So, I’ve noticed that early decision acceptance rates are generally higher at most universities due to yield percentage, rankings, etc… So my theory is that second tier universities such as Vanderbilt, JHU, Penn, Cornell, Notre dame, northwestern accept people with high stats during the ed round to meet their high averages for ACT and GPA, do they can accept more interesting applicants with lower stats regular decision since their averages are already high. Does anyone agree with me?
How do you know they accept students in this order? It’s best not to speculate.
@RoundGenius He said it was a theory and on forums that is all there is - speculation.
@perspectivestude No I don’t agree with that, they give ED a preference bump over RD but still use a holistic approach.
I should have chosen my words better; my apologies. What I meant to ask was: what makes you think they accept students in that order? Yes, all we can do is speculate and come up with theories, but theories should be rooted in some kind of evidence. There’s a difference between thought out speculation and making random guesses. A theory without evidence is no theory at all.
@CU123
There is only one thing for sure and that ED gets you a bump. Even the college AO’s agree with that. That’s about all we know, the rest is conjecture.
I don’t agree that any of the schools you listed are ‘second-tier’!
But with regard to ED, a good portion of the pool are athletes, legacies and URMs that the school may have reached out to with diversity programs/events, and it is quite likely that some of the stats in those groups, while still high, may not be as high as unhooked applicants.
I don’t think so. I think the true ‘second tier’ schools (and I also would redefine this to the USNWR 30-60 range) do give an advantage to Early applicants. In other words, they are actually accepting Early applicants with slightly lower GPA and scores because they prefer to fill a significant portion of the class with students who truly love the school. Can’t blame them!
Actually I think that applies to all schools, after al,l they all take much higher percentages in the EA/ED pools. Its just that EA is super competitive for the HYPS so you may not see that much of a bump for EA.
@CU123 You might think it applies across the board, but at the tippy tops there is apparently little or no advantage to applying early. From Yale’s website:
schools that you listed do not need the bump for stats. People who apply to Harvard early and get rejected apply to Northwestern regular and you can bet they have some good stats. They get good stat students in both regular and early.
Still AO’s are human and there is the psychological influence of someone who is applying to your school early, didn’t say it was much but I don’t think its nothing.
Agree, that none of the schools that OP referenced are second tier. It’s not surprising that everyone is wondering why they aren’t getting into their target schools when their targets were really reaches. Top-10 schools are super reaches for eveyone.
It seems like the ED applicant pool might be less top heavy at schools like Duke, Vandy, Wake, JHU, etc because all the ultra tippy top kids are going for SCEA at the top five.
Once again, only kids who truly know and love the above schools will go ED and the admissions people know this.
^ Which may lead to the situation where many of the ultra-tippy-top kids who chase prestige get shut out everywhere besides their safeties while tippy-top kids who follow their heart get in to their first choice.
BTW, @pickpocket, I think you have to go below 60 before you start running in to schools that sacrifice stats in ED.
What does happen is that, outside the tippy-top schools, just having top stats but not much else may be enough to get you in through ED to certain schools but that wouldn’t be enough for those schools during RD.
I think when OP uses the term “second tier” perhaps what is really meant is non-HYPSM? I agree that this is all just conjecture. But I’ll use my D1 as an example. She was a high stats but unhooked female applicant. Top 1% of her class, 2340 on the old SAT, all 5’s and 800’s on her AP’s and subject tests, reasonably strong E/C’s. Basically everyone else in her category (say top 3%, high stats kids) at her high school applied EA to Stanford, Harvard or Princeton. She applied ED to Pomona which was her true first choice. We’ll never know if applying ED made a difference, but it does seem like a plausible theory that a school like Pomona gets lots of recruited athletes in the ED round while a lot of unhooked high stats kids go for EA at HYPSM and will later pop up in the RD round. So theoretically an unhooked high stats applicant might just stand out a little more from the crowd of unhooked high stats applicants in the ED round. And a school that’s striving for a diverse class is also conscious of maintaining a high average ACT/SAT, so locking down some high stats ED apps maybe gives a little more flexibility in the RD round? I agree that this is a theory with no supporting evidence but sounds at least somewhat plausible.
@PurpleTitan Based on what I’ve seen, I have to agree. In our area, for example, it’s fairly well-known that if you’ve got the stats (34+ACT and grades to match, for example) but “normal kid” ECs (local leadership/regional but no national-level honors/awards) and want to go to NU, apply ED and you have a good chance of getting in. Don’t wait for the RD round because then it becomes more of a crapshoot.
I think the athlete effect is part of it, there’s an institutional reason for them to apply early in terms of making sure teams have specific positions filled, but i also think that skews smaller selective schools than it does large universities, since athletes make up a larger % at smaller schools.
A really strong candidate choosing to ED to a school would logically make that school more likely to take him/her then, since they can lock in that kid. And the chance that the kid can afford the school, perhaps without any financial aid, is also greater in ED.