<p>Duke and UPenn both in particular have a HUGE portion of their classes come from ED and legacy. Duke’s legacy rate is certainly much higher than the rest of the applicant pool (although that it pretty typical at most top schools with a few notable anomalies).</p>
<p>Last year, a whopping 47% of Penn’s enrolled freshman class was from ED and 15% were sons/daughters of alumni. For Duke, 31% (a 4% increase from the previous year) was from ED; don’t know stats about alumni, but I expect it’s similar to UPenn and have grossly estimated it at 17% based on available figures. </p>
<p>Duke filled up 35% of its Class of 2014 spots through ED this year. Seeking to enroll a class of about 1700 (last year appeared to over-enroll slightly at 1739; Duke’s class size has increased by about 100 in the last four years; it was about 1640 for Class of 2008), RD acceptance rate will be about 15% assuming similar number of RD applicants and yield as last year (although I expect RD apps to be up nationwide based on these ED numbers). That is a 14.5% acceptance rate gap. Penn ED acceptance rate last year was 32%, while its RD was 15%, for a gap of 17%.</p>
<p>Both Duke and Penn yield-protect like crazy.</p>
<p>Penn (~65% yield rate) just does a better job of it than Duke (~40% yield rate).</p>
<p>In fact, Duke has a lower yield rate than all the ivies, including Cornell. Remember the ivies cannot offer merit and athletic scholarships to boost their yield like Duke.</p>
<p>True, but they can offer ADMISSION to applicants who would otherwise have no chance. And with amazing FA pacakages, an inner city kid playing basketball can expect a full ride anyways. Harvard basketball comes to mind with recent flexibility when it comes to admitting recruits. Certainly not as much flexibility as DI scholarship-offering schools, but a borderline student/borderline top DI athlete who gets the offer of an Ivy League education is not going to turn it down, especially with an amazing FA package. So recruiting athletes at Ivy League schools certainly DOES help their yield. Harvard doesn’t need to worry about its yield, though; just using it for illustrative purposes. And this isn’t just in basketball. I know various tennis players, for example, who were admitted to Cornell, Dartmouth, and the like who probably wouldn’t have gotten in otherwise (certainly solid students, but it still would have been a reach). So obviously they’re going to attend when the coach is recruiting them.</p>
<p>Don’t use the “let’s give the poor minority inner-city kid a chance” excuse to rationalize Duke’s state-school admissions standards for basketball recruits. Most of Duke’s basketball players are neither “poor,” “minority,” nor from the “inner city.”</p>
<p>For crying out loud, Duke does not even participate in Questbridge, so I doubt it really cares that much about socio-economic diversity, except for public relations, which is actually one of the few things that Duke is very good at.</p>
<p>It is much harder to encourage students to apply ED, for obvious reasons. Why do you think Brown switched from EA to ED fairly recently? It was being flooded with far too many early applicants.</p>
<p>You missed my point. Then again, I could’ve been more clear.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that we’re talking about percentage changes (of the same early program) not switches (between programs). In other words, we’re comparing not EA vs. ED, but EA vs. EA and ED vs. ED.</p>
<p>The reason I find Chicago’s EA % change to be more impressive than Duke’s ED % change is because the former’s potential applicant pool is more likely to be close to exhaustion than the latter’s. The (overstated) fact that “it is much harder to encourage students to apply ED” vs. EA is irrelevant because we’re not comparing ED vs. EA.</p>
<p>That said, your argument about Brown seems specious to me. (I actually have no idea what Brown said, so I am just taking your word for it). Now, why would Brown or any school, for that matter, willingly choose or want to decrease their application pool? That makes no sense to me at all.</p>
<p>A more reasonable explanation is that Brown was seeing that they were losing too many of its EA admits to HYPSM than it was comfortable with; so it switched to ED for the purposes of yield protection.</p>
<p>Finally, it’s not clear that potential EA pools are actually that much larger than ED pools. Plenty of kids choose to apply to ED schools over EA school because the former affords them a strategic admissions advantage that the latter doesn’t (usually).</p>
