it is true ED/EA acceptance rate is 2-3 times of that for RD in general, but does that translate into “significant advantage in terms of admissions chance”? No for students like OP, because she is competing with completely different pools of applicants, the rate does not translate into chance. There will many many recruited and/or hooked (URM, legacy, FGLI, QB, etc) applicants lined up in front of this asian student, and then the rest will be compatible even higher achievers.
Just want to make my #20 clear:
it is true ED/EA acceptance rate is 2-3 times of that for RD in general, but does that translate into “significant advantage in terms of admissions chance”? No for students like OP, because she is competing with completely different pools of applicants, the rate does not translate into chance. There will many many recruited and/or hooked (URM, legacy, FGLI, QB, etc) MOSTLY QUALIFIED applicants lined up in front of this asian student, and then MOST of the rest will STILL be compatible even higher achievers, whereas in RD round, minimum half of the applicants will have much lower GPA/SAT than OP’s.
I dont think this is true. There is no proof that the early pool at the ED ivies is significantly more qualified than the RD pool. In fact the opposite might be true. There are a ton of extremely qualified HYPSM-rejected or deferred applicants applying to non-HYP ivies during RD. That competition is not there during ED.
Also even after accounting for legacies and athletes, the ED advantage is there. i can give you the example of Penn this year. The overall ED acceptance rate was 18.5%. After excluding athletes and legacies the acceptance rate for the rest was ~13-14%, which is more than double the RD rate.