<p>At Harvard, the regular decision acceptance rate hovers at 3% while its early acceptance rate is a whopping 24%! Is this number highly inflated by athletes and legacies or does early action really give you that much of an advantage at Harvard? A school like Stanford, for example, has only a very small difference - 3% regular and 10% early</p>
<p>Harvard admitted about half their class during the early round – Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and other selective colleges, who also use the early round to admit about the same number of recruited athletes, legacies and URM’s DID NOT do that.</p>
<p>So, if you are a qualified applicant – high test scores, high GPA with demonstrated course rigor, stellar recommendations, interesting EC’s and thought provoking essays – your chances are definitely better in the early round at Harvard. By taking so many students from the early round, Harvard Admissions is letting applicants know that your chances are better if you apply early.</p>
<p>Is the case just specific for Harvard? Are there any other colleges that have significantly higher EA rates?</p>
<p>^^ Yes, the case is specific to Harvard. </p>
<p>Prior to last year, when Harvard admitted about the same number of students in the early round as Yale, Princeton, Stanford etc, it was easy to accept their explanation that your chances are about equal applying SCEA and RD. But, given that Harvard accepted so many more students in the early round than their peers, your chances at Harvard would seem to be significantly better if you apply early. And much more so that at other schools. All of this presumes Harvard will accept about the same number of early applicants next year as they did this year . . . and that’s an unknown.</p>
<p>Duke is a highly selective school that will tell you your chances there are much better if you apply ED, and the stats bear it out.</p>
<p>^^ Duke is an Early Decision (ED) school – and generally ED schools have higher early acceptance rates than their regular rates. </p>
<p>If you are accepted to an ED school you must immediately withdraw all your applications to other colleges, so you DO NOT get to see where else you would have been accepted and DO NOT get to compare financial aid offers. </p>
<p>Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT are Early Action (EA) schools. If you apply early and are accepted you can wait until May 1st after hearing from all your other schools. That’s a huge difference. See: <a href=“Early Decision and Early Action – Counselors | College Board”>http://professionals.collegeboard.com/guidance/applications/early</a></p>
<p>Well the early rounds typically have more competitive students. So a lot of times, the better students are already in that pool, which is why the number of acceptances is so high.</p>
<p>They can be deceptive for the reasons given. A lot of the more competitive, on the ball students apply early as well as athletes. However, so do a lot of students hoping for an edge. For some schools, it’s more deceptive than others. If you are on the border line for acceptance at a small, highly selective school that has a lot of sports teams, yes, I would say ED is likely not to help you whereas it would help someone with very high academic stats. Such a school would want to lock in those high stats early along with the sports teams, and defer those border line, holding out for better. They would not want to let that high stats ED applicant go, since they could see that he is also in the market for other highly selective schools and if they defer him, he is very likely to go elsewhere since he is likely to have other highly selective offers. A kid on the borderline of being accepted…eh, chances are that he’d be in the border line anywhere and would likely accept your offer even if deferred as it would definitely be one of the reaches and could even be his most selective option. </p>
<p>^^^ Totally agree with that. Quite often we see a misconception that ED would give better chance to those applicants with borderline or below admission average stat. Or saying applying ED is like giving a 100pt or so increase in SAT score. Or anyone would have 2-3x higher chance of admission. Those are all non-sense. The school want a higher yield rate and secure good students. There are usually not enough room for all the ED applicants with above average credential anyway. There is no reason for them to accept below average students early and hurt their admission stat.</p>
<p>I think it’s a mistake to think that schools don’t accept below average students ED, they accept all sorts of students in the mid-50% percentile (25th to 75th percentile) of their acceptance range. What they don’t do is generally accept non-hooked sub-25th percentile students. If you had little chance of acceptance RD, ED won’t make up for what you are lacking. </p>
<p>A good case could be made for those students who are in the 25th-50th percentile to apply ED, your chances might be better than RD by showing this school is absolutely your first choice. There is little point wasting an ED chance on a school you are absolutely sure would accept you RD (75th+ percentile), unless the school is your #1 choice anyway or it is a highly selective school like Harvard (SCEA) where applying early really can make all the difference over RD.</p>
<p>Of course, an applicant with hook or athlete recruit are totally different categories from regular non-hooked applicants. But it is more likely due to the hook or recruitment get them accepted rather than the ED.</p>
<p>Exactly. Some schools require them to use the ED system though, or they lose their hook - which is also why the ED rates are often deceptive. Not everyone is playing by the same rules in the ED rounds.</p>
<p>Very true. Some schools include legacy in the ED round too.
