Stanford has claimed that applicants are just as likely to be admitted if they apply early as they are in the regular pool. This is even though the admit rate early is roughly double the regular admit rate. Is it true that you are still equally likely to get in REA as RD?
Yes that is true, you really need to believe what they say, they have no reason to mislead you.
There might be a slight advantage to REA but it is very very small. My counselor advised me to do REA because Stanford is my first choice but said that other top schools give much bigger preference to early applicants.
your suspicion is correct… there is an advantage to applying early to Stanford… while MIT offers zero advantage for EA. HYP confer the greatest advantage when applying early even when factoring in legacies athletes etc.
do the math and run the numbers to get a better idea across different schools