Interestingly, Brown was less worried about yield than HYSPM at that time. Princeton, Stanford, and Yale had ED back then. From the Daily Princetonian:</p>
<p>*The workload created by the application increase has been staggering, Nickels said.</p>
<p>“The idea of the early action policy was to attract students who were sure that Brown was the place that they wanted to end up,” Nickel said.</p>
<p>The early action admission process became inefficient, said Michael Goldberger, Brown University director of admission. “Clearly, we are now evaluating application materials from thousands of students who have not yet narrowed their sights on Brown and two years ago would not have applied early,” he said in a press release.</p>
<p>“We have, in effect, simply moved the regular admission process several months forward,” he added.*</p>
<p>
Oh, I don’t agree with that at all. Chicago has soared in popularity in the last 3-4 years, something I’ve noticed even on CC. Their marketing campaign is easily the most aggressive of the top universities (yes, more so than WUStL). </p>
<p>In contrast, Duke is pretty much rehashing the same spiel and attracting the same students it always has.</p>
<p>This is Brownian double-speak for: “Clearly, we are losing our early (action) admits to HYSPM at the same rate that we are losing our regular admits. So what’s the point of EA? Maybe it’s time to switch to ED…”</p>
<p>I’m very impressed by Rice. The school seems so hospitable, they give merit scholarships, current students and alum. chronicle happy and rich experiences, there, and I know five kids, in the past two years, who are there. These particular kids could have gone, anywhere, and were (all) thrilled to get some generous subsidy, and that was the tipping point for their decision to attend Rice.</p>
<p>More to the point, their choice matched up with a wonderful experience. It’s always been a great school; I just think, like Tufts, Emory, and Wash U., it’s recently enjoying a more national/international reputation.</p>
<p>a) some loner high school kid who wishes he could go to a top school like Duke, Chicago, Penn, etc,
b) was actually rejected by Duke, or
c) are some loner college kid at HYPSM. </p>
<p>Either way, I’m glad I’m having the time of my life AND receiving an amazing education at Duke. An at least I respect my peer schools while at it. </p>
<p>Hate to break it to you, but I do respect my TRUE peer institutions: the other HYPSM schools. The fact that you had, ahem, trouble getting into Stanford (et al.) should’ve suggested to you that Duke is not a “peer” of HYPSM.</p>
<p>Playing the “Duke rejection” card is sad and misguided. Until Duke:</p>
<p>1) has single-digit acceptance rates like HYPS (or at least 50%+ yield)
2) gets rid of Early Decision (or at least does not have ~30% overall ED acceptance rates and ~60%+ ED legacy acceptance rates)
3) stops paying their top admits a salary (read: “merit scholarships”)
4) stops recruiting sub-900 SAT “student athletes” and developmental admits
5) surpasses at least one ivy (Cornell) in selectivity
6) ceases to be dominated by the ivies in cross-admit battles (or being an ivy backup in general)
7) starts respecting their real peers such as Georgetown and Northwestern (instead of putting them down in cheesy publicity puff pieces*)</p>
<p>*“In recruiting battles against the third five–Georgetown, Chicago, Washington University, Northwestern, and Cornell–Duke is successful about 80 percent of the time.” </p>
<p>^ Not necessarily just as an Ivy back-up.
For some cross-applicants, choosing Rice over an Ivy might make very good sense. That would be the case if, for example:
you are interested in architecture or engineering, but want a smaller school than Cornell
you want something closer to the experience of a small LAC, but like the idea of having some graduate and professional programs
you want to go to school in a warmer climate</p>
<p>Rice is a stand-out in a small set of selective, LAC-like universities that offer both liberal arts and professional degree programs. If you see yourself in a field like investment banking where prestige and social networking really are important to getting your foot in the door, then an Ivy League school probably would be a better choice. If you are more interested in building things (as an engineer or architect), performing (as a musician), or perhaps in a career in academia, Rice could be at least as good a choice.</p>
<p>Princeton fits both of these criteria. Outside of financial and possibly geