<p>If one applies to a school early decision, would that help or hurt his or her admissions chances? I heard that either:
1) People in the ED pool are more qualified, or
2) People in the ED pool are less qualified.</p>
<p>Which is true? Are neither of them accurate depictions of Early Decision?</p>
<p>Depends on the school.</p>
<p>From my research these past few weeks, Early Decision does tend to have higher acceptance rates, but depending on the school, it might be because the applicants are more qualified or simply because the college knows it’s their first choice, so they’re more willing to take a risk in a borderline applicant. Might not be completely right, and it obviously does not apply to all schools.</p>
<p>Most schools have a higher acceptance percentage ED than RD. This could be for many factors such as:</p>
<ol>
<li> The pool is better.</li>
<li> They accept a higher percentage of qualified or marginally qualified students because it improves yield (or because they want students who really want to be there).</li>
</ol>
<p>Also, if a school defers ED candidates, it gives the students two shots to be considered. Finally, it would really make no sense for a school to put those who REALLY want to be there at a disadvantage to RD candidates. </p>
<p>Most here think that at highly competitive schools there is some advantage to ED (though no one knows how much it is). For students who do not meet the general admissions criteria, it’s not a magic bullet.</p>
<p>Bottom line – if a school is absolutely positively your first choice then ED makes sense. If not, it doesn’t.</p>
<p>Regardless of actually numbers, it helps your chances… Some schools ED is simply admission by numbers. If you are academically super strong they’ll admit you because they want a stats boost (some don’t even have essays and such for ED). Some colleges have the same admission standards, but you might get a boost for being committed (as zephyr said, it boosts yield because you have to go there). The worst that can happen in ED is rejection, same as RD, but rejection in ED means you would have definitely been rejected RD too. Most of the time they defer any even remotely qualified candidate they don’t accept. SO ultimately it would never hurt your chances.</p>
<p>one easy way to find this is look at “school stats” in Naviance (if your school uses Naviance)/ They divide the admission stats for the last 4 years into ED and RD. look at GPA and SAT averages for ED and RD carefully there.</p>
<p>It definitely boosts your chances if you are a borderline or higher candidate. Colleges will be likelier to take a chance on bringing you in if you show you are truly dedicated to their college, and signing an agreement to go there without even considering other offers is one way to show that.</p>