<p>Why are they so high? I just looked at collegeboard.com and early action admission rate is at 50%. I thought that was high considering that their early admission isn't even binding. Are the applicants more qualified in the early round? </p>
<p>Kind of an unrelated question but, U of Chicago defers some people who apply early, correct?</p>
<p>They're high because being high is fun. Just kidding...kind of. I think it's because one third of the applicants that are accepted attend, so for every one spot, they accept 3. They had about three thousand EA applicants last year supposedly, and one thousand two hundred something were accepted while the others were deferred and denied, so the percentage is actually thirty five to forty. And people that apply early do tend to have higher academic qualifications I suppose? </p>
<p>and yes (i said yes i will yes!) some early-s are deferred.</p>
<p>Yellow_Jackets - </p>
<p>the college board info is about a year out of the date - last year was a little tougher: <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/267741-early-action-application-volume-hits-record-high-chicago.html%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/267741-early-action-application-volume-hits-record-high-chicago.html</a></p>
<p>Chicago over-enrolled this year, so my guess is that it will be a bit tougher for this year's applicants. It important to remember that CC kids tend to do better - statistically - that the mass of applicants. </p>
<p>From last year, the EA admissions + deferred/admitted rate was definitely more generous than RD - true for Chicago and most schools in general.</p>
<p>Admissions rates are high because this school has a narrower appeal than most. Chicago appeals to students who are more than just smart-- it appeals to students who really put academics as a priority. That means that the prospect of going to Chicago is nirvana for some (i.e. yours truly) and hell for most high school seniors.</p>
<p>Chicago is highly selective-- it's probably not as selective as most of the Ivy League (most, if not all of the Ivies have many more students to choose from than Chicago), but if the "official decisions threads" are anything to go by, it seems like there are a lot of highly qualified, academically strong applicants who don't get in. I don't like the idea that my university is turning down students who want to attend and have shown themselves capable of doing the work, but I guess that's life.</p>
<p>Also, you should understand that the difference between binding ED and non-binding EA means that Chicago has to accept a much greater number of EA students to fill the same percentage of its class as the ED schools do with ED students. The fact that it's non-binding increases the number of acceptances.</p>
<p>I don't remember exactly how I did it, but at one point I deduced (from the various admission percentages) that Chicago only outright rejected about 10% of its EA pool. The rest of the non-acceptees were deferred to the RD round.</p>
<p>Chicago will not accept a student EA to guarantee that student's attendance. It's probablymore or less true that students are accepted EA because the admissions staff is confident they would be accepted in the RD round. But there is (or has been in the past) one major difference between the EA round and the RD round. In the past, the EA round included no one who had applied SCEA to Harvard, Yale, or Stanford, or ED to Princeton or Brown. That took a lot of strong potential applicants out of the EA pool; many of them doubtless applied in the RD round. So it's quite possible both that the RD round pool is actually stronger than the EA pool, and also that EA acceptees are somewhat more likely to enroll than RD acceptees (which is probably saying about the same thing). In any event, that may change somewhat this year, as some portion of the Harvard-Princeton group may apply EA rather than RD to Chicago.</p>