Stanford is my dream school and I want to apply REA there. However, the admission numbers and statements made by admissions officers of Stanford explain that there is no preference given to Early Applicants and that the only reason the acceptance rate is higher is because they have more legacies and athletes applying (I am neither).
My second favourite school is Harvard and I was thinking of applying REA there since it is anyway non binding and I can still apply RD to Stanford regardless.
But I wanted to know if my chances at Harvard university increase at all by applying REA or whether it is the same case again - athletes and legacies. If it is so, I may choose to apply to Princeton or Yale REA to have an actual increase in chance.
Please help me out! I do not want to waste my early shot.
PS - I am a junior. And also, please don’t say that I should apply to safeties. I am doing that already.
I think that if you apply REA or ED anywhere, you should be quite sure that it is your top choice and that you are likely to be able to afford it (either the NPC gives acceptable results, or you can afford full pay).
Why is Stanford your dream school? What is your intended or likely major?
Are you an international student? I am wondering because of your spelling of “favourite”.
The answer you received from Stanford would apply to HYP as well - there is no statistical difference in admissions rates once athletic recruits/legacy, etc are backed out of REA numbers, IMO. Harvard states as much. If a college is your first choice, apply REA.
That may be true, but from what I have heard it is slightly better in the other places because apparently it indicates to admissions officers that you really want to attend there. But in case of Stanford, admissions officers have explicitly said that it makes no difference
All these colleges tell you that it doesn’t matter whether you apply SCEA/REA or RD, and they don’t release any data to back up their claims. However, in the case of Harvard, data released during its recent trial show that similar applicants were more likely to be admitted if they applied SCEA, all other factors being equal. That doesn’t necessarily mean the same advantage exists at other colleges. Stanford is likely to offer less of an advantage, if any at all, based on its early admission statistics it used to release.
If you don’t want to waste your early shot to one of these super selective schools, you should ensure that you compellingly show them why you are a good fit. That means knowing what they are looking for, and tailoring the essays to show those qualities. A successful applicant will have almost certainly spent many many hours writing excellent responses to all supplements.
These schools are not interchangeable. It’s telling that you are simply trying to strategize getting into HYPS, rather than trying to figure out which school is right for you and why. ED applicants are highly qualified and don’t get in just because they applied early. They get in because they successfully convince AO’s that they are a good match and will succeed at the college.
Anything less than 100% effort is a waste of an ED card. Good luck.
Frankly, your chances of admission at both is very low. Just like everyone else’s chances of admission at both.
If need based aid is a consideration…I believe Harvard is need blind for international students, but Stanford is need aware. So…at Stanford, your level of financial need would be considered when your application for admission is reviewed.
And lastly…what kid if weather do you prefer…because it’s very different at Stanford than at Harvard.
This is my concern also. I think that at this level a student’s chances of admissions will in general be better if it is clear why a particular university is the best fit for them.
There certainly was a difference after ALDC hooks were removed at the time of the Harvard lawsuit sample. Specific numbers are below for the most recent year in the lawsuit sample:
The author performed a regression analysis in which in addition to hook status, he controlled for the ratings readers gave applicants in each category, race, prospective major, location, SES “disadvantaged”, and dozens of other criteria. With maximum controls, the regression analysis found 4x (odds ratio) average increased chance of admission for applying REA among unhooked, White males. That’s a weaker boost than traditional hooks such as legacy or URM, but is still a noteworthy increased chance of associated with applying REA.
Unfortunately this degree of detail is not available for other schools, but there is a good amount of evidence that Stanford uses their early round differently than Harvard (among other highly selective private schools). Examples include extreme differences in deferral rate, and noteworthy differences in ratio of REA/RD admit rate.
