Damn I got that email too
I got the email too 
Wishing everyone the best of luck for Friday!
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good luck everyone!
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Anyone know of an increase in ED applicants this year to Amherst?
All other elite institutions (ivies, Stanford, MIT, UChicago) are announcing an increase in ED applicants by 20-50%! Yikes.
Wondering how that will effect Amherst given how rigid Amherst and other liberal arts schools are in keeping class size uniform…
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That’s tough to answer.
Here’s my two cents. We already know there’s a huge increase in international applicants compared to other years. We also have to take into account people who deferred their admission.
I don’t know if the increase in internationals will have an impact on domestic applicants, but I would at least assume a little. I do think that Amherst will be keeping their class size pretty uniform (maybe slightly- and I do mean slightly increase, due to COVID-19 circumstances) compared to other years because they have nothing to gain and a lot to lose as a small LAC by admitting more people. Yield isn’t a factor due to ED, and Amherst can’t necessarily make more money from the domestic or international pools due to its need-blind policy. All they’ll have are more people to deal with and more resources to distribute.
It is however worth noting that I seriously doubt that, at least for domestic applicants, the amount of Early Decision students has gone up, at least nowhere near the level as those other institutions you mentioned. There might not be an increase at all. If there is, it might be test optional people which might have a slightly harder chance at getting in.
LAC’s in general aren’t super popular places to ED to regardless (yes, even WASP) in comparison to universities. In fact, at least for domestic applicants, I think that more people this year chose to shoot their shot at ivies compared to LAC’s (compared to other years) because of COVID. Might be the test optional policy.
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Also, could you explain the 50% number? The biggest increase I heard was from Duke, and it was 20% something or something close to it.
Edited: Oh wait, never mind, you were talking about Cornell. My bad.
How about Amherst? It is said that this year’s ED applicant pool is 2.3x as compared to the last. Doesn’t that mean an increase of above 100%?
will the financial aid package for those admitted come out at the same time as admissions on friday?
To answer, I’m guessing there was probably an increase in domestic applicants as well, considering the increases at other elite schools. Though maybe not as drastic of an increase as there was for intl.
I emailed Admissions a while ago to ask the number of ED applicants (domestic+intl). It was approximately 650 :o
Anyone from South East Asia here?
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If that’s true then it’s just a 25% percent increase from last year’s 518 ED applicants. That’s kinda strange as the number of international applicants has apparently increased by like 130%… So it’s probably only the number of international applicants that has increased a lot. Still, strange numbers.
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Where did that number come from?
I believe an AO shared that on an info session, but it was the number of international applicants that is 2.3x the size.
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Aaaa my Amherst portal has started showing my legal name instead of my preferred one. Could this mean anything?
Edit: my financial portal still has my preferred name. I’m probably overthinking though.
Hasn’t happened to me. Has it happened to anyone else?
Mine hasnt changed as well. This made me a bit nervous
I didn’t put a preferred name 
I’ve just realized that when attending A2A I put my preferred name there, while Commonapp only had my legal name. So probably they were just giving Commonapp the naming priority. In any case, the only thing this tells is that they’ve read my application.
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That’s probably it. I also went to A2A and I did put the same preferred name on CommonApp, so the app probably does take precedence. Thanks for the clarifying info.
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Aye my friend just received a financial aid letter from Amherst…did anyone of you get it ?