Hi everyone, I’m a rising senior from France. Brown is my dream school, but I have still not gotten started on my suplement essays. Considering that Brown’s RD acceptance rate is 7.7%, and its ED acceptance rate is around 20%, should I apply ED? This would mean rushing my essays and maybe sending in an application that isn’t as good as my potential RD submission.
ED admission rates at Brown and the other Ivies are skewed due to “hooked applicants:” legacies (those with parents or grandparents who have attended the school) and recruited athletes (who are committing to play for the university’s sports team in the Ivy League, which is actually a sports conference.) The acceptance rate for
“unhooked” applicants is likely much closer to the Regular Decision acceptance rate.
IMO, you should only apply ED if ALL of the following are true:
- You LOVE Brown and would 110% attend if admitted.
- You're extremely confident you can present a well thought out and crafted application by the ED deadline, which is typically November 1st.
- You and your family can afford Brown if admitted (run the financial aid calculators if applicable, but keep in mind that these are ESTIMATES, not guarantees of aid----AND that they're meant for domestic, not international applicants.) Also, Brown is need-AWARE, so your level of financial need will be considered during the admissions process, though to what extent, I do not know.
As #2 isn’t true in your case, I would strongly recommend you to apply RD: you only get one chance to apply in this application cycle, so you want to put your best foot forward.
Hope that helps! Good luck with admissions!
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Brown’s RD acceptance rate is 7.7%, and its ED acceptance rate is around 20% < Brown uses ED to vacuum up the top applicants – ones they are sure they want – and to handle recruited athletes (each varsity sport gets a sport-dependent number of slots for applicants they want on their team who meet at least minimum academic requirements).
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Along the lines of what PikachuRocks15 said, the ED admit rate is higher simply because a disproportionately high number of applicants who are going to be admitted one way or the other apply ED. A relative few ED’s are denied outright, but most are deferred to RD.
From what I can divine as a long-time interviewer, applying RD isn’t likely to hurt your chances, especially if you weren’t likely to be admitted ED anyway. As for Legacies, I’ve had plenty of those who applied ED and were deferred to RD, same as most of the ED applicants. Brown’s Legacy admit rate it notably below some of the other Ivy schools. They have turned down some incredibly “connected” Legacies, even ones who demonstrated academic merit.
@Brown79 Just wanted to note that IIRC this year, Brown deferred ~25% and rejected ~60%, which is a switch from last-year’s deferral rate of ~60%. Brown’s trying to give students an earlier answer rather than giving them a soft-rejection, which I definitely appreciated. 
Imo, everyone considering ED at any top college should keep @Brown79’s post in mind. This is not a coin toss. No better probability of an admit if you are not the right candidate.
So, try to know what makes the right candidates.
@Brown79: A relative few ED’s are denied outright, but most are deferred to RD.
vs
@PikachuRocks15: this year, Brown deferred ~25% and rejected ~60%, which is a switch from last-year’s deferral rate of ~60%.
My knowledge base is principally centered on ~2010-2015 when I was area chair of a geographically small yet Brown-crazy region which has 2-3% of worldwide applications funneling through it. I think over that period, the deferral rate was well over 60% though I never did the calculation. So if it was 60% last year and 25% this year, quite a change in the longstanding state of things.
Time will tell whether 25% is a pandemic-related blivet, or a lasting shift in philosophy by Admissions. It occurs to me that since the whole point of deferrals, waitlisting and whatever else is to end up right where they want to be on admits, then the ever-increasing applicant pool would tend to push things towards more and more ED denials. When I was doing my thing they got around 30k applications each year, but now it’s getting towards 40k. They could drop more and more during ED and still accomplish their yield management.
There’s that, plus the simple fact more and more people seem to be applying who don’t have a chance of getting in, and would thus be quite drop-able if they happen to show up in the ED pool. The all-comers shift was fueled by Brown going to the Common App (Class of 2013), and has been further propelled by things like The Brown Promise, which has people applying simply because Brown may be one of the most net-affordable of their options – a shot at “pay less/get more”.