I am realizing now that early decision does not relieve one of applying to other schools. Along the way there are early action, rolling admission, and the need to put together regular decision applications carefully if early decision does not work out.
But that also means that a successful early decision result would mean withdrawing from a bunch of other applications. My question is, do withdrawn apps count in terms of admit rates? If so, the school withdrawn from would get to count more apps without needing to admit anyone, making them look more selective than they might really be. This effect might be particularly strong among the rejective schools with overlapping admit pools.
Is this the way it works, or I am grasping at straws to try to make the current admit rates seem a tiny bit more hopeful?
Look at the CDs. That should say how many applied RD and how many were accepted.
Really, the chance of getting in is 50%. Exactly the same as not getting in. As in, either you get in or you don’t.
Don’t worry so much.
If you’re referring to the highly rejective schools, most of them offer REA or ED in the early round so there’s not much overlap between schools. So withdrawals will likely be few, and not enough to make a difference.
Thanks for the advice to look at the common data sets. Reading the fine print there, it is clear that a completed application that is withdrawn does count as an application.
I’m not thinking so much about the REA schools, of which there are only HYPS, Notre Dame, and Georgetown, to my knowledge.
But take another example. According to Columbia’s CDS, 768 students were admitted early decision. It is not implausible to think that a high percentage of those might also be applying to NYU. If 400 students, admitted ED to Columbia, withdrew applications to NYU, that has a measurable effect on NYU’s admit rates. Those students look like NYU rejected them, but they would likely be accepted if they had stayed in NYU’s pool. I think this affects one’s interpretation of the midtier schools’ low admit rates.
To my point above: most private schools that you might consider as having an overlap (like NYU and Columbia in your example) typically offer ED not EA. So someone couldn’t simultaneously apply to these schools and then withdraw from the other one.
However, what you’re describing could potentially happen with MIT (because they offer EA), and with top public schools.
Many likely have their applications ready but do not actually submit them until they receive a decision from their ED school. I don’t know how schools actually count withdrawn applications, but they really shouldn’t be in the total because they are not decisioned.
That’s an interesting point. There are many T100 schools that offer EA and might be second choice to an ED school. Where it may play out even more is with EDII and RD where some applicants may be casting a wider net in RD and there are many more RD schools.
“Applicants should include only those students who fulfilled the requirements for consideration for admission (i.e., who completed actionable applications) and who have been notified of one of the following actions: admission, non- admission, placement on waiting list, or application withdrawn (by applicant or institution).”
I guess the justification is that it makes the school look better by counting the maximum number of applicants. But it changes one’s expectations, since the admit rate may not completely represent how hard it it is to get in. Agree with the point made above that this likely has the biggest effect with ED2 applicants and the cohort of schools that rely on them.
Some schools play games with app numbers. One of the primary ways is to include incomplete apps in the total numbers.
The Department of Education clarified some IPEDS data collecting practices for 2022-23, and specifically said incomplete apps should not be included in total app numbers.
If an institution’s formal application review process considers students for admission, even in the event when not all application materials are submitted, and a formal admission decision is made based on the information provided (e.g., admitted, not admitted, waitlisted), students can be included in the reported applicant count. If a student is automatically not admitted because they do not submit all application materials (i.e., an incomplete application file does not allow a student to be considered for admission), the student should not be included in the applicant count.
Institutions are reminded that reporting data accurately to IPEDS is statutorily mandated. Artificially inflating the number of applicants by counting students who are not given full consideration for admission because they do not submit all application materials is an example of not reporting accurately to IPEDS.
It might make a difference in the numbers for schools that have early action - my D, for example, applied to four early action schools and one ED school in November. She was accepted at one of the EA schools on Dec. 1 before being accepted ED on Dec. 12 or so, after which she withdrew the 3 other EA apps before getting a decision. If they counted her (and others in her situation) as applicants it would definitely increase the numbers of applications filed at the school and assuming there were a significant number like her it would increase their total number of applicants and decrease their acceptance rate. But I actually think this is appropriate - why should the school that got her decision out early get to count her, but not the schools that would have gotten it out a week or so later? (all schools had promised to notify in December). She was certainly a serious applicant to all four schools. I think she should count in their numbers. But the OP is correct that that probably makes the actual acceptance rate of these schools higher than they otherwise appear - though no idea if that makes than a marginal difference. I don’t think it will make much difference at schools without EA though - very few kids are motivated to put in a regular decision application in November when they’ve also put in an ED application and know they’ll just have to withdraw it if they get into their ED school. My kid had a sixth application she would have submitted had her ED school hadn’t worked out, but given that they didn’t have EA she was waiting to submit that one. So the really competitive schools that only have RD and ED are less likely to be affected by this quirk, except, as mentioned above, in the ED2 round when RD apps have also been submitted and will be withdrawn before decision if accepted ED2.
All these schools know their yield rate (which already accounts for withdrawals and other reasons for non-enrollment). Each year the schools try to estimate their yield, and barring truly unusual years like 2020-21, they do a pretty good job of forecasting. The acceptance rate is based on that yield number.
I get the temptation to look for a glimmer of hope; to try and read something favorable in the numbers. It’s natural in a crazy and unpredictable process. I’ve been there, done the same, so I definitely understand. But I’ve learned that it doesn’t work.
The top private schools are competing with each other to look good on some metric or the other, and they’re going to pick the students that meet those needs, making the process very unpredictable.
Best to not fall in love with a single highly rejective school, but instead create a balanced list of schools you love.
