<p>I read in an admissions book that Cornell's chances for Early Decision and Regular Admissions are almost identical and that they don't care if Cornell is your first choice. Is this true? I am planning on applying early to ILR and I was wondering if there was any advantage to this?</p>
<p>I would apply ED!</p>
<p>There is definitely an advantage to applying early. Admit rates of ED applicants are much higher than for RD applicants.</p>
<p>ED rate is around 35% while RD is around 18%.</p>
<p>They care quite a lot. Peppino, are those numbers specifically for ILR or were they the admittance rate for Cornell 2 years ago (ED, and overall (RD+ED))? They are pretty similar.</p>
<p>The ED is for all colleges and the RD is just an estimate based on its overall admittance rate</p>
<p>For the Class of 2016, ED admit rate was 32% and RD admit rate 14%. The combined admit rate was 16%.</p>
<p>^and that is the average for the whole college, am i correct</p>
<p>Yes, for the entire university</p>
<p>But is it true that the ED pool of applicants is actually stronger?</p>
<p>and that this accounts for the increase in acceptances?</p>
<p>This has been debated on CC several times over the past few years. One side says that the acceptance rate for ED is higher because of legacies, recruited athletes, & a higher percentage of viable candidates, while the other side says that it is because that you are more likely to be admitted ED because it improves yield.</p>
<p>"This has been debated on CC several times over the past few years. One side says that the acceptance rate for ED is higher because of legacies, recruited athletes, & a higher percentage of viable candidates, while the other side says that it is because that you are more likely to be admitted ED because it improves yield. "</p>
<p>It’s likely to be both. You can argue that percentage wise it might be tougher to get in early if the early acceptance rate was like 20% instead - but when we’re talking about around a 17% difference in acceptance rate or higher between RD and ED, they simply accept more people. And historically speaking, the people who ever ED are usually the weaker candidates than RD because the RD pool is confident enough to think that they can afford not to bind themselves on their college choice. There are not enough legacies and athlete recruits to make that huge of a difference in acceptance rates, and the pool is just weaker overall for ED.</p>
<p>Think about it this way: ED is your way as the applicant to show how much you want to get into this school, so much so that if you get in, you would absolutely go there if it’s financially viable. The school would not punish you for that sort of commitment. It can only help you.</p>
<p>What I’m speaking for however, is absolutely true for Cornell only - EA is a different sort of thing entirely, and other schools’ EDs may work differently as well.</p>
<p>Of course the Ed acceptance rate is for all of Cornell’s colleges and male and female. So the acceptance rate for some colleges may be considerably lower than 35% and others higher. And a number of those accepted Ed are athlethes</p>
<p>ED gives you an advantage, but it doesn’t really make up much for any significant weaknesses on your application. </p>
<p>Let’s take 2 students (rigorous course load, good EC’s/essays, etc.):
Student A:
3.7GPA
1940SAT</p>
<p>Student B:
3.95GPA
2200SAT</p>
<p>Student A may have something like a 30% chance of being admitted RD and student B might be something like 45%. ED I would put student A at maybe 35% and student B would be like 70-80%.</p>
<p>My point is, that with Cornell admissions. most people being rejected are well-qualified. Student B always had an excellent chance, but going with the (made-up) acceptance rate, out of 100 student B’s applying to Cornell RD, 55 are going to be rejected. When that’s ED and you know Student B is committed to Cornell, now 70-80 Student B’s will be accepted out of 100.</p>
<p>Don’t get caught up in the specifics of the example, I’m just trying to generally illustrate a point. The specific numbers were made up by me because I don’t really feel like actually trying to come up with accurate predictions right now.</p>
<p>"Of course the Ed acceptance rate is for all of Cornell’s colleges and male and female. So the acceptance rate for some colleges may be considerably lower than 35% and others higher. And a number of those accepted Ed are athlethes "</p>
<p>Not just athletes, but also legacies, etc. I’m just saying that RD %ages also follow the trend - lower for some colleges, higher for others - but the pattern that ED admittance rate is significantly higher (beyond a level countable by just athletes and legacies) is sure to hold for all colleges within Cornell given the HUGE discrepancy between ED and RD admit rates.</p>
<p>I was going to say mikey those numbers are way too high… but i’ll let this one slip. The thing is that though, your numbers still matter a whole lot. They may not decide EVERYTHING, but they matter more so than most people seem to think, given what people have been saying in chancing threads. However, how they matter is dependent on the student and his or her situation - especially noticeable when taking the school name into the question.</p>
<p>Also, whatever advantage you get from applying ED, you would get an even bigger boost if you are taking a very rigorous courseload senior year (multiple AP classes or IB diploma) and you get a 4.0 or near 4.0 GPA first semester and that would be reported for RD applicants. So if your GPA is a bit on the low side but you are on an upward trend, it may to your greater advantage to apply RD and report in a solid first semester GPA.</p>
<p>Sorry but I doubt that you’ll get acomparably significant boost through RD unless you have a lower gpa to start with and you take pretty much 1.5x the amount of credits you would in any other semester.</p>
<p>None of us here truly know the ED advantage since none of us are Cornell admissions offers. My intuition (based on experience, knowing many people accepted ED, and reading these forums for 6 years) isn’t that ED automatically raises your odds 15%. I think it doesn’t do much of anything if you are a barely qualified candidate and a lot more if you are an excellent candidate (by the numbers). For those who are barely qualified, the signaling you are committed to Cornell doesn’t mean that much to admissions because they are mostly trying to evaluate whether or not you belong at Cornell and will be able to succeed. Applying early doesn’t change that aspect of your application. For those who are well-qualified, ED signals that Cornell IS without a doubt your top choice and admissions has to worry less about “fit” because they can see that the student themselves sees Cornell as a “fit” and are prioritizing Cornell over other peer schools, all of which they have a good chance of being accepted to. Overall, those accepted ED don’t have all that much lower stats than those accepted RD.</p>
<p>The advantage of ED acceptance to the applicant is also feeling comfortable for the rest of the school year while others are still worrying about acceptances. The disadvantage is the inability to play one FA offer off another (which can only happen during RD). Still, being done with the process early was a real pleasure.</p>