There is a big difference for SCEA application to Harvard. This was outlined in the recent Harvard lawsuit. Look up the Arcidiacono report. Without getting into all the math, the regression technique that was used helps to isolate the weight of each individual factor on the odds of admission
This regression technique lets us to hold other factors constant and adjust for things like legacy, athlete, development, etc. The overwhelming findings are that applying EA to Harvard helps a LOT. Not just a few percentage points, but it increases the odds to about 3. This equates to a probability of about 0.79. So all other factors being held constant, this means that the chances of admission to Harvard by applying early increases the chances by 79%. (Source Arcidiacono report Table B.7.2)
There are factors which raise the chances even higher, and these are athlete, race, Dean’s interest list, legacy, faculty child, race2 and disadvantaged status. But applying early is not just a small tip. It is a huge advantage. And those colleges who say that it offers no advantage are simply not telling the full truth.
I haven’t looked at the lawsuit or the Arcidiacono report or anything, but are you sure a 79% increase in chances, if true, is such a big deal?.
When the original acceptance rate is well below 10%, such an increase seems largely negligible (if RD rate is around 3%, then this increase brings it to 5.37%… both seem largely based on chance)
Note that the slightly different numbers from my post relate to me using the B.7.1R table in the rebuttal analysis. In the rebuttal analysis, REA is no longer grouped as an ALDC type hook, so REA applicants are included in the non-ALDC baseline group and are a part of the baseline analysis, with ALDC removed. In this non-ALDC sample, the regression coefficient for applying REA was 1.4, for an odds ratio of 4x.
A 4x odds ratio means the average increase in chance of admission is 4x. For example, if your chance of admission was 0.01%, then your chance of admission is expected to increase to ~0.04%* – not good odds. However, if your chance of admission was 3% like your example, then chance of admission is expected to increase to ~12% – a more significant difference, but still not good odds. The actual degree of increase is not formulaic and will likely vary dramatically between applicants, for a variety of reasons.
*The actual expected increase would be ~0.05% rather than 0.04%, which relates to compression near maximum pulling down average. For example, a kid with 50% chance of admission doesn’t increase to 50% x 4 = 200% chance of admission.
Agreed with @data10 here. I don’t want to nitpick with the numbers. The regression coefficients change depending on the analysis set used. But in general the numbers all tell the same story – that applying early really helps a lot.
Those are average rates. Not every applicant has the same chance of admission. For some applicants who have significantly higher probability of admission, the difference is significant, not negligible.
It stands to reason that the increase in admissions is for “attractive” students who Harvard thinks they could “lose” to similar colleges. Similarly, the smaller size of the REA applicant pool means that it would take less to stand out. Standing out among 7,000 REA applicants is easier than among 40,000 RD applicants.
I mean, in December AOs will be saying “This is great! Look at this kid with 4.0 GPA, 1600 SAT, state-level awards, etc”. By February, the attitude will more likely be, “oh, great, another 4.0 GPA, 1600 SAT, kid with a couple of state-level awards. What is, now, 300 so far?”
Question: If I remember correctly, the first 2 of the 6 years in these datasets were years when Harvard didn’t have an early action decision period. Does that imply, generally, that the odds, all else equal, are likely higher because the variable being measured only applied to 2/3rds of the applicants that would have availed themselves of it?
Question 2, given the absolute size of the odds ratio, doesn’t this imply that it doesn’t likely apply to only a small subset of the applicants, but is largely spread among them? In other words, if the odds ratio had been small, then it could still be the case that there is a large advantage for a small subset of applicants… but if it is large generally for the entire set, then it likely applies to most participants.
Question 3: The data in these sets do not seem to allow for either a) distinctions between 2-, 2, and 2+ (at least, Arcidiadono never breaks these out), nor b) for the nature of comments in LORs or the quality/nature of the essays. So, if people who apply early action are more likely to have higher-quality essays (spending more time on them) and/or LORs (self-selection for people who use their early chit on Harvard) versus those who apply later with similar academics but end up with similar “2” scores on various ratings… couldn’t that imply that the improved odds ratio is still just a reflection of the applicant pool itself, but in variables unobserved in the dataset?
