Early Decision - a dissenting view

Applying to College
1

This seems to be as good a time as any to discuss what I think is a very misunderstood topic – the impact of applying early decision on your odds of admission to an elite school. The assumption here on CC (for most hopefuls) seems to be that there is some large advantage in applying ED. I think this is largely a delusion, driven by some fundamental misunderstandings. I think there are primarily two issues here:

  1. One is an assumption that the higher admit rates seen in ED reflect a substantially lower standard being used by the schools in the ED round.
  2. The other assumption is that, whatever the ED advantage is, it generically applies to all ED applicants in a general way.

(Quick note: I’m going to use ED in this whole post, but I really mean Early Decision + Restricted Early Action, because in actual practice these two systems work in substantially the same way. Obviously, ED yields more applicants than REA, but both systems exist to lock in applicants based on expressed preferences.)

Ok, before I get into detail about the misunderstandings above, I’d like to state one simple fact about ED that most people don’t seem to appreciate:

                            EARLY DECISION exists to serve the school’s interests, not the applicant’s.

The advantages of early decision programs for the schools are many and important – here are some of the more important ones:

  1. They increase yield and, consequently and more importantly, they drop admission rates.
  2. They allow schools to break the admissions cycle up and more accurately manage their progress in terms of goals and targets.
  3. They provide a framework to manage the competition for the most attractive students.
  4. The RD pool is cleansed of many applicants that preferred other schools, further reducing yield risk.

Now, the automatic objection to this from a lot of people is some variant of “Harvard doesn’t care about rankings and stats” which is just simply not true. Sure, they don’t really care if USNWR sticks them in 3rd place behind Yale and Princeton BUT they most certainly care about their prestige and position in the hierarchy of top schools and if their stats started to slip below their peer schools, heads are going to roll in the admissions/recruiting offices.

I think most of this is fairly obvious, but I think in particular 3) is less obvious to most people. The actual pool of candidates who are true superstars (in terms of test scores, grades, stellar ECs, top quality applications) is much smaller than most people realize – there aren’t really enough of these kids to fill the demand, and the competition for them EVEN at the HYPMS level is fierce.

2

(part 2)
Ok, with that out of the way, I’d like to return to misunderstanding 1) from back at the beginning, and ask this simple question:
Why are the ED admit rates so much higher than the RD rates?

(And of course, the only thing anyone really cares about is the corollary “Do I have a better chance of admission if I apply ED?”)

The colleges say, repeatedly, over and over, that the ED rates are higher because the ED pools are more qualified. They also often say “For a given candidate, the chance of admission is the same in ED as it is in RD.” Are they telling the truth? Is that the whole truth? What’s really going on here?

I think that preponderance of the available evidence largely backs up them up – whether you look at the stats they publish about ED admits, or just look at the policies and actions of the schools, in terms of routing many types of hooked applicants into the ED pool. For the most part, the ED admit rate reflects the increased percentage of holistically qualified applicants in the pool (recruited athletes, legacies, etc.)

Moreover, turn it around, and try to come up with a sound justification for a policy that would offer increased admission chances to applicants that chose ED? What tangible benefit would flow to the college? I can’t think of any, beyond the fact that they would like to have a decent sized ED pool from which to choose a substantial chunk of their incoming class, but I’d contend that the existing statistics and the misunderstandings about them do all the promotional work they need WITHOUT actually relaxing their standards in any way.

So, am I saying that there is NO ADVANTAGE to applying ED? Not entirely, and I’ll get into what that advantage is a little further down. However, the idea that the mere act of filing your application ED is going to substantial raise your chances is almost entirely a statistical fallacy – for most applicants, it’s simply not going to have any measureable effect.

Ok, so now let’s take a quick look at admission criteria and how they work in practice at the elite schools. Basically, as we all know, this is a holistic process and broadly speaking rest on a 3 factor evaluation – test scores, grades + course rigor, essays + recommendations + extra-curricular. Generally speaking, a given applicant needs to be strong across all three of these areas to have a strong chance of success. Additionally, all of these elements are evaluated in the overall context of the applicant’s background and the goals of the institution.

