<p>Is it true that there is no added benefit for applying early?</p>
<p>that's what they tell us...but idk i think applying earlier demonstrates greater interest or whatever......and hey hey 2nd semester = relief</p>
<p>applying ED DOES help a lot, and by the percentage accepted ED and RD, there clearly is a higher chance of getting in early. However, this year's PLME acceptance rate might be a lot different...</p>
<p>the ED acceptance rate is a lot higher than the RD rate</p>
<p>Not really. When you discount recruited athletes (150), you get around 350 acceptances with 2350 applicants. At 14.9%, that's not far from RD rates at all.</p>
<p>Yes but that is assuming all athletes apply ED. </p>
<p>If you think all 150 (or even most) apply ED to Brown, that's a hasty generalization.</p>
<p>Personally, I think that this preoccupation with percentages is a little misleading.</p>
<p>Students who are accepted early are not any better/worse than the students who are accepted regular decision. </p>
<p>I don't think anyone should try to "cheat" the system. If you apply early, it's because you have finished your application earlier and wish to hear a decision earlier. You should not apply earlier solely because you think your chances are higher, especially if you have to rush your application and do a sloppy job of it in the process.</p>
<p>If you are able to create an amazing application in a limited time, you're probably a hard worker to begin with, meaning your chances of getting into Brown are already pretty good.</p>
<p>Finally, it's also a matter of how strong the ED body is. Usually, stronger students apply earlier (or so the adcoms at Brown say).</p>
<p>There's an entire book devoted to this topic, called The Early Admissions Game, which used statistical data from the Ivy League, Stanford, etc. Unfortunately, although every college will tell you there is no advantage to applying early, the statistical analysis showed pretty conclusively that in fact, for the same SAT scores, and removing minorities, legacies and recruited athletes and other special cases from the mix, the probability of admission was substantially - sometimes amazingly - higher at these schools. </p>
<p>They also showed that the claim that the early pool is stronger, and accounts for the difference, is not accurate. They made it a point to include in their regression analysis the EC-personal rating, so that the study was not marred by an exclusive focus on SAT scores, using a combo of SAT and EC-personal rating to do the analysis of admit rates for students.</p>
<p>The analysis is thorough and has never been challenged.</p>
<p>Net - yes, Brown and almost every other Early school provides a pretty significant advantage to the earlies. The advantage for Brown in particular was found to be most significant in the SAT range of 1410-1450, where the early admit rate was 4.5 times the regular rate, and dropped off significantly but still existed beyond 1500, where the advantage was smaller.</p>
<p>Actually, Goingtospace, you should be applying early only if you are certain that said school you are applying to is the only place you want to go, compounded with the desire to hear results sooner. If it were just an issue of putting the application together a little faster, it would be a totally different ballpark. Much more consideration needs to go into the choice of applying ED (is there anywhere else you'd want to go, will this supply ample financial aid if necessary, will I need to negotiate for more aid if not, etc etc).</p>
<p>More and more students seem to be applying early. Can't say as I blame them; who doesn't want the process to end and have a decision months sooner? But I also know that sometimes it's done too much in haste. 1) Financial Aid is a serious thing to think about. Early Decision acceptees (word?) might not have as good of an offer as regular ones, and they can't compare offers from other places. 2) Because it has to be done so close to the beginning of the year-- October 31 in many cases-- students have not really explored enough schools. 3) Mid-year senior grades, scores, ECs, essays, rec letters, etc. can really change and improve.</p>
<p>It does seem to be true, though, that the chances for acceptance ED are better. I think EA is the best of all worlds!</p>
<p>unfortunately not many schools offer early action.</p>
<p>ailey, you mentioned something about early advantage being particularly significant in the 1400's range.
as you said that beyond that point, the advantage drops off significantly, i wonder if it is not negligible given my SAT score. (2400)</p>
<p>von_herrs, congrats on your SAT. To answer your question, the advantage was much smaller above 1500, primarily because the acceptance rate for regular went up a lot. The acceptance rates for early and regular were as follows for the listed SAT ranges, for Brown specifically:</p>
<p>upto 1400 : E 25%, R 10%
1410-1450: E 48%, R 11%
1460-1500: E 51%, R 31%
1510-1550: E 50%, R 46% (yes, slightly lower than the prior band for E- weird!)
