<p>Here are some Early Action/Decision stats from The New York Times admissions blog, "The Choice." </p>
<p>The</a> Early Line on Early Applications for the Class of 2016 - NYTimes.com</p>
<p>Some numbers are up this year. Some are down. Let the speculation begin!</p>
<p>Really hope Duke takes more ED applicants this year.</p>
<p>Did not expect upenn applicants to go down. It seems almost too easy to get into somewhere as high caliber as upenn. 26% chance? Wow.</p>
<p>Dips at Stanford and UPenn probably aren’t great news for myself or other Harvard SCEAers. Still, the same sort of student will be accepted, regardless of the applicant pool’s size.</p>
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<p>I’ve been advising students applying to Ivy League schools for more than two decades. Most of them are “qualified” to be admitted, and many who are turned away are not appreciably different than those who are accepted. Yet one small distinction I’ve observed over the years is that more students in my orbit with no hope of acceptance will apply to Harvard, Princeton, or Yale than they will to Penn. Their rationale is usually along the lines of, “What the heck … it’s Harvard. I gotta give it a shot” or, sometimes, “My dad is making me apply to Princeton.”</p>
<p>With Penn, on the other hand, I see less of that “cast my fate to the wind” attitude. In fact, as far back as I can recall, every student in my purview who applied to Penn had a reasonable chance of acceptance, even though not all got in.</p>
<p>I can’t say the same for Harvard, Princeton, or Yale, where seniors are more apt to “heave and hope.” So this might–at least to some degree–explain the size of the admit-rate discrepancy. In other words, the most sought-after schools end up with the greatest number of applications that are swept right into the reject pile.</p>
<p>Although I try to refrain from telling students point-blank NOT to apply to a dream college, sometimes I do have to bite my tongue. I must confess that, one year, I suggested to a hopeless Yale aspirant that she would be spending her application-fee money more wisely if she took me out to dinner instead. ;). But I’ve never made that recommendation to any Penn candidate because they have always been squarely in the ballpark.</p>
<p>My freshman class started like 100 students over capacity this year (Yay forced triples…), and now there’s another huge surge in applications! Glad I’m already in with my full scholarship, and I’m glad they’re building another dorm building. And it’s good that we’re getting more and more appealing, a little more prestige never hurt anyone ;)</p>
<p>Would you say the increasing number of students applying with a “what the heck” reach attitude, as opposed to an increasing number of really qualified candidates, is one of the reasons admit rates at top schools are sinking?</p>
<p>GlobalDolphin, I really hope that’s the case but I kind of doubt it because usually applying early requires more dedication and time put into an application, which is something students would do for their dream school.</p>
<p>@mysweet, I agree with you, though I was intending my comment more as one about regular applicants. However I have encountered some students who apply early to reach schools with care but have very little chance of acceptance.</p>
<p>Idk, I doubt I’m right but maybe with Duke, there are a significant number of big college basketball fans who really want to go to Duke (because of the crazies+renowned school) and applied, but aren’t really qualified academically. I don’t know, I could be totally wrong but I get that sort of feeling given Duke is so famous among sports fans.</p>
<p>Great, Cornell went up… </p>
<p>Acceptance rate for Cornell ED will probably be just above 30%.</p>
<p>^be happy, Duke will be lucky to be 25%.</p>
<p>W&M’s always astounds me. I’m OOS, which probably sets it back down to around 30%, but it’s a reassuring figure to hear nonetheless.</p>
<p>Duke and Chicago going up. Very interesting. I’m surprised that the rate for UPenn went down, though.</p>
<p>@Globaldolphin, you might be surprised that some Admissions offices actually make a profit during the app. season! Harvard and others buy lists of students with high test scores (one of the reasons the College Board is profitable too) and then send out mass form letters to tens of thousands of kids asking them to consider applying. When two of my kids (now at MIT and Penn) got these letters, they were so flattered that they wanted to apply to schools they were previously uninterested in. No wonder the published acceptance rates at these schools is so low!</p>
<p>Cortana- How did you come up with the 30% for Cornell. maybe I am not seeing the article in its entirelty due to browser problems or something.</p>
<p>Cortana- How did you come up with 30% for Cornell. I didn’t see anything in the article.</p>
<p>^It’s probably just cortana’s prediction based on the numbers for this year.</p>
<p>The number of went applicants went up about 3%, so it’s very unlikely the ed acceptance rate will go down more than 5%.</p>
<p>With everything online now, it is easy to have the “what the heck” attitude. Plus, then we have the Vanderbilt’s of the world who drop their supplemental apps, so it makes it almost a no-brainer to throw them an app if you are interested at all.</p>