<p>Barrelbowl, the whole point of ED may have been to draw the best applicants to apply to institutions, but that is not the case today. EA is the system that draws the most "best" applicants. The point of ED is to attract students who are geniunely interested in the institution. That way, colleges wouldn't give up seats to students who choose not to come to the school. In other words, the colleges wouldn't be wasting seats, or taking seats away from certain students who really want to go to an institution and giving seats to students who don't want them anyway.</p>
<p>Sdma89, i understand what you are saying, and that was the reason i applied ED. But the fact of the matter is that ED is just as competitive at RD if not more. Check this out about percentlies of ED for UVA this year:</p>
<p>Stats are the basically the same as for the RD of last year, with a few exceptions where ED is higher than RD.</p>
<p>The only benefit of ED, I think is, you recieve your letter in late November, instead of April and its smooth sailing for the rest of your (fun) senior year</p>
<p>JMIONE, that is why I stated that UVA may be an EXCEPTION in a previous post. That was the exact article that I read on the UVA website that I was talking about where the dean of admissions stated that applying ED won't be a statistical advantage at UVA because the stats mirror RD. However, generally at highly selective colleges, applying ED is better because the quality of the pool is more than likely weaker than RD and it is definitely weaker than EA. Most college counselors should tell you that. The author of "A for Admission" states this as well.</p>