1560-1600: E 75%, R 62%</p>
<p>Again, remember that recruited athletes, legacies and minorities were taken out of the calculations, so this is for the standard-issue admits. And also remember that the EC/personal rating was taken into account when doing the analysis, so the analysis was not one-dimensional based just on SAT scores.</p>
<p>As to why the gap widens at the top band, after narrowing in the 1510-1550 band, several schools showed this pattern, and the speculation (but it is only that, there is no numerical analysis for tihs) in some quarters is that these schools practice 'strategic admission' at the very top ie: they assume that the absolute top-rated applicants will be admitted to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, etc and so won't come there, and that the practice in such cases at these schools is to waitlist the applicant and admit them if they say they are coming. But this is not part of the hard numerical analysis, of course, so you should be aware that it is speculation and not fact.</p>
<p>Brown just recently became my top choice, though it's to late for me to get everything together and apply early. But I know of a few other students at my school, comparable to me in test scores (National Merit Semifinalists) and activities but below me in rank/GPA (I'm in the top 3%, they're more like top 15%), who are applying early. Are they likely to get in with early decision? Do my chances of getting in decrease if any of them are accepted? Not to sound vicious about it or anything, just wondering if colleges have quotas like that.</p>
<p>ailey, thank you SO MUCH. do you have the data for the other scools as well, specifically, stnaford, dartmouth, and columbia? cuz that would help alot.
thanks so much.</p>
<p>Orangepeel, it depends, really. In theory, it could, especially if you are comparable in more areas than just test scores, and/or if your school normally doesn't get many acceptances to the school. If you all happen to fit what they are looking for, then you never know.</p>
<p>Those stats posted by Ailey just don't look right to me. First, they are old -- the book came out in 2003, so they are at least 5 years old. In the class admitted last year (class of 2011), the overall acceptance rate of students scoring 800 in CR was 29.2%, and 27.5% for students scoring 800 in Math. The percentages drop down from there. I find it hard to believe that the acceptance rate for any group of applicants could be as high as 75 percent.</p>
<p>As for the difference applying ED and RD -- remember, there are fewer than 3000 ED applicants compared to 16,000+ RD. In ED, the class is just being formed, while in RD many decisions have already been made. Just based on those statistics alone, the benefits of ED are obvious. Some students would get accepted whether they applied ED or RD -- if they are exceptional and meet one of Brown's enrollment goals. </p>
<p>Brown does not have quotas for high schools. But kids within high schools and within regions are sometimes compared.</p>
<p>Also, Brown does not deny admission to students because it thinks they might go to Harvard or Yale. Admissions is too unpredictable these days; Brown can't figure out any more than you or I who might get into any top school.</p>
<p>yes, the book was published in 2003, and admit rates at all the schools they covered have gone down - sometimes significantly - since then. So one has to adjust accordingly - for all the schools, it's an indicator of trend for ED vs RD for subsequent years, rather than an exact probability predictor.</p>
<p>However, the numbers are what they are, and showed a similar bias towards early at nearly all the schools they covered, so Brown was not unusual at all in this respect. It's a hard and unpalatable set of data to swallow, given the assurances we all receive from all these schools that early is not an advantage. Of all the schools we visited, Swarthmore was the only one willing to admit it was, but this study is widely respected and heavily cited in the literature on admissions.</p>
<p>(Since The SAT scores were combined in the study, however, one can't perform an accurate comparison with single-socre results eg: math 800 or CR 800 - as we see on this forum, there are a lot of students who score very high on either math or CR, but not both. The study did not analyze the outcomes for the 2 SAT scores separately.)</p>
<p>anyway, that's the data, for better or worse.</p>
<p>I don't think it's statistically harder to get in RD than ED... The quality of the ED is much higher.</p>
<p>Not necessarily. Typically, the ED pool is filled with students who will not need to bargain for increased financial aid and who are deadset on attending. That doesn't mean that those same students are the top tier.</p>