<p>Im having trouble finding the EA vs RD stats. Could someone please tell me what the acceptance rate for EA and RD were this year?</p>
<p>According to the New York Time's Education Life supplement yesterday there were 468 early applicants and 2293 regular applicants. 36% were accepted early and 17% were accepted regular. 40% of the EA applicants actually enrolled.</p>
<p>whoa....is that true? Have there been similar rates every year? I didnt think applying EA would have helped that much.</p>
<p>Admissions rates can be deceptive since they depend on the strength of the applicants. Example: UC Berkeley admits less than 30% of its applicants, but look at the profile of applicants and admits:</p>
<p>Take SAT I Math. Out of applicants who scored 700-800 on this test, the admit rate was ~50%. The fact that there were so many applicants with scores below the 700-800 range (where admit rate is lower) has a significant impact on the overall admit rate. If Berkeley had an early application option and all the 700-800 SAT Math I students applied under the early option (and students below 700-800 did not), the early option could well have a higher acceptance rate.</p>
<p>Similarly, if applicants who apply EA to Caltech are, on average, better qualified than applicants who apply RD, it could be expected that the admit rate for EA is higher than that for RD. Thus applying EA doesn't necessarily "help."</p>
<p>In fact, I think I've heard Ben say that the admissions committee is more conservative in EA than in RD. Perplexitudinous is right that EA applicants tend to be more qualified as a group, hence the higher admittance rate.</p>
<p>On the whole, I think the only two advantages for applying early are 1) being able to avoid doing applications for other schools if you get in here and 2) having time to improve your application if you are deferred.</p>
<p>Well im just trying to boost my chances, I dont really care when I get in. My scores and grades are good enough as they are, so I dont need any more time. My top three choices are caltech, stanford, and MIT, and Ill be happy if I can get into any of those three. I can either apply caltech EA or stanford SCEA, but MITs EA accept rate is lower than its RD rate so I wont do that. Stanfords acceptance rate is 20% for SCEA and 11% for RD. What would you all suggest? Has caltechs EA rate been that high most years, or were things just really weird this year?</p>
<p>Acceptance rates are not a measure of selectivity. Most EA applicants at MIT get defered. If I were you. Just go SCEA at Stanford, b/c MIT and Caltech don't give THAT much preference t EA or RD.</p>
<p>It's highly debatable (Ben would have to clarify here) whether EA affects (helps or hinders) your chances AT ALL. A rather large (relatively speaking) prportion of MIT EA deferrals last year were admitted. Furthermore, it's entirely pointless to compare small or even medium differences in the acceptance rates since those statistics are normalized for the "worth" of the applicant.</p>
<p>I think you're going about this the wrong way. Applying to college isn't a roll of the dice and you don't get in based on percentages. halfthelaw is right that comparing these types of percentages is meaningless, because the same group of students didn't apply to each school. You should be working on improving your application, not your odds. There's still time to do an independent project or even get involved with research. (The latter is a perfect example of something you could use to improve upon a deferred EA application -- if you get results after you send in your EA app.)</p>