People always say that if your heart is set on one school, and you wouldn’t want to apply early anywhere else, you should go ahead and apply early. The supposed logic behind it is that more people get accepted (as a fraction of people who apply) early action than people who get accepted regular decision.
But is this fact mostly attributed to a bit of self-selection among the applicants? I.e., more qualified/outstanding/attractive/hookish students apply in the early rounds, so therefore the chance of admission is higher if you apply early? Or do admissions officers, in truth, look more closely at applications the first time around?
If it’s the former, it seems a little deleterious to encourage kids to apply if it’s a long shot for them either way.
For early action, any higher rate of admission (and not all schools have a higher rate in EA) probably is due to self-selection. (More motivated, informed, etc., applicants) So anyone who thinks they will get in with lower stats than average just because it’s EA is probably misinformed.
For early decision, you can get some edge, though not enough to go from extreme long shot to likely. Higher rates are probably a combination of self-selection and the school’s desire to lock down good applicants.
I don’t think people are always saying what you say they’re always saying. People do sometimes say that you shouldn’t apply ED unless you’re sure that is the one school you would go to if you could go to any. I would say more that you should only apply ED if you’re sure you won’t regret not hearing from any other school (and you’re sure you can afford the ED one).
But nobody’s saying that you should only apply early action to your absolute favorite.
@Wilson98 My thoughts exactly. I will clarify that I did not mean to say that you should only apply to one school early or that if you have a far below average SAT score you should go ahead and apply early to Harvard because the chance is higher (it’s not, usually, if your stats are that lacking)–just that if there’s a specific private school with all the stars aligned (i.e., you can confidently afford it, your stats are above average for it, and you are sure of the strength of your application), then you should apply early to it, along with some publics if you so please (if the specific school you are applying early to allows that sort of thing, of course). I was simply looking for a little bit of light shed on what sort of advantage applying early actually gives, or if any perceived advantage is created by the strength of the early applicant pool itself.
Unhelpful answer: it varies school by school. For ED, not only is there some self-selection but also recruited athletes and some legacy applications raising the acceptance rates. Some schools, though, do have a pretty dramatic gap between ED and RD acceptance rates. In those cases, it’s hard to believe there’s not some advantage. If you have a school you love, and can afford to pay without any aid, and it had such a dramatic gap, it would probably help to apply ED assuming you would have a reasonable chance at admission but would not be a certainty or near certainty. In that case, you would probably be better off getting read from the ED pool than perhaps very crowded RD pool. The school would know you really want to be there and are certainly attending. You would avoid getting caught in a numbers crunch. As noted above, though, if acceptance would be unlikely or nearly certain in RD, ED would probably not make any difference. One additional factor: how “hot” is a school? Once in a while, a school experiences a big jump or fall in applications. Did your favorite school make the Final Four or BCS Championship last year? Have applications risen sharply in recent years? Is this trend changing the metrics for accepted students, and the numbers you are looking at from a year or two earlier actually out of date? Then you might want especially to be in the ED pool. Good luck.
I agree with @TTG . I can use my kid as an example. She attends a well-known LAC. She had great stats, expressed interest, interviewed, loved the school, and was a very good fit. The college is known for not only considering interest, but also being test-optional, and actively seeks first-generation students. It accepts about 50% of the incoming class ED, because like many LACs, it needs to protect its yield.
She applied RD and was WLed. Despite knowing that her chances were better ED, she really wanted options and refused to apply ED. She was eventually accepted off WL and attends that school. We are sure if she had applied ED she would have been accepted. The kids admitted ED do tend to be a self-selecting pool, and does include athletes and legacies. It’s telling that the RD acceptance rate for unhooked females at her school is around 13%.
To address your original point, if a kid doesn’t have the right stats to begin with, it isn’t wise to encourage them to apply ED. ED isn’t going to get you in if you don’t have what the college is looking for.
@TTG, that was actually pretty helpful. For instance, I didn’t even consider the fluctuation in the volume of applicants annually–I just assumed it was increasing across the board. I didn’t even think to see where it was increasing faster or slower. Thank you!
@Lindagaf, do you think it’s better for a kid with, as you said, “the right stats” to apply ED to a school that’s a reach for everyone (HYPSM; and I’m aware that a couple of those <— don’t have ED) or to apply ED to more of a high match/reach school (Harvey Mudd, Pomona, even though those are very selective in their own right)? I am assuming that the “right stats” are being above the 75th percentile SAT/ACT/SAT II/GPA wise.
I agree, the “right stats” are generally above the 75th percentile, as well as having all those intangible factors that go along with holistic admissions.
I think your ED is always best spent on the school that is your heart’s desire. If you have great stats, along with great everything else needed for HYPSM, go for it. Understand that “everything else” needs to be exceptional, in general. HM and Pomona are reaches for all, but yes, I do think if you have very high stats and a special something, those schools are better bets ED. The LACs are usually all looking for a particular kind of student too. Fit is really important. Make yourself appealing to the school you are most interested in.
Agreed, varies from school to school. Schools that have 1/2 of their class enter through ED will generally be better ED chances than peer schools that admit 1/3 of their class through ED. At MIT it appears that ED has zero help, and given the self selection students may be more likely to be accepted in the RD rounds.
There is some edge to ED for obvious reasons. A school with a 40% yield in RD can admit two kids through ED or 5 kids through RD to receive 2 students. One helps their acceptance rate much more than the other. Schools also like students who want to be at the school at they are more likely to be happy at that school and therefore also more likely to succeed to some extent.
I do think that a lot of the ED acceptance bump is due to self-selection along to go with the higher percentage of legacy students and athletes within ED, but there is some bump for most schools, whether large or small.
Most important is to research schools, and visit if you can, and try to find the schools that are the best fit for you. That’s much more important than a school’s ranking. I’ve visited numerous (about 50) schools over the last five years for different reasons. My biggest takeaway: there are many, many schools with great students, great professors, and beautiful campuses. I think there was maybe one where I felt like my kids would not get as strong of an education as I would like. The reality is there are probably scores of schools, probably more, where if you went, you would leave having loved the experience, in the classroom and out.
But if you can afford to apply ED to your top choice and feel like admission chances would be better than in RD (for reasons in above posts), then you probably want to do that.
Cost aside (and with the extremely high costs that is most often not the case), one might face a situation where they have a slight preference for a hyper-competitive school (as you describe above) over one with a better chance of acceptance ED. Then it might be a tough choice, because you might be using that one ED application on a place where you might very well not be accepted (1A choice) and forfeiting the opportunity to use it at your 1B choice.
Otherwise, only apply ED where you really want to go (again leaving cost out of the equation).