<p>does anyone know what percentage of the class of 2009 has been accepted under early decision I or II?</p>
<p>I have not seen this year's numbers; however, the numbers stay very consistent from year to year.</p>
<p>Last year 141 students were accepted in EDI and EDII.</p>
<p>That is 15% of the total accepted students and 38% of the total enrolled students.</p>
<p>I would expect somewhere between 130 and 140 students to have been accepted ED this year. That seems to be the range over the last few years.</p>
<p>Applications overall appear to be up about 11% over last year. While that changes the acceptance odds, it may or may not change the real odds of acceptance for any given student, depending on the qualifications of the additional applications. I tend to think that incremental applications tend to fall at the fringes and probably don't impact the true chances of admission all that much.</p>
<p>Interesteddad, what do you mean by the last 2 sentences? Are you saying that a lot of people applied to Swarthmore this year for some random reason (prestige, popularity, what have you), the same way people flock to the ivies and HYPSMC?</p>
<p>I'm not saying that specifically about Swarthmore, but more as a general observation, especially to the extent that rankings drive applications.</p>
<p>In Swarthmore's case, if the change in USNEWs ranking from #3 to #2 drove the application increase, then it is quite possible that the additional applications are not particularly well targeted.</p>
<p>If, on the other hand, the increase in applications resulted from the new DVD giving prospective students a better feel for what Swat is all about, then the pool could actually have more well-targeted applicants.</p>
<p>It's hard to measure difficulty of admission purely on the mathmatical "admissions odds". Some schools, in some years, probably get a significant percentage of applicants who are clearly not well-suited to the school and have no prayer.</p>