<p>well i personally think there are convincing arguments for both points of view here....
but to me it seems more likely that the people who apply EA are on the whole not that much stronger... but who knows?</p>
<p>true..because it can also vary each year..oh well, that was just the most logical to me..but things can change every year..one year the EA pool can be stronger, and then another year the RD pool can be stronger.</p>
<p>I have to disagree with your argument. I do not think that it's better for an "average" applicant (I use "average," "strong," and "weak" from the Harvard viewpoint) to apply RD because you have to remember that almost half (49%) of the freshman class is admitted EA. If EA applicants consist of the strongest applicants, there would be no room for average applicants because there are plenty of very strong RD applicants; remember that the RD pool is several times larger than the EA pool. (Based on the numbers for the class of 2008, the RD pool is about four times larger than the EA pool.) Yet, there are many examples of average people (i.e., unhooked candidates) getting into Harvard.
The reason why an average applicant will do better in the EA round, in my opinion, is because his application will be seen first. Since the adcoms do not have the RD applications yet, they can't compare the applicant to as many people to see how strong he is versus the rest of the RD applicants. Also, the yield of EA applicants is much higher than the yield of RD applicants. The adcoms I believe would rather accept an EA applicant to increase the yield than take the risk of accepting a similar or even better RD applicant who is less likely to attend Harvard. In fact, you could make the argument that many average applicants are admitted not during the RD round, but during the EA round.
Since by the time EA is done, there is still half of the class left to fill, the adcoms can afford to let in an average EA applicant by "sacrificing" an RD applicant in the name of yield -- there are already too many of them, and there are plenty of strong RD applicants to make up for a weak EA applicant. This may explain the reason why some unhooked candidates are admitted while some hooked candidates are rejected.</p>
<p>"But, if you are only an average student, you would have more chance under RD, because you wouldn't be competing with the stronger applicant pool that is in EA."</p>
<p>To reiterate somewhat: An average student wouldn't have more of a chance under RD because there are four times as many people to compete against. Even if we assume that the EA pool is stronger than the RD pool (we could speculate that it may be stronger because more stronger applicants than weaker applicants are likely to realize that EA increases your chances dramatically! -- or RD applicants think their scores are too low and so retake the tests instead of applying EA, except that by the RD round, the competition in the RD round is more than likely enough to erase any gains made with higher scores. Personally, I think the RD pool is stronger, numerically speaking. After all, Harvard is SCEA, meaning the RD pool is full of ED/EA/SCEA rejects/deferreds, along with, importantly, EA/SCEA acceptees; nobody applies only to Harvard and nowhere else), I don't think the strength of the EA pool is a worse thing than having to stand out among four times as many people in the RD pool as the EA pool. You would have to assume that the EA pool is significantly stronger, as in several hundred SAT points stronger, to make up for the fact that the competition in the RD round is extremely fierce.</p>
<p>"After all, Harvard is SCEA, meaning the RD pool is full of ED/EA/SCEA rejects/deferreds, along with, importantly, EA/SCEA acceptees; nobody applies only to Harvard and nowhere else"</p>
<p>I tend to agree with this statement. This is why it makes more logical sense to me that EA pool isn't that much stronger.</p>
<p>"Yet, there are many examples of average people (i.e., unhooked candidates) getting into Harvard."</p>
<p>I think that there have been some very good points made that it can be an advantage to apply EA. </p>
<p>I do, however, have a slight quibble about the term "average." It would be a shame if your use of that word caused some naive students to assume that if a student truly is average, they actually have a chance to get into Harvard.</p>
<p>Frankly, I don't think that any candidates who are even average in the Harvard pool have a chance of getting in even though average in the Harvard pool would mean being "outstanding" at most colleges in the country.</p>
<p>When I think of who got in EA in my relatively large in area, but small in # of candidates region over the past 3 years, they included one 1600 scorer who also had a national level academic EC (and was to my knowledge the only 1600 scorer in our region) and a National Merit scholar who was #1 in the country in an academic EC, and also was strong in an unrelated academic EC plus had a couple of other exceptionally strong talents. </p>
<p>I don't know about the third person who got in except to know that she wasn't a legacy, URM or athlete. It's rare for my region to have strong female applicants, so that may have helped her get in. I also think she was in the humanities, which also would have made her stand out.</p>
<p>Anyway, none of these EA accepted students had incredible hooks. In one case, a legacy was passed over EA in favor of an unhooked EA. The legacy was admitted RD.</p>
<p>In my area, there really doesn't seem to be an RA advantage. Typically, one student gets in EA, and one gets in RD out of about 20 applicants. The regular admit may or may not have applied EA. I can imagine that things work differently in the areas that get 40 or even more acceptances a year. </p>
