<p>First of all, I understand the rule that if you deserve to get in, you will regardless of other factors (when you apply etc) but i was wondering with Harvard and Princeton introducing restrictive early action it is likely that the number of early applicants to MIT will drop significantly. I, personally know quite a few people who would have applied early to MIT but are applying early to Harvard this year. With fewer people applying early, would it improve the chances of those applying early to MIT? I understand this topic has probably been discussed in great detail and if so, could someone give me a link?</p>
<p>It’s likely there will be a drop – more students have applied early to MIT over the past few years as other schools have eliminated their early programs, so it wouldn’t be surprising if application numbers dropped as these schools reintroduce their programs.</p>
<p>However, fewer people applying to MIT EA in and of itself doesn’t help anyone get admitted. MIT won’t admit a large percentage of the class EA if the EA application numbers don’t support such an action – there’s not a minimum number of students they want to accept EA or anything. In most cases, students who choose to apply to a restrictive early program at another school will end up applying to MIT regular action, so approximately the same number of people will apply to MIT overall.</p>
<p>According to what Mollie has said, is it likely that the number of applicants MIT accepts EA will drop proportionally as well?</p>
<p>It is quite common for people to post questions like canbambiswim’s above. Is [something] “likely” to happen?</p>
<p>I have never understood these questions. And there are several reasons for this:</p>
<p>1) The CC community is likely to be spectacularly ill-informed about questions like this. We can all take guesses, but we are mostly not professional admissions officers and as such our guesses are weak. But even if we were all adcomms, then the questions are still meaningless for the other two reasons</p>
<p>2) The future is unseen. I am fairly certain that nobody in the MIT Admissions office has any knowledge of the current question, for example. In this case, as in almost all similar cases, the admissions office will get the applications, then take a decision.</p>
<p>3) This cannot affect any individual’s application. The sample size for any specific individual application is 1 and whether something is “likely” does not actually affect any specific application. If we know that (for purely hypothetical example) MIT is more likely to accept bassoon players this year than last year, then either you already play the bassoon or you don’t, and if you do, either you will be offered admission, or you will not. How likely your application this year might compare to some fictitious alternate application that you might have made in some other year is meaningless and futile.</p>
<p>I’m just puzzled why questions like this show up so often.</p>
<p>I guess my question was a little hasty–but I was really asking about the possibility of MIT deferring more applicants to RD and then accepting them then. In the end, it’s the same result. Your point, however, about how it’s nearly impossible to guess is irrefutable. I guess I’m just trying to make myself feel better about the application process by finding out as much as possible. Thanks for the response!</p>
<p>More than any other college whose numbers I have ever looked at, MIT manages to keep to real parity (or very close to it) between its EA admission rate and its RD admission rate. By the time the admissions staff finalizes EA decisions, they almost certainly have enough information to project very accurately how many RD applications they will receive, and thus what their overall acceptance rate is going to be (not taking into account wait list, etc.).</p>
<p>So my “spectacularly ill-informed” “weak” guess is that MIT will continue to maintain its EA acceptance rate very close to what its overall acceptance rate is going to be. That means if EA applications decline relative to RD applications, EA acceptances will decline, too. But if EA and RD applications both decline or increase in the same proportions, the number of people admitted EA will be about the same as last year.</p>
<p>It is reasonable, but far from certain, to expect EA applications to decline (or not to increase much) at MIT this year. There will be at least about 10,000 people applying EA or ED to Harvard, Princeton, and UVa, and some of them are people who last year would have been applying EA to MIT. How many? That’s the big question; it’s anyone’s guess. And how many people will be applying EA to MIT this year because they think they have a better chance because EA applications are likely to be down, whose equivalents last year did something else? No one knows. And no one knows how many more people will apply EA to MIT this year because all the ongoing discussion about early admissions educates people to consider that an option. So it isn’t clear at all that the expansion of SCEA at Harvard and Princeton will reduce the number of EA applications MIT gets.</p>
<p>As for RD, I think it IS clear that the Harvard/Princeton EA policy change is not at all likely to reduce the number of RD applications MIT receives. Between them, they will probably admit about 1,500 people EA. Only a fraction of those would have applied to MIT at all in prior years – 20-25% is probably a really generous estimate – and some of THEM will apply to MIT anyway this year, since the EA acceptance isn’t binding, and some may be looking for better financial aid, or just still wanting to think about MIT. So the maximum difference in the MIT RD pool from that is probably 200-300 applicants, maybe 2%. Even though those were probably high-quality applicants, that difference isn’t going to move the needle much, and is likely to be swamped by other factors, including random year-to-year variation.</p>
<p>None of this should make any difference to you if you are thinking about applying early (or not) to MIT. The net effect is unknowable. And even if the net effect were completely known, how that would affect YOU would remain a complete mystery. Let’s say MIT’s EA acceptance rate declines by 2 percentage points (which would be pretty significant). If that happened because the ratio of EA to RD applications declined proportionately, or because the EA pool was somehow weaker relative to the RD pool, in theory the change wouldn’t affect the decision for any individual applicant at all. And even if it DID affect applicant decisions, the number of applicants affected would be tiny – 98% of the EA pool would get exactly the same decision (yes, no, or maybe) they would have gotten last year or the year before. You are far more likely to be in the 98% group than the 2% one.</p>
<p>So don’t sweat it.</p>
<p>Mikalye and mollie are both correct. “what is likely” is kind of a silly question for any individual applicant to ask. That said, I think that there will probably be a drop in early action applicants this year, and so we will probably drop the number of students we admit in early. As mollie said, we prefer to keep our admit rate proportional to the applicant pool during EA and RA, though we really take whom we want to take and it usually just works out that way.</p>