<p>The 2012 edition of The Best 376 Colleges by Princeton Review indicates that Amherst has a total undergraduate enrollment of 1,795 students, and that it recently accepted 34% of 440 Early Decision Applicants. </p>
<p>While these statistics suggest that Amherst accepts about 150 students of its approximately 449 freshman class via Early Decision, they do not break down what percentage of these Early Decision admits are recruited athletes, legacies, or URMs.</p>
<p>That being the case, I’d greatly appreciate it if someone could answer the following questions:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>How many recruited athletes does Amherst typically accept on an Early Decision basis?</p></li>
<li><p>How many legacies does Amherst typically accept on an Early Decision basis?</p></li>
<li><p>How many URMs does Amherst typically accept on an Early Decision basis?</p></li>
<li><p>What is Early Decision admit rate for non-hooked applicants who are not recruited athletes, legacies, or URMs?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I ran these numbers for Williams a week or two ago-I don’t think it is easy to find out this info, you have to dig around and compile it yourself making some assumptions.</p>
<p>But for Williams it turned out that the ED accepted pool had 15 questbridge,49 athletes,36 legacy, 14 internationals and 15 first generation. No notice if some first generation were questbridge or athletes. Amherst may be similar, or even have a larger number of disadvantaged students. It looked like 130 slots at least of the 230 accepted were “used up” by the above categories of applicants.</p>
<p>The information you provide about Williams is interesting for the possible implications it may have for ED applicants to Amherst. That being the case, here are two questions for you:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Did you conclude that the 40% ED rate at Williams is a potentially misleading statistic for non-hooked ED applicants since Williams allocates more than half of its ED slots to hooked candidates? </p></li>
<li><p>Is there still a competitive advantage for a non-hooked applicant to apply on an ED rather than RD basis to Williams? </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Getting back to the issue of ED at Amherst, I drilled down a bit more and found an April 13, 2011 article in the Amherst student newspaper which states, “Of the 444 early decision applicants this year, 151 were accepted, which is 10 more than last year … In addition, there were only five QuestBridge matches last year compared to 15 this year.” While this article is helpful, it does not quantify the total number of ED URM admits because it refers only to QuestBridge matches. Nor does it indicate how many recruited athletes, development admits, legacies or other hooked candidates Amherst accepted on an ED basis.</p>
<p>I also found an October 9, 2009 CC post which states, “Amherst will be admitting about 150 EDs this year, and recruited athletes, together with legacies, will probably constitute about half of that number.” According to the poster, the Amherst dean of admissions told him that, ‘"more than half’ of the ED accepted students were not in those favored categories.” However, as those “favored categories” apparently did not include URMs, the “more than half” statistic may relate to some, not all, hooked ED candidates.</p>
<p>Does anyone have additional, or more current information, on this subject?</p>