<p>So -- what does all of this mean for the OP? Who knows? We have no idea about her stats or location. And as much as we may try to, we can't read the adcoms' minds.</p>
<p>I have read "The Early Admissions Game" and I find it quite compelling. Its data does include Harvard, BTW. The authors emphasize that the EA/ED advantage (the equivalent of 100 SAT points or so), applies to "the average (unhooked) applicant." In other words, no attempt is made to assess EA/ED advantage for legacies, URMs or recruited athletes. </p>
<p>I note that Northstarmom (whose advice and perspective is always valued) relies heavily on anecdotes and the relatively small applicant pool in her immediate area. I would tend to agree with Byerly (whose ability to marshall data to support his conclusions is quite impressive) that anecdotes and a relatively small regional sample cannot trump the well-documented conclusions and research in TEAG. There is clearly a EA/ED advantage for "average" (i.e. unhooked) applicants, even at Harvard.</p>
<p>That said, Northstarmom may be right with respect to her guidance re: "hooked" candidates. For example, in one of her posts she cites the example of an applicant who is both a URM and a legacy. I suspect that is a sufficiently rareified group of applicants that the general conclusions of TEAG do not apply. In the instance of Northstarmom's S, who I understand is also a legacy and a URM, applying EA to a college with substantial merit aid possibilities and RD to Harvard may be a deft strategy.</p>
<p>As to the OP's query, I also have not seen data on the Harvard admit rate for URMs EA v. RD (I suspect there is no significant advantage). In the most recent issue of the JBHE, however, it was disclosed (for the first time) that the overall Harvard admit rate for black applicants (EA and RD) for the Class of 2008 was 16.7%. The admit rate for all applicants was under 10%. Hope that helps.</p>
<p>Do you have a link for that? I see a story about LAC admit rates, but I didn't see any mention of Harvard in Issue 47.</p>
<p>16.7%? hrmmmm.... I'd like to see more data about those applicants.</p>
<p>Byerly, the data comes from the same JBHE issue as the LAC information. When I return home this weekend, I'll gladly post the relevant text and page number. I am a subscriber and have the issue in hard copy only.</p>
<p>It must be in a section not posted online.</p>
<p>Although I recognize that many factors play a part in the discussion of EA/RD and their relative benefits to applicants, I think there might be an alternative reason for the differences in EA and RD admit rates.</p>
<p>Could it be that it's simply easier to accept students early in the process, rather than later in the process? At the beginning of the admissions cycle, all 1650 freshman class are still available, so the idea of scarcity doesn't weigh quite as heavily on an admissions officer. On the other hand, in March, when they're debating in committee to determine who gets the last couple of spots, the perceived scarcity makes it much more difficult for the applicants to gain admission.</p>
<p>To think about it another way, say that you have a given budget and are told to go and shop until you spend all of it. Let's say in this very contrived example that you can't "unbuy" or "unaccept" an item (or an applicant) after selecting it. I'd venture that most people would spend their first chunk of the budget rather eagerly, without quite as much scrutiny. On the other hand, deciding what to do with the last couple of dollars would involve much more in-depth examinations of the things you're purchasing.</p>
<p>Thus, an admissions staff might select their first crop of the new class with a looser mentality. On the other hand, when they're doling out the last seats in the class, they'll be willing to reject a much larger proportion to pick out the students they want.</p>
<p>I think your argument has validity, and I'd say it goes well with my argument. However, I've heard that before sending out the admisisons letters, the adcoms go through all of the applicants one more time. Applicants who have been accepted can sometimes end up being rejected, i.e., "unaccepted."</p>
<p>In The Gatekeepers, one of the adcoms at Wesleyan (I think it's Ralph) changes the admissions decision of a few candidates in order to get his candidate in. While this may or may not occur at Harvard specifically, I would imagine that this happens at many colleges.</p>
<p>I think post #72 is generally correct that until the letters go into the mail, any accepted applicant's file can be removed from the pile of accepted applications. But I also think post #72 has an interesting take on the psychology of the situation that I have not seen often before. I know that what admissions officers say in public (which I last heard from a Harvard admissions officer) is that they are more "stingy" in the beginning of the process, because they know they are using up scarce spaces that they also have to allocate in the regular round. "We have to be sure that an early applicant is fully qualified to be accepted in the regular round," is the usual way of putting this. But officers who also talk about "building a class" rather than "admitting by the numbers" probably MUST think that they should admit as soon as they find good applicants to fill out particular parts of the class they are building. This is why I think it is more plausible that early applicants have a genuine advantage: I am not accusing any admissions officer of being insincere, but I think some admissions officers lack self-awareness about the global effects of the competing pressures they face to do their jobs well with limited resources.</p>
<p>That article about blacks in LACs was mindboggling. </p>
<p>71.6% at Middlebury! Wow.</p>
<p>Yeah I really can't believe that...
