Bates vs. Colby

Colleges and Universities A-Z Colby College
21

<p>I think all of these numbers are not the whole story - both schools have a much higher ED rate than their RD rate, which makes it much harder for kids who have to be concerned about financial aid so cannot apply ED to get in.</p>

<p>Consider it: if they have about 500 students each year enrolled, and they admitted 52% of the ED applicants, then they have very few spots left for the 3400 or so who apply RD. They accept 1454 total, about 250 are accepted already, so they take roughly 1200 out of the RD pool of 3400? The RD number is less than 30%. So I take all of these numbers with a grain of salt. The only school I have noticed so far that does not take a higher percentage of students through ED is Bowdoin - their numbers are about 25% ED and 29% RD.</p>

22

<p>Colby Admissions posted enough data in his 4/25 and 4/30 posts to calculate Colby's actual numbers for the class of 2011. ED was 190/452, for a 42.0% admission rate, and RD was 1,253/4,227, for a 29.6% admission rate. Overall was 1,443/4,679 for a 30.8% admission rate. This disparity is typical at most colleges, although less pronounced at Bowdoin. For the class of 2010, I calculated the following (using data in the Common Data Sets): Bates ED 46% and RD 27%; Bowdoin ED 29% and RD 24%; Colby ED 52% and RD 36%; Carleton ED 51% and RD 27%; Haverford ED 50% and RD 25%; Skidmore ED 66% and RD 42%. However, I agree with Colby Admissions that the ED pools are highly self-selective and that these numbers can be misleading.</p>