I’m not going to get into the details of holistic evaluation, but the part makes the most difference for ED applicants is the “goals of the institution.” There is a saying amongst admissions people – “We aren’t handing out trophies, we are trying to build a class.” Yes, part of evaluating applicants is identifying excellence (and eliminating applicants below a certain standard), but there is a lot more to building a class than just picking the “best” applicants. There are all kinds of constraints and goals that are also in play, ranging from diversity concerns to simply making sure the incoming freshman class is balanced in terms of fields of study. By the time schools get around to the RD applicants, they will have thoroughly analyzed the ED admits, and they will inevitably be above or below various targets – and they naturally will try to balance out some of these problems, and that will definitely have an impact on the chances of certain applicants in the RD round. None of this is visible to the applicant, and it will result in seemingly arbitrary admissions decisions. This works in both directions – some classes of applicants will benefit and some will be harmed. I think that most of the advantage of applying ED is that by doing so, you are essentially “first in line” for seats, and so your application is going to be evaluated before these types of issues are a concern for the admissions staff.

Conclusions:

  1. The much higher admit rate is primarily a function of the large numbers of hooked applicants in the pool.
  2. There is a small advantage to being “first in the door” – your application is less likely to be rejected on account of institutional constraints in the early round.
  3. If there is any softening of standards in the ED round, the benefits of that aren’t distributed amongst all
    applicants – the only beneficiaries are going to be those who are very close to the admissions threshold.

The main takeaway from all this is that the ED advantage is not nearly as large as one might guess just from comparing the ED and RD rates, and whatever boost does exist is most likely concentrated on the most qualified candidates. For the marginal candidate with a below average probability of admission, applying ED is not likely to make any difference.

3

Anyway, sorry for the giant wall of text.

I’m sure plenty of people will disagree with this, and that’s fine with me. I’m not expecting that a lot of people will change their minds based on this post, I’m more just putting it out there to see what the reaction is.

4

I don’t think anyone denies that ED serves the school more than it does the applicant. Also, not sure who thinks the ED advantage applies equally to all ED candidates. Recruited athletes, for example, are usually encouraged to apply in the ED pool, and they are going to get some academic leeway that the unhooked ED candidates don’t get. One reason ED looks “easier” is because of those applicants.

5

I guess we are substantially in agreement then @intparent

However, there is a sizable contingent of people here on CC who seem to be looking at those ED rates, and imagining that their own chances of admission are going to be similar if they apply ED.

You don’t have to look very far to find plenty of examples of this kind of thinking.

6

But I think I’m correct in saying there is no downside to selecting your first choice and applying SCEA. If you’re a solid qualified applicant with no hook you could get accepted and reduce the stress for all your RD results. If you get deferred you are in the same place had you waited and if you’re rejected you might review your safety schools for RD.

Am I missing something?

7

@NCmom14 Agree absolutely - I think that’s fine.

Where I think this stuff goes of the rails is when you see people pouring over the ED statistics and trying to strategize their choices based on their mistaken assumptions about which schools are offering the biggest advantage.

Or, the people who are wildly overestimating their chances of getting into a school (and this is often based on the ED stats) and neglecting their applications to more feasible schools.

8

Not to disagree with you, but you can’t make a blanket statement about ED and why schools use it. A school like Penn is very clear that ED makes a difference to them in terms of signalling interest. Others do not.

9

Agree with what you’ve stated. I wasn’t aware so many people on CC thought there was such a large advantage do ED. @NCmom14 the disadvantage I see in applying SCEA or ED is losing out on applying elsewhere EA, which is often required in order to be eligible for scholarships. But this would only be a disadvantage if you’re looking for merit.

10

I think Nick is saying they signal that bc it is important to them for the reasons he stated, not bc it gives you any “points”.

From my limited view of it with a 24% ED school, they accept all the hooked kids that they will have to fight for with HYP in the RD rounds. That is the main driver of the increased rate. Taking the sure thing, getting 100% yield for half of the class admitted ED.

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@Zinhead Agree with you on the general principle that schools handle the details of ED in different manners.

Not really sure that what Penn says really distinguishes them from anyone - clearly restrictive early policies are all about “interest” or “applicant preference” or whatever you want to call it.

I mean Harvard says in their CDS that “applicant interest” isn’t an admission criteria, yet they have an SCEA program that only makes sense if they are trying to weed out people whose first choice isn’t Harvard.