I was also impressed by the 51.5% at Pomona, where I am applying.</p>
<p>I was thinking about applying to Middlebury</p>
<p>The JBHE citation is in Issue #45 (Autumn 2004) at page 7. The chart is entitled "Admission of African-Americans at Higher-Ranked Universities, Fall 2004." "Higher-Ranked" universities are defined as the top 30 universities according to USN&WR. A comparable chart for "Higher-Ranked Liberal Arts Colleges" is at p. 13.</p>
<p>In any event, the data for Harvard is as follows:</p>
<p>All Applicants - 19,752
Total Accepted - 2,110
Overall Student Acceptance Rate - 10.7%
Black Applicants - 1,263
Blacks Accepted - 211
Black Acceptance Rate - 16.7%
Black Enrollees - 145
Black Student Yield - 68.7%
Black % of First-Year Class - 8.9%</p>
<p>There is a notation at p. 12: "Until now, Harvard University has declined to disclose to JBHE how many black students applied to the university, making it impossible for us to calculate the black student acceptance rate. This year, for the first time since we began collecting black first-year enrollment figures, Harvard supplied JBHE with complete data."</p>
<p>Now, of course, we need a little context by getting a look at the whole list! (ie, admit rate, yield, etc. Any chance you could do a little more typing?</p>
<p>From p. 12:</p>
<p>"At 13 of the 18 [high-ranking] universities that supplied data to JBHE the black student acceptance rate was higher than the acceptance rate for white students. In some cases the difference was substantial. For instance, at MIT the black student acceptance rate was nearly twice as high as the 15.9% acceptance rate for all applicants. At the University of Notre Dame 55.6% of black students were accepted compared to 30.4% of all applicants. At the University of Virginia 62.2% of blacks were accepted whereas 38.2% of all applicants received notices of acceptance.</p>
<p>Six of the high-ranking universities we surveyed had black acceptance rates that were lower than the overall acceptance rate. At the University of California at Berkeley and the University of California at Los Angeles, which were prohibited from taking race into account during the 2004 admission process, the black acceptance rate was significantly below the rate for whites. The black acceptance rate was also lower than the white rate at Washington University, Emory University, and Wake Forest University."</p>
<p>Here's the raw data from the chart at p. 7 (I include only the 18 high-ranked universities that submitted complete data in the following format - all applicants/total accepted/overall student acceptance rate/black applicants/blacks accepted/black acceptance rate/black enrollees/black student yield/black % of first-year class):</p>
<p>UNC - Chapel Hill
19,053/6,736/35.4%/2,209/812/36.8%/404/49.8%/11.3%
University of Virginia
15,149/5,786/38.2%/1,034/643/62.2%/310/48.2%/9.9%
Harvard
19,752/2,110/10.7%/1,263/211/16.7%/145/68.7%/8.9%
Vanderbilt
11,147/4,256/38.2%/705/295/41.8%/140/47.5%/8.7%
University of Pennsylvania
18,282/3,878/21.2%/1,199/361/30.1%/180/49.9%/7.4%
Emory
11,218/4,330/38.6%/1,594/476/29.9%/92/19.3%/7.2%
Johns Hopkins
11,103/3,323/29.9%/922/338/36.7%/76/22.5%/7.2%
Georgetown
14,841/3,261/22.0%/1,009/310/30.7%/106/34.2%/7.0%
Rice
8,110/1,806/22.3%/487/140/28.7%/51/36.4%/7.0%
Brown
15,286/2,534/16.6%/923/243/26.3%/100/41.2%/6.8%
Washington University
19,822/4,400/22.2%/1,654/298/18.0%/88/29.5%/6.0%
MIT
10,466/1,655/15.9%/383/121/31.6%/64/52.9%/5.9%
Wake Forest University
6,289/2,945/46.8%/408/147/36.0%/61/41.5%/5.4%
Carnegie Mellon
14,113/5,868/41.6%/715/324/45.3%/74/22.8%/5.3%
Cornell University
20,882/6,130/29.4%/1,031/316/30.6%/146/46.2%/4.7%
Notre Dame
11,491/3,488/30.4%/331/184/55.6%/92/50.0%/4.6%
UC-Berkeley
36,785/9,029/24.5%/1,553/236/15.2%/113/47.9%/3.0%
UCLA
43,197/9,981/23.1%/1,944/235/12.1%/114/48.5%/3.0%</p>
<p>Duke, Yale, Stanford, Dartmouth, Princeton, Columbia, University of Michigan, Northwestern and Caltech did not submit complete data.</p>
<p>Very interesting. JBHE seems to be able to pressure (most!) of the schools to release data they'd rather not release!</p>