EA vs ED Admission Difficulty

Applying to College
1

Hey all,

When it comes to extremely selective T20 universities, the early application options are often either REA/SCEA or ED. Common knowledge seems to suggest that applying Early Decision would be the better option because it’s binding and shows 100% commitment to the school. However, I recently had a conversation with one of my friends on how most universities want about half of their admitted pool to come from the early plans. If colleges can’t guarantee a 100% yield rate for a REA/SCEA application, wouldn’t this mean that in anticipation of students deciding not to attend, they would admit more students through Early Action, possibly even 60-70% of the total admitted pool?

If we are talking universities specifically, the best examples that come to mind are comparing the difficulties between Yale SCEA vs Stanford REA vs Columbia ED. Thoughts?

2

I think that you have the word admitted confused with attending.

3

The types of colleges that offer restricted EA programs are those that would generally have a high yield out of that pool even though it’s not binding. They are reach colleges, and students prepared to use up their early chance on those colleges usually do so because they really want to go there.