<p>I am always happy to share any information I happen to have. :)</p>
<p>I believe I need to clarify my earlier post where I stated; “While there are a more recent studies that confirm the conclusions of Avery, I do not think that any study to this date has been able to support the notion that the ED pool is stronger than the RD or overall pool.” </p>
<p>In fact, there is a recent study (Avery and Levin in 2009) that reviewed the 1999-2000 applicants at 14 highly and selective schools and reached this conclusion:</p>
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<p>The top-ranked four schools where early applicants had higher SAT scores on average than regular applicants are Harvard, Yale, Stanford and M.I.T. At Across these schools, the average SAT score of early applicants was 1468, compared to 1450 for regular applicants.</p>
<p>The study further states that at a number of very selective schools, early applicants had lower test scores on average than regular applicants. Across these slightly lower-ranked schools, the average SAT score of early applicants was 1389, compared to 1405 for the regular applicants. The schools in the study were recognized as U. Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Penn, and Princeton </p>
<p>It is important to note that Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and M.I.T. only offer a combination of EA, SCEA, or RD. The schools that offer ED all seem to confirm the advantage described by Avery et.al. in 2003.</p>
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<p>A few years back, Emory published both its EDI and EDII stats and the difference was significant. EDII was barely a nominal increase boost over RD. OTOH, a college that is need-aware might look on EDII just as favorably as EDI.</p>
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<p>They may attract more candidates that way - the ones who would like to have at least one acceptance in hand. (For the EA applicant, that can save a lot of effort later on – no reason to worry about applying a bunch of safeties if the acceptance from a good school is already in hand. )</p>
<p>For the school, it gives them an excellent targeted marketing opportunity. Once the student has been accepted EA, they are very likely to receive a lot of interesting mail, phone calls, and invitations from that college – and most schools that offer EA also give merit aid, so of course the school has the opportunity to dangle some very attractive offers.</p>
<p>You would have to guess EDII applicants are weaker as a pool. Most probably applied to a peer school EDI and were rejected.</p>
<p>Being rejected doesn’t mean “weaker,” hmom. We all know that the people who are rejected at top schools aren’t “weak” – there just isn’t enough room for all comers.</p>
<p>It really helps if you look at the raw numbers as well as the percentages. A percentage looks great, but 50% of 200 students is not the same as 50% of 1000 students (obviously). Most colleges have a clear idea in mind of how many ED spots they plan to offer. </p>
<p>So lets say that college X usually receives 300 ED applicants and accepts 50% of them; in the RD pool they get 4500 applicants and accept 20%. So ED looks pretty good — but the real story is that the college will offer admission to 1050 students overall – 150 in the ED round and 900 in the RD round.</p>
<p>If more students apply ED, the college is unlikely to increase the number of ED spots offered – so lets say word gets around about the huge ED/RD differential and the next year 500 students apply ED, and only 4300 applicants apply RD. The college still accepts 150 students from the ED pool – but now that translates to an only 30% admit rate ED, and the RD admit rate has shifted up slightly to roughly 21%. So, among other things, you can see that because of the small size of the ED pool, a relatively small increase in applicants can significantly change the percentages – whereas the RD statistics, in the larger pool, will remain relatively stable.</p>
<p>The smaller the overall ED pool, the more likely it is that it leans heavily towards “hooked” applicants such as legacies or recruited athletes who are strongly encouraged to apply ED. If there are 100 such applicants each year – then in my example when the ED pool was 300, the “real” admit rate for the unhooked applicant would have been 25% (50 spots from the unhooked pool of 200) – and when the ED pool rises to 500, the actual ED admit rate for unhooked applicants drops to 12.5%, significantly lower than the RD rate. </p>
<p>On the other hand, the unhooked ED applicant is still being evaluated against a smaller pool – is it better to be 1 out of 400 applicants competing for 50 spots, or 1 out of 4300 students competing for 900 spots? The problem with looking at percentages is that it assumes each applicant is equal, whereas the reality is that applicants are selected based on their individual merits. If we did a thought experiment where all but 1 slot was used up, but the remaining pool remains in play – then the last spot in the ED pool will go to 1 student out of 350, whereas in the RD round the last spot goes to 1 student out of 3400. </p>
<p>I do think you have to look at the reality that ED applicants are selected to benefit the college and fill its needs, not to benefit the student. No under-qualified ED applicant is ever going to be admitted because the ad com took pity on them – in each case, that student offers the college something that they wouldn’t easily be able to get in the RD round. That something could simply be the ability to pay full freight – but the bottom line is that the college is going to select the strongest students from its ED pool, not the weakest. </p>
<p>I think ED might confer an advantage to a student who is competitive for admissions at the school, but doesn’t have any particularly distinguishing quality – they have what it takes to get in, but they are likely to get lost in the crowd in the RD round. But I don’t see how logically it could confer an advantage to the unhooked student who is under-qualified for the school. How would the college possibly benefit from tying up a spot with a questionable student when they know there will be stronger students to choose from in the RD round?</p>
