Does it help to have applied restrictive early action at Princeton over the regular decision?
At Princeton, it’s called SCEA, Single Choice Early Action. In a nutshell, the admit % is high for SCEA because of higher quality applicants among the SCEA pool. In other words, whether the SCEA application helps or not really depends on the level of your application quality.
I believe it is some advantage to apply SCEA over sending the same app RD. How much is up to debate. H and Y used to say there was little or no advantage, but I believe data from the H lawsuit contradicted this. It is true the applicant pool for SCEA is stronger than RD, so the higher admit percentage should not be blindly assumed to mean that SCEA acceptance is easier. But there probably is some modest bump. Any college likes to know they are a candidate’s first choice.
Of course, if your app will be stronger after first semester grades and/or winter scores are received, then you are better off going for RD.
The acceptance rate for SCEA at Princeton for the class of 2023 was 13.93%, whereas the overall acceptance rate was 5 percent. The acceptance rate for RD can hence be calculated to be approximately 3.4%, which is a significant dip from the figure for SCEA. While this, to a great extent is due to the SCEA applicant pool comprising of self-selected top achievers who believe they have a shot at Princeton, it it difficult to believe that the applicant pool is 4 times as strong as its RD counterpart.
Hence, it might be advantageous to apply SCEA only if Princeton is your first choice, since it shows your interest in the institution, which although not a factor officially considered by Ivy Leagues, might make the difference when choosing between equally qualified applicants from SCEA and RD respectively.
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SCEA includes recruited athletes, which have a nearly 100% admit rate. It also has a higher percentage of legacy. Once you back out those two groups, it’s unclear if there is much difference that can’t be explained by a stronger applicant pool.
However, I suspect there is one advantage to SCEA vs RD. Like every other college, Princeton has targets for various groups, including by intended major, by race, by geography, etc. At the time of SCEA, none of those buckets are “full”, whereas by RD time some groups could very well be full.