Early Action Acceptance Rates anyone?

<p>Anyone know the acceptance rate for applying EA to U of Chicago? I saw somewhere on CC that it is 50% but that seems just ridiculous. So what is it really?</p>

<p>Next year, probably something like 30%.</p>

<p>your reasoning, phu?</p>

<p>hannahmontana (creative name, no?)</p>

<p>I've been digging around for a number from last year (2012), and I haven't found anything definitive yet. I found something that suggested that 50% of the students who are admitted though EA end up accepting the offer, which isn't all too surprising.</p>

<p>EA is going to be funky this year, anyway. The school saw a 42 percent increase in EA apps last year (after Harvard et al did away with their EA programs, students who wanted the opportunity to apply to Harvard didn't want to do ED anywhere else but probably still wanted to see if they could get into other "good" schools) and this year, with our inclusion of the common app plus more general awareness, that number might go up higher.</p>

<p>Percentages mean very little, anyways, when you don't know what the other students who are applying to the school look like on paper.</p>

<p>Year in, year out (at least in the past few years), Chicago has accepted about 1,300 people EA, and about another 2,300 people RD. The RD number went down a little last year, because the number of people who enrolled had slightly exceeded projections for two years running. Since I think they were STILL a little oversubscribed this year, I would expect the numbers to go down slightly for next year. </p>

<p>That's because the number of acceptances is completely determined by projected yield (the rate at which accepted students enroll), and yield changes verrrrry slowwwwly. Apart from ED applicants who are committed to enroll if accepted, most selective colleges other than HYPS & MIT have a yield somewhere between 30-45%. Chicago's has been inching upward from 36% towards 37%. That means about 3,500 total acceptances.</p>

<p>So -- you will be able to estimate the admission rate pretty precisely whenever you know how many people applied. For EA, it will be about 1,300 divided by the number of EA applications. For RD, it will be about 2,200 divided by (Total Applications, Less EA Applications, Plus 1,500 estimate of EA deferrals).</p>

<p>What you can't predict accurately is how many people are going to apply, and how strong their applications will be. But so what? What difference does it make to you if 4,500 people apply EA (29% acceptance rate) or 3,600 people apply (36%)? That's a 10% swing either way.</p>

<p>
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your reasoning, phu?

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</p>

<p>Historically, schools switching to the Common App have seen their admit percentage go down by 3 percent in the year they make the switch. Since Chicago was ranked 8th this year in US News, I'll make the somewhat risky assumption that the acceptance rate will go down by 5 points to 23%.</p>

<p>In 2007, the acceptance rate was 42% EA, 26% RD, TOTAL 35%. Don't remember what last year was, but probably something similar. (By similar, I mean RD/TOTAL ~= 75% and TOTAL/EA ~= 80%.) Then 23/.8 = 28.5, which is what I would expect it to be if the total admissions percentage were at 23%. If it's at the predicted 25%, it's 31.25.</p>

<p>In any case, it's going to be 25%-35%. I can almost guarantee you this.</p>