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<p>I suspect many were rejected from a more selective school rather than a peer school. </p>
<p>The schools that offer EDII are usually a notch down in selectivity from the very top. Why wouldn’t they welcome applications from students who were rejected from a top-of-the-top-tier school? They’re still getting a student who likes their school better than its peers.</p>
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<p>Well, there is at least one school for which we do NOT have to guess. </p>
<p>Students who were admitted to Hamilton College between Fall 1999 and Fall 2007, a selective liberal arts college in the Northeast, through the Early Decision Plan II (ED II) program have lower college GPAs and are less likely to receive honors, fellowships, and outside scholarships during their undergraduate years than those admitted through the regular decision process. Students who are admitted through the Early Decision Plan I (ED I) students are not statistically different from regular decision candidates. These results hold after controlling for high school aptitude, SAT test scores, and a number of other background characteristics. The students admitted through the Early Decision Plan II (ED II) also had lower admission statistics.</p>
<p>A few numbers for the admitted classes
Overall - EDI - EDII
Verbal SAT 639.68 633.11 619.84
Math SAT 640.77 636.07 629.99
HS Rank 12.61 12.19 13.17
Honor Society 0.22 0.21 0.15
Admissions Committee Rating 11.43 11.25 10.59</p>
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<p>Calmom, that is a good example to start, but you might want to add a few important elements. </p>
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<li><p>For many schools that offer ED, there are few reasons to NOT increase the number of admissions under ED. Why? Because the overwhelming majority of students are clearly showing the school is their first choice and that they have the financial ability to pay (often full fare.) Let’s remember that the ED yield among selective schools is 97% and more than 90% nationwide. </p></li>
<li><p>If the school accepts 50% of 300 ED applicants, they know that between 140 and 150 will attend. </p></li>
<li><p>In addition of using a target rate of 20%, it is important to underscore the impact of the yield. A school that admits 900 RD students with a 30% yield will only land about 270 enrolled students. 150 over 1050 is not that important. 140/150 enrolled ED students over fewer than 450 is much more relevant.</p></li>
<li><p>Having missed the target of the class, the school will probably have to dig deep into the waitlist pool. </p></li>
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<p>If you want to play with real numbers, take a look at Smith CDS numbers for 2009-2010</p>
<p>Out of 4,011 applications, Smith accepted a total of 1,904 students. However, they admitted 166 out of 297 in ED with an eye towards an expected class of 665. This means they expected to enroll 500 from the RD pool. From the remaining 3,714 applications, they admitted about 1,700, including close to 100 from the waitlist. In other words, to enroll the remaining 500 RD students, they had to find 100 in the waitlist. This means that their RD pool only yielded … 400 students or about 10% of the total applications. </p>
<p>Makes those ED applicants all the more important. And explains why schools such as Smith, and lower ranked LACs do not hesitate to reward their ED pool with very high admit rates. Any student that is merely in the admission ballpark and does not apply for financial aid has to be considered as carrying a GIANT hook! High stat students are virtually guaranteed admission.</p>
<p>the other thing I think worth noting is the “value” of the ED advantage. One top 10 school rep said it was at best a “few percent.” Of course, this is a school with a ~12% RD admission rate. So adding a “few” may mean a 15% admissions rate. Better, right? Heck yeah, 25% better! </p>
<p>Then do the math for Duke which last year said ED was worth “10 points”. With a combined 23% admission rate (from IPEDS), 10 more points = 33%. But in reality, ED yields a 33/23-1 = 44% increase in chances over the combined RD rate.</p>
<p>Don’t most ED applicants have few financial needs? An ED applicant has to attend if accepted, regardless of what level of financial aid offered- right?</p>
<p>Why wouldn’t a college take most ED applicants if this is the case? I would think a college would be thrilled to have an applicant that meets academic requirements (even barely) but can pay their own way. I strongly suspect that a couple of ED kids at DD’s school were accepted to a school I don’t they would have gotten into RD.</p>
<p>An ED applicant has to attend if accepted, regardless of what level of financial aid offered- right?</p>
<p>No, if the student/family feels that the FA package is insufficient, the offer can be declined without consequence. </p>
<p>Schools want to lock in both top academics and money.</p>
<p>It would be very bad business for a highly selective college to take more than a certain percentage of its overall admitted students from the ED pool --usually 40-45% is a break point, for several reasons:</p>
<p>1) Since the ED pool is largely made up of more wealthy students, the more the school relies on ED, the more it becomes seen as a bastion of privilege.
2) Because of the various factors impacting the ED process, the ED pool is likely to be far less diverse than the RD pool – so a college that values diversity is likely to run into problems when too much of the class comes from ED. (The ED pool is probably more likely to be weighted toward students from affluent families; students from private schools; and students from geographic areas close to the school).
