<p>Does applying Restrictive Early Action at Harvard improve your chances at admission? I initially wasn't planning to apply early to anywhere, but as Harvard doesn't have anything much extra for the supplement, I thought I might have a go at EA. I just wanted to know whether admission rates for EA tend to be higher than Regular, and why.</p>
<p>Admissions rates are higher for EA because the bulk of athletic recruits get admitted in that cycle. Some talk about legacies being favored there as well. Not sure. For the average applicant, I’d assume that the admit rate would be similar if they had applied RD. Schools with significant weight given to early applicants are schools that are concerned about their yield. Harvard is the king of “not caring about yield” schools – so there is no incentive for them to give advantage to early applicants.</p>
<p>" Harvard is the king of “not caring about yield” schools"
This could not be further from the truth :-). Harvard cares about the yield as much as any other top institutions because the yield is the hard measure of prestige.</p>
<p>OK: let me rephrase that: they are the “king of yield” — how much they fret about it is another matter. They have the best yield, hands-down. I infer that they don’t need to tinker w/EA applicants to boost their yield. But it’s only my guess.</p>
<p>If anything, EA should help. Harvard hasn’t been doing it in recent years, but if we take Yale as a proxy, the admissions rate for EA is significantly higher than for RD, partly because EA uses up a significant number of slots. Some of that higher rate can be explained by a stronger pool, recruited athletes, and maybe legacies, but with EA the admissions office hasn’t yet run out of slots. If you’re deferred for EA, you still have one more (long) shot. If you get rejected at EA, it’s unlikely you’d have done better with RD. </p>
<p>I don’t recommend ED at schools that offer it (unless you’re really, really sure you want to go there), because I think the chances of regret are too high. But if an EA school is your first choice, it makes sense to apply there.</p>
<p>Any other opinions?</p>
<p>The other opinion is: YES applying EA gives you a boost. Now finding people who subscribe to that opinion is a different matter.</p>
<p>Here’s the conventional wisdom: If you’re a viable candidate and H is definitely your #1 choice and you don’t need any Senior year first semester GPA boost, then apply. Nobody has a good chance at all – so you’re not going to be shifting the tent poles much if at all.</p>
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<p>But this seems beside the point when the early-application procedure is EA rather than ED.</p>
<p>Colleges have an incentive to admit students under ED. They get a student they like, who they know is going to enroll. It helps their yield numbers, and it gets them a well qualified student.</p>
<p>What’s a college’s incentive to admit students under EA? They tie up a place in the class that they won’t be able to offer in the RD round, but they have no guarantee that the student who’s been offered the slot will actually enroll.</p>
<p>Looking at this just in terms of economics, I can’t see a reason in the world why applying EA should increase a student’s chances of admission. Won’t hurt, of course, but I can’t see why it should help, either.</p>
<p>Sikorsky:
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<p>They have no guarantee, but the EA yield rate tends to run higher – more than 10% higher in recent experience at Yale. Applicants are likely to apply EA to a school they really like, and they’re likely to feel even more positive if they get admitted EA. Knowing you’re in at a school near the top of your list is a powerful antidote for the uncertainty that drives HS seniors crazy. That lets them skip applications to safety schools, and maybe even eliminate RD applications.</p>
<p>Oh, I completely understand what the student’s incentive is. But I think that for the reasons I outlined above, it’s reasonable to believe that most of the difference in the EA and RD admissions rates *and yield rates *comes, as others have said, from the overrepresentation of recruited students in the EA applicant pool.</p>
<p>But if you’re just another smart kid from Westchester County, NY, or San Mateo, CA, or Alpharetta, GA, I don’t see why Harvard has an incentive to do anything other than defer you to the RD round.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s reasonable to believe that most of the difference in EA and RD yield rate comes from recruited students. In years of observing, I have seen exactly two kids accepted SCEA to one of HYS fail to attend that college, with an n > 30, and none of them was a recruited athlete. Many of them applied to one or two other colleges, and some applied to lots, so lots of them THOUGHT about going elsewhere. But in the end they didn’t, and many others treated EA as if it were ED, especially if they were satisfied with their financial aid. </p>
<p>RD yields are already astronomical at these schools, especially Harvard. EA yields are probably approaching or over 90%, even for nonrecruited students.</p>
<p>In the one year Harvard had SCEA (for the Class of 2010) I think the SCEA yield was 92% and the overall yield was 79.3%</p>
