Is it harder to get in EA? Is it possible to apply EA and ED somewhere else at the same time?
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Is it harder to get in EA?
This is a heavily discussed and debated question. Search old threads and make draw your own conclusion.
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BC states Early Action is a non-binding program for students who view Boston College as their first choice.
If BC is not your first choice, you’d better read their “Understanding our Early Action Policy” guidelines on their admissions site.
I agree with @jpm50 but I think with BC’s rise in the rankings that it might MAYBE scale back its EA acceptances this year, so past results aren’t necessarily predictive. I think Georgetown’s Jesuit based argument that EA favors higher income applicants might MAYBE also influence BC and reduce EA acceptances. I have no special access to BC Admissions! I just see the trends.
Not OP but if I were to be rejected EA, is it safe to assume I would have been rejected RD too? I know EA is more selective, but I feel like they would defer those on the fence to regular decision and only reject the ones that are far below their averages or standards.
@classof2017 I’m not sure EA is always “more selective” but where an applicant is rejected early it is true that he wouldn’t have been accepted in RD either. BC says the acceptance rate is slightly lower EA but in the past it has accepted so many EA relative to the number of seats available because its yield from that group was low. Now the yield is increasing from EA so it needs to accept fewer in RD, or make it tougher in EA.
In general, schools that defer all EA/ED applicants who aren’t accepted are saying they are all “on the fence” but that clearly just isn’t true.
@Oregon2016 In the “Understanding our Early Action Policy” section on the BC website it says
“The Early Action review process is more selective than Regular Decision.”
Im assuming many people that apply to a non binding non restrictive EA like BC are top students aiming for ivy tier schools and hope to have an acceptance from a school like BC early on. It would explain the low yield especially since they don’t take interest into account.
@classof2017 Yes, and that is what the admissions officer told us during our visit 2 summers ago. But as you point out BC’s EA pool has great top students and as the school’s yield of that group improves (both with more choosing BC over others and RD admission rates at those others falling into low teens) then BC has fewer seats to fill RD. I don’t think BC has adopted Georgetown’s policy of limiting EA acceptances to a relatively small fraction of the seats. So BC now can be much more selective RD than it has been in the past.
I’m a current student at BC and know a decent amount of the admission process here. From what I understand, admissions aims to admit roughly 1/3 of the class through Early Action. Since they don’t have a full picture of what the applicant pool looks like for the year, they limit acceptances to top students that fall well within their criteria. There are three decisions that can result from applying early action: an acceptance, a rejection, or you can be deferred to regular decision.
I’m confused. The BC Common App requests that EA applicants not apply to any other binding ED schools – doesn’t that make BC’s EA very much like ED?? or EA in name only?? Is this new this year??
nope, not new. BC has offered Restricted EA for many years. If you apply early to BC, you can apply to as many EA schools as you like, but not ED. And, acceptance is not binding (like ED), so you can compare other offers, Early and Regular.
That is interesting @bluebayou I had never noticed that. I wonder how this affects the number of students applying via early action. I tried looking on the “Fact Book” (BC doesn’t do a common data set?) and there is no information on number of applications for EA. It just shows that for Fall of 2015 there were 29,486 total applicants. Does anyone know how many (or what %) of those were early action?
I found my own answer (via CC of course):
Boston College EA - accepts ~2700 out of ** 8600 ** Early Action applicants (~31.4%)
Therefore: ~29% of all BC applicants were in the EA pool (assumes 29,486 total applicants, which was last year’s number- Class of 2019). Class of 2020’s info is not public but the BC site states:
Why are they saying “requests” EA applicants to not apply to any ED schools. Why don’t they say “required?” I mean, a request means what, exactly? That you can still apply ED somewhere but they’d prefer you not to?
Our Early Action policy on our website does not state is as ambivalently as the previous poster summarized:
“A student applying to a binding Early Decision program may not apply Early Action to Boston College.”
http://www.bc.edu/admission/undergrad/process/freshman/deadlines.html
Thank you @DevlinHall208 – the “requests” language did cause some measure of uncertainty. Glad you cleared that up.
The “requests” language is directly from the BC “General” Questions on the Common App (when you choose Early Action):
“I acknowledge the following statement. Students applying to Boston College under Early Action are free to apply to other Early Action and Regular Decision programs. However, Boston College requests that students applying to a binding Early Decision program not apply to our Early Action program.”
If you can change the language there, @DevlinHall208, you probably should. I’m not sure how many people are going to hunt down the language on your website when the CommonApp and agreement they are signing is right in front of them.
@redpoodles Thank you for alerting us to that. Our staff will discuss the discrepancy between the two so they can better match. The policy, however, remains the same: Students applying to another institution Early Decision may not apply to Boston College Early Action.
What percent are outright rejected during the early round? I always thought that the majority who were not accepted, were deferred.
@desie1 looking at the class of 2021 EA round, around 1/3 of the people were rejected, 1/3 were deferred, and 1/3 were accepted.
@acron611 Thanks - I did see on another site that last week BC released statistics. It was basically 1/3 each, but the deferral pile was slightly higher and the rejection percentage slightly lower. But they do reject a chunk of the early action applicants - that’s good because if there’s no chance of them being admitted, they should let them know early so they can move on.
http://bcheights.com/2017/01/18/2900-admitted-class-2021-acceptance-rate-slightly-33-percent/