<p>To be honest I’m too lazy to do any arithmetic, because it’s not a big concern of mine, or my family. I personally take the adcom at her word, since it is identical to what an adcom at a top LAC told me about his school, and identical to what I’ve read others say, and identical to what a research study I found says. I’ve no reason to doubt it.</p>
<p>In the “A is for Admissions” book, a former Dartmouth adcom writes,</p>
<p>“If you are looking for a way to increase your chances of getting into an Ivy, one possibility is to apply early decision, or early action”.</p>
<p>Benefits to college she cites include: set standard for the incoming class, 100% yield, get a solid body of students who are excited to attend. </p>
<p>From some cruising around the web I did a while ago when this came up elsewhere:</p>
<p>Here’s Carnegie Mellon:</p>
<p>"Both Steidel and Elliott agreed that the advantage of early decision is that it allows admissions counselors to know which students want to come here the most.</p>
<p>“I would rather have kids who wanted to come here first than other kids who applied regular decision because they didn’t get into other schools,” Elliott said. “</p>
<p>Here’s a UC chancellor & author of an admissions book:
"The advantage of early decision for a college is that the college knows that each student who is accepted early decision will indeed enroll in the fall; there is no guesswork. Even early action eliminates guesswork for a college—most have learned that a student admitted early action, even though the decision isn’t binding, is more likely to attend that college than a student admitted during the regular decision cycle. The early application process appears to be an efficient way to match students who want a given college with a college that wants them, and it looks like everyone wins. But the answer is not that simple.</p>
<p>Critics of early decision (and to some extent, early action) point out that it has become something that it was never intended to be—an admissions strategy that increases the chances of being accepted to a selective institution. Some colleges have admissions rates two or three times higher for early applicants compared with regular decision applicants, and fill from one-third to one-half of their freshman classes from the early pool. As a result, the much larger pool of regular decision applicants ends up competing for fewer slots well after the much smaller group of early applicants has secured a place."</p>
<p>an older magazine article:</p>
<p>"The real question about the ED skew is whether the prospects for any given student differ depending on when he or she applies. Last fall Christopher Avery, of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and several colleagues produced smoking-gun evidence that they do. The authors analyzed five years’ worth of admissions records from fourteen selective colleges, involving a total of 500,000 applications, and interviewed 400 college students, sixty high school seniors, and thirty-five counselors. They found that at the ED schools an early application was worth as much in the competition for admission as scoring 100 extra points on the SAT. For instance, a student with a combined SAT score of 1400 to 1490 (out of 1600) who applied early was as likely to be accepted as a regular-admission student scoring 1500 to 1600. An early student scoring 1200 to 1290 was more likely to be accepted than a regular student scoring 1300 to 1390. </p>
<h2>The equivalent of a 100-point increase in SAT scores makes an enormous difference in an applicant’s chances, especially for a mid-1400s candidate. Indeed, the difference is so important as to be a highly salable commodity. A gain of roughly 100 points is what The Princeton Review guarantees students who invest $500 and up in its test-prep courses. The Avery study’s findings were the more striking because what admissions officers refer to as “hooked” applicants were excluded from the study. These are students given special consideration, and therefore likely to be admitted despite lower scores, because of “legacy” factors (alumni parents or other relatives, plus past or potential donations from the family), specific athletic recruiting, or affirmative action. "</h2>
<p>"Below this formal structure lies a crucial reality, which Penn is almost alone in forthrightly disclosing: students have a much better chance of being admitted if they apply early decision than if they wait to join the regular pool. </p>
<h2>For instance, when selecting its class of 2004, which entered college last fall, Yale admitted more than a third (37 percent) of the students who applied early and less than a sixth (16 percent) of those who applied regular. The most extreme difference among major colleges was at Columbia, where 40 percent of the earlies and 14 percent of the regulars were accepted. Amherst accepted 35 percent of the earlies and 19 percent of the regulars. Hamilton College, in upstate New York, took 70 percent of the earlies and 43 percent of the regulars. At the University of Pennsylvania 47 percent of early applicants and 26 percent of regular applicants were admitted. "</h2>
<p>“Years ago many children of alums were not viewing Penn as their first choice, so they didn’t apply early,” he said. “We said we were willing to give them a measure of preference, but only if they were serious about coming.” It made sense, he added, for Penn to extend the policy to applicants in general: if they are extra serious about Penn, Penn will make an extra effort for them. “We’ve been very direct about it,” Stetson told me. “Everybody likes to be loved, and we’re no exception. Everybody likes to see a sign of commitment, and it helps in the selection process.” Bruce Poch, the admissions director at Pomona College, in California, is generally a critic of an overemphasis on early plans, but he agrees that they can help morale. “It’s worth something to the institution to enroll kids who view the college as their first choice,” he says. “Fewer people are whining about transferring from Day One. They turn out to be a lot of the campus leaders.” This was part of Penn’s strategy in pushing its binding ED plan. “I would say that these days eighty percent of our students view Penn as their first choice,” Lee Stetson concluded. “You can’t overstate what that does for the mood of the campus.” </p>
<p>“It does something else as well, which is understood by every college administrator in the country but by very few parents or students. The more freshmen a college admits under a binding ED plan, the fewer acceptances it needs from the regular pool to fill its class—and the better it will look statistically. That statistical improvement can have significant consequences.”</p>
<p>From the Avery et al, paper:
“There is a common belief, validated in this paper, that selective colleges favor early applicants in admissions decisions.” </p>
<p>And here is a link to that paper:
<a href=“http://ericchaing.org/files/Avery_2001_WP.pdf[/url]”>http://ericchaing.org/files/Avery_2001_WP.pdf</a></p>
<p>Now, some of this is old. Could everything be different now? Yes, but more likely in degree than as an absolute matter IMO. The comments by the two adcoms I heard were not old at all. Could their comments be incorrect? I suppose.</p>
<p>But I don’t care much. I am inclined to take their word for it. After all, I am not looking at the total content of those applications, to see what happens to equally strong applicants in both cycles. But they, unlike me, are in a position to do so.</p>