<p>The SCEA admit rate was 21.2%, and the RD admit rate was 6.9%.</p>
<p>Harvard had SCEA at least from sometime in the early oughts through the class of 2011, and unrestricted early action for a year or two before that.</p>
<p>Not true. Harvard had open early action throughout this century, even as Yale, Princeton and Stanford went to binding early decision for the Class of 2000. Each of those schools saw an immediate yield rate jump of 5-6% thanks to ED. It was only after Yale and Stanford - acting in tandem - moved to SCEA since their ED app numbers were falling, and Harvard found that it was admitting people (up to 75 or 80) to which Yale claimed “superior rights” that it reluctantly, and briefly, moved to SCEA itself. There were those at Harvard who preferred to ignore what they viewed as a shady market sharing device and were prepared to admit anyone they wanted, despite YS claims to “exclusive rights.” Cooler heads prevailed, until finally Harvard, joined by Princeton, junked the whole rotten early admissions process. It is indeed unfortunate that, in self defense, Harvard and Princeton have now returned to SCEA, since no other Ivy + was willing to take a yield hit by going to true open admissions.</p>
<p>The key question is why Harvard brings back SCEA. In terms of the war on the yield rate and Admit/Yield ratio, Harvard is winning and Princeton and Yale is suffering a continuous decline in the last couple years after Harvard dropped SCEA. Only Stanford is holding steady. It is quite likely both Yale and Princeton will see an instant boost in their yield rates in 2012. From the yield perspective, there is not much incentive for Harvard to bring back SCEA. The reason for the switch is probably to spread the case load over a longer time window. So one likely benefit may be that the adcom people can afford to spend a little more time on each application and read it more thoroughly.</p>
<p>I don’t believe the motivation is as benign as you imagine. The Harvard yield rate only dropped about 2 points from 79% to 77% in the “early admissions free” era, but they are frosted that Yale and Stanford have utilized their “exclusive 90-day negotiating period” to romance people they wouldn’t have had a chance with, otherwise. Harvard wants EVERYBODY on their list and they don’t want to SHARE! </p>
<p>What has happened is that the size of the common admit pools with YPS have grown, since “ordinary” Harvard applicants have occasionally taken a W-T-F approach by throwing in a non-binding early app to the other places. By the time Harvard admits them, Stanford or Yale has already sent them piles of totchkes to show their love, and some of these people will have settled for the bird in the hand. After all, the chance to benefit from this “exclusive negotiating period” by give applicants their “first kiss” is virtually the sole rationale for SCEA.</p>
<p>I think the common admit pools will decline in size by about a third or so, and although Harvard has taken, and will continue to take, the great bulk of these common admits, the smaller pool size will translate into higher yield rates at Y + P particularly.</p>
<p>Harvard yield rates have stayed around the 76-78% without SCEA, which is about the same as what the rate was before they eliminated the SCEA. So apparently giving YS an exclusive 90 days did minimal damage to Harvard’s yield rate so far. But they may be afraid that they may eventually lose more in the future. The competition is getting more cutthroat too. A few non-Ivy top schools have started sending out early admission letters to a small group of top applicants way before the official date.</p>
<p>Its not the yield rate per se, but just the notion that certain people are walled off from your recruiting efforts for 90 days or more. </p>
<p>Harvard is reasonably confident that the great majority of those they admit will choose to matriculate - given a level recruiting playing field. Early programs are, purely and simply, efforts to restrict access to the playing field insofar as possible, minimizing competition for desirable recruits. </p>
<p>As a practical matter, the pecking order is fairly rigid, and Y and S are ruefully aware that in a truly open market, H would gobble up more than its share of these desirables, and that they would have to be content with the leftovers. (Sorry if this seems harsh, but I think it is reality.)</p>
<p>It will indeed be interesting to see how Harvard “plays the game” now that it has been given no choice and been forced to resume an early admissions program. For one thing, you are going to see some terrific flexing of financial muscle, as the top schools compete for the best and brightest in every demographic subset. </p>
<p>Having HYPS all SCEA schools essentially moves the battle to earlier in the school year, when they will be competing to “sign up” the superstars to exclusive negotiating agreements. What with early programs and likely letters, we are reaching the point where these schools basically offer rolling admissions. Before too long, academic superstars will be lined up and pinned down in their Junior or even Sophomore years, like recruited athletes are now, even in the Ivies.</p>