha
thank u to everyone who responds!