I am planning on ED for WashU. What are my chances. I do know that its totally unpredictable however any expert guidance after looking at my stats.
GPA: 3.65 UW/4.125 Weighted (end of Jr)
7 APs and 2 Post AP courses completed by Junior year. Taking 4 APs and and 1 Post AP classes Sr year
ACT: single test: 36
Working as intern for mid size company for last 3 years. Part-time during school year and full time summers in same field as what I plan applying
4 year Varsity sport
1 club officer
Good amount of volunteer work and few state level awards and participated in National level in same area of interest
With the lower UW GPA, is there a noted upward trend? Were the lower grades in courses unrelated to your intended major - or some obvious explanation (illness?)of disparity between ACT score and GPA? Are you a captain in your sport or otherwise recognized/would be able to play it in college? I think with strong LOR , upward trend in gpa then decent possibility in ED. IF it were RD, then probably not unless URM/other hook.
No one outside of someone with experience in admissions seeing your full app can provide you with a reasonable estimate. We can offer some data points. As of a couple years ago (matriculants fall 2019 pre-Covid per a self reported A2C census):
-roughly 25% of kids applying to WashU with a 3.75+ UWGPA and a 1500+ SAT got in RD. This was non-CS though. That compares favorably to nearly all other USNWR T20 private schools. Most were 10-15%. A couple others (Vandy and Cornell were low 20s). This is a self reported, non-scientific sample. But it’s something.
-ED acceptance data should provide some boost, but ED acceptance rates are misleading. ED applicants will skew more hook-heavy: athletes, children of staff and legacies. Unhooked acceptance will be far lower. Still, as a percentage of total applicants and enrollees, WashU has fewer legacies and athletes, so total ED acceptance overrated for unhooked ED less than its peers. What I’ve heard from multiple fellow alumni is that kids in the stats zone I listed above with a legacy boost (which isn’t big at WashU) are getting in about 50% of the time. I’d expect someone without it is getting in between 25% RD and 50% legacy boosted ED. So your baseline guess is maybe 35% ED.
-CS may be the most competitive major out there, so any acceptance rates listed above will need to be reduced to account for that. And you’re also not hitting that GPA threshold included in the numbers above.
A lot of words to say that getting in ED with your GPA and test scores (and not having a full understanding of your GPA trends and the rest of your app) is pretty speculative. You are a reach. I have no idea if that equates to a 5% chance or a 30% chance. But assuming the rest of your app is in the wheelhouse, you’re probably in the middle of that. Call it 20%. If you had to pick a school to apply ED from among the “top 20-25ish” schools, WashU would be a good candidate to use that ED. It might actually be the best candidate from among those schools.
You would probably be a target match for slightly less selective schools offering CS in an ED round along the lines of CWRU, Rochester, Northeastern, Rose-Hulman. No idea if those schools offer ED. Just names that came to mind where your app would be more likely to fall in a 40%-75% acceptance band.