<p>If one is not a superhuman athlete, super rich, a genius, a published author, or an outlier in the positive sense, then wouldn't they have a lower chance by applying EA/ED/SCEA? Aren't these outliers all applying earlier than the rest of us? If one could further explain, that would be great! :)</p>
<p>They do generally help a bit as it shows you have more interest in the university. The admissions officers also have more time to look at your application, which gives more consideration to it. Due to these things, there generally is a higher acceptance rate for students applying EA/ED (there are several sources online). </p>
<p>There are a couple of reasons why they help. First off, (especially for ED), you’re showing a lot of commitment to the college. But another reason that might interest one in deciding to do Early applications are the admissions officers themselves. In the early months, they are not as tired as they would be at the end of an RD cycle. They have much less in terms of apps, so they would give much more time to each applicant. In the RD cycle, the objective parts of your application (GPA, test scores) are somewhat more important than in ED primarily because the objective qualities don’t take much of their time, whereas the subjective requires a great deal of time on their part. So, to answer your question, no, it wouldn’t, especially for an ED school. For some SCEA schools (Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Princeton), applying early may not be smart for some, since SCEA is usually full of recruited athletes/legacies. Hopefully that answered your question</p>
<p>For ED (and REA), it does help. However, it does not mean a student with poor credential can get in. As you can only apply to one ED or REA school, you do demonstrate your interest at the school and your commitment (for ED). The pool of applicants for ED and REA is much smaller and the acceptance rate is mostly much higher for that reason. For RD, all applicants rejected/deferred from other schools or not applied for ED/REA may apply and the application pool is much larger while a significant portion of seats were already taken. So for a student with the same credential, it would be a lot easier to get in during ED/REA.
For regular EA, the advantage is less obvious if any.
The stat may go either way though. There are more students athletes or legacy applied for ED/REA that may bring down the average a little bit while the school may pick the best candidates and defer those below admission average at the same time. For ED, the school can secure the yield rate and may go a little bit lower in requirement. For REA, they can only expect a higher yield rate. For top schools, they really do not worry not to have enough high quality students to fill the class anyway as the yield way are usually high even for RD. So there is little reason for them to accept students early with below average credential.</p>
<p>From what I’ve seen/heard of top schools, ED/EA helps at some institutions more than others. For example schools like Penn try to fill about half their class in early decision so you’re competing in a much smaller applicant pool. I believe schools like Northwestern, JHU, Dartmouth, and Duke among other schools express a similar bias towards early applicants. In contrast, I do not believe EA like at HYPSM confers a similar advantage. </p>
<p>@billcsho SCEA is actually not the best choice, since the pool for SCEA typically tends to be very qualified (by qualified, I mean well-paying legacies)</p>
<p>@Classof2018app Yes, SCEA (and ED) are full of legacies, recruited athletes and very qualified candidates. That’s why I always suggest to apply ED/SCEA if one has above admission average stat. If not, one should try to improve the score/GPA and apply RD. Nevertheless, if one cannot get in at SCEA/ED, he will not get in with the same credential at RD anyway.</p>
<p>@billcsho Yeah it’s much harder to shine in RD than in anything early-related</p>