12

Schools like Northwestern and Penn are very open about the fact that they purposely give an ED boost because they want to fill the class with students who are attending their first-choice college.

From Northwestern:
Schapiro said he has seen a similar growth in applicants who are applying to NU as their first choice.
“There are so many kids, more so than I’ve ever seen, definitely than the last couple years, who absolutely have just virtually perfect SATs, ACTs and just great GPAs and they only want to come here,” he said. “They’re not coming here and applying in the spring because they were deferred from Yale or Stanford or rejected. They’re here because this is where they want to be.”
“Obviously your chances are going to be a little better if we’re your first choice and that’s a good thing for the school,” he said. “We want students here for whom Northwestern’s a first choice and not a back up and almost half the class has said, ‘Northwestern’s my first choice.’ That’s great.”

13

Good analysis Nickflynn. I’m going to mildly disagree about the supply and demand of true superstars though. There seems to be no shortage of them lately, and I’m not just talking about ORM statistical superstars. My son’s peer group is littered with perfect test score, 5.0 kids that are varsity captains, science, MUN, math team award winners and they are all getting deferred and rejected this year.

ED does offer the benefit of allowing a kid to get an earlier decision but EA can do the same thing without restricting other activity. The HYP kids are all stuck having to go RD if they want to apply to UChicago, ND, Vandy, etc… and that means maybe not knowing til April or May where you are going. That’s the real penalty of ED/SCEA for the student.

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@2muchquan Each applicant should probably look into their choices as some private allow merit scholarships and RD, for example for the Robertson at Duke the scholarship app must be in early but you an apply ED or RD. Plus if SCEA you can apply to state schools and their merit scholarships (for example the Morehead at UNC Chapel Hill). As usual, it depends :slight_smile:

15

ED or SCEA can also be a way of showing a high level of applicant’s interest at schools which consider that. Tulane says up front that this is the case if you apply SCEA instead of EA there.

ED usually does not exclude (non-SC)EA to other schools. SCEA often has exceptions in its rules against EA to other schools. Read each school’s information carefully.

ED is only suitable for a student willing to commit at application time, without comparing net costs.

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@gluttonforstress I don’t think those are the superstars that the schools fight over. They are the generic thousands of perfect kids.

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@goldenbear2020 Well, yes, ED/REA is all about gauging applicant interest, and it certainly is nice to have students on campus who want to be there.

However, it’s also clearly about keeping admit rates low (which isn’t all about rankings, it’s also about prestige and relative desirability, etc…) Imagine a world where there was no ED/REA, and imagine how much more money and effort would go into influencing/measuring interest and all the rest, and what the admit rates would look like.

These early programs are a very cost-effective way to avoid all those extra costs and work - and they don’t really require an actual “advantage” to be given to the applicants for these programs to function.

18

If anyone is looking for concrete evidence of what Nick is saying, go on the “ABC College Class of 2020” Facebook Page where the newly minted ED admits are mingling. Invariably, each student’s introduction begins, “Hello I am from Scarsdale NY and I will be playing lacrosse next year…”

19

I believe the main reason Harvard went back to SCEA after trying was that they were losing URMs to other universities. They had hoped that having regular EA would encourage more URMs to apply, but that did not pan out. Instead the word got out that you could back out of ED for financial reasons and that EA really wasn’t binding. More and more students prefer the certainty of ED or at least EA to waiting until April. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:TqZKX3P3YT4J:news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/02/early-action-returns/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Yield is such a tiny part of the USNWR equation (it used to be more important) I really doubt it played any role in Harvard’s decision to go back to SCEA. I don’t recall them slipping in the rankings during those years.

I think the athletes and hooked applicants are a huge portion of the admission pool, especially at LACs, many of which have a full roster of sports whose teams need to be filled.

Penn is also open that if you are a legacy, you get a boost only if you apply ED.

20

This is a totally separate issue, and I probably will put a post up soon on the topic, but there just aren’t nearly as many “perfect kids” as everyone seems to assume.

There are only about 15,000 kids with ACTs of 35-36 or SATs of 2300+…some non-trivial amount of those kids don’t have 4.00 GPA or perfect SAT2s or rigorous schedule or whatever…

There are about 34,000 seats at the Top 20 colleges. There is actually pretty stiff competition for these kids.