3) Too much reliance on the ED pool will end up discouraging students from applying RD, reducing the overall number of applicants. Few people will apply to a school with a small admit rate if they know that the school has already filled up 60%+ of its available spots with ED admits – why bother? While yield is up, the overall percentage of admits might go down if the RD pool is substantially diminished.
4) You can play whatever games you want with statistics as to GPA and test scores, but is realistically impossible for the ED pool to provide as strong a class as the RD pool when the RD is much bigger. The sheer number of RD applicants means that there will be more students in that bigger pool with a greater variety of talents and abilities to offer. The college would end up diminishing the overall quality of its student body to the extent that it over-relies on the ED pool. Obviously the down side of RD for all but the most elite colleges is that the majority of admitted students are going to turn down the college and go elsewhere – but yield is fairly predictable from one year to the next, and it would make no sense for a college to shut itself out of the bidding for highly desireable students.</p>
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<p>Sorry, what was the censored website again?</p>
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<p>Why is there this continuing assumption that the only schools that people ever desire are the top-of-the-top tier ones, and that no one ever has a goal to go to a top-but-not-tippy-top school just because they like it and it suits them?</p>
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<p>Calmom, inasmuch as I am not sure if you answered to me (and to your own example) I’d like to point that there are other factors in play. In your example, having only 300 ED applications (out of 4000) would NEVER yield more than 50% of the enrolled class, unless the school had an extremely low yield (demonstrating the lack of popularity of the school among both ED applicants and admitted students.) In your example, the school could admit 75% of its ED pool and it would be a GOOD decision. Of course, we know that because that is exactly what schools as prestigious as Smith (and other non-coed schools) have been known to do. </p>
<p>As far as the 40-45% “limit” I am sure that you know that Barnard has crossed that limit in past years. But if we want to study past history, we do not look down the list of lesser ranked school … all we need to do is to look at the school that tends to blaze the trail of utter dominance in college admissions, namely Harvard. </p>
<p>How many times in the history of Harvard’s ED should we assume they admitted more than 50% of their enrolled class from their ED pool? And, of course, the public numbers might not include the deferred students who were admitted in the RD pool, or even in the waitlist.</p>
<p>Fwiw, it is important to understand that the ED (both EDI and EDII) is an animal with many different heads. Depending the popularity of a school to generate applications and its performance in transforming admitted students into enrolled students, the mechanism of ED might accomplish different functions, ranging from managing the tuition discounting to directly managing the enrollment and responding to the signals of clear first choice of the applicants pool. </p>
<p>For some schools, the difficult part is having to build a class from a pool that is 8 to 15 times the size of its freshman class. For others, there is a constant worry to find enough bodies that are both sufficiently capable academically and financially. </p>
<p>The typical analysis on CC tend to focus on the big names such as HYPS and sometimes on the schools listed in the first pages of the USNews. The reality is that Ivy League and a small number of schools operate on a different plane than the hundreds of lesser selective schools that HAVE to use the early admission cycles to fill their classes. Perhaps it is bad business or bad news for diversity, but it is reality of all but a VERY small group of highly selective schools.</p>
<p>PS Fwiw, it is important to recognize that the schools that share the few spots at the very top of the food chain have decided to either focus on EA admissions or solely on their RD cycles. What remains to be seen is this truly for the benefit of the students or as a predatory move targeting the lower ranked schools that on (rare) occasions did scoop of “the HYPS et al” admitted students. There is no doubt that HYPS would love to operate in an environment that prohibited early admissions.</p>
<p>If someone’s not full-pay, it’s unwise to apply ED … and if someone IS full-pay, I’m not sure they should really care if the school fills 30% or 50% of the class ED, or if it winds up attracting more rich kids, or whatever. I certainly don’t. And I fail to see why I should care about a school’s yield, at all. If <em>I</em> like it, I’m going to go there – the fact that only x% of other students might is irrelevant to me.</p>
<p>PG, applicants should not care less about the yield. The yield discussion above was only relevant to the size of the admitted classes between RD and ED. </p>
<p>The biggest question for a full pay ED applicant should be one and only: how do I maximize my application impact by picking the right school? This choice could be to place it a school where the advantage might be a 20% (20% RD to 40% ED) or an even higher advantage at schools that are known to go well beyond 50% admit rates.</p>
<p>As we know, the lower one goes down on the “selectivity index” the best the chances get for ED applicants. For a full paying student, the chances reach the shoo-in level!</p>
<p>as a frequent observer on this thread, one might be advised to check out Dickinson’s CDS when it comes out to illustrate the entire ED/RD yield issue from last year…apparently, they guessed wrong and ended up with underenrollment…a perfect example of a school that may have to think twice about upping their ED acceptance rate in this climate…just an example…not sure if their CDS is out yet…</p>