Also, I have read at least one school (forgot which one) claiming the admission stat to be similar for ED and RD. Considering those with hooks and recruit accepted ED, the regular applicant admitted need to have better than admission average to make up the difference.</p>
<p>I believe the acceptance rate for Tufts is almost exactly the same ED and RD. They may not force hooked applicants into the ED rounds.</p>
<p>Most schools claim that the stats needed for ED and RD are exactly the same, logic alone explodes that myth, but for non-hooked applicants, it is a little true. I think for ED, there’s less chance a qualified applicant will get knocked out by an excess of other similar applicants - less congestion means there’s more chance you’ll get across the finish line.</p>
<p>The highly selective schools may not offer much edge at all to border line applicants as they know they will have the problem of turning down kids they’d love to take. It’s as the selectivity goes down a few notches, that it can help. A school that is nervous about locking in a class, and these days that’s a lot of them with the Common App, the higher numbers of apps sent out per student in that bracket, a lot of phantom applicants–they disappear when you accept them; a school that is need aware; an applicant that has something on the school’s wishlist are all situations where ED can be useful. </p>
<p>There can be a bit of a psychological advantage in terms of AD’s mindsets. The room is wide open, lots of seats. You are a lot more generous in letting people in there when you know you HAVE to fill that room and you have all of those empty seats. As the seats fill up, you then have the problem of taking too many people since you do have limits and you can start getting a bit more picky as you are also still going to keep some spots open for some stars that you want that may come venturing in late.</p>
<p>If one is a triple legacy (grandfather, mother, brother) applying ED to Brown, how much does this help as compared to applying RD and does being a legacy help at all, even in ED? I have seen information that for some schools, ie Cornell, legacies are only given an advantage if they apply ED, but they are given some advantage ED. DS2 would love to go to Brown (he will be one year behind his brother), but from what I have seen over the years with friends’ kids, it does not appear that being a legacy helps at all, either ED or RD. BTW, I think that is perfectly fine if they do NOT give any advantage, as I do not think my kid has a god given right to get into Brown. But in his case, if it confers no advantage, he really should pick another school for ED app, as without the legacy thing being a potential hook, I think he will be just like most of the other applicants that they defer and then reject. He is A- at top 20 HS in country, 32 on 1st ACT, good EC’s, etc. ie just like lots of other kids. </p>
<p>ED, with or without legacy status does confer some advantage, and if Brown is his first choice, his stats would indicate that it’s worth an attempt - people have been accepted with them. If another school is first choice and he’s above the 25% threshold, he should apply there. (All this is conditional on shopping for the best aid package is not necessary.) Also consider that many schools have ED2, while I don’t think Brown does, so if he’d be happy at Brown, but then wants a second shot if he doesn’t make it, there’s always that option as well.</p>
<p><a href=“Students question use of legacy admission - The Brown Daily Herald”>Students question use of legacy admission - The Brown Daily Herald;
</p>
<p>Good point about ED2. Brown is far and away first choice for DS2 and is great fit for what he wants to do longterm (PhD in Psych), and he would certainly be able to do the work if accepted (100% of hs class goes to 4yr colleges and most to very selective), but I have thought it such a long shot that I did not want to let him get too excited about it. DS1 was a different story, 2380 SAT and recruited athlete (swimming) so I was not as nervous for him. As for FA, we may not qualify for any, or maybe just a bit when two are in school, but it can only help if both were at Brown for those 3 years that their college days overlap. At this point, I am hoping he can get a couple more points on the ACT by September, and then he can apply ED to Brown, with parallel plan (sounds better than backup plan, right???) to select another school ED2. I had forgotten about ED2 as Brown does not have it. But I think many of his other top choices do have ED2 (vandy, emory, davidson)</p>
<p>My daughter had two #1 choices (we called them 1 and 1A), got deferred ED1, got accepted ED2, so it is a viable option especially if two schools are close in preference and one doesn’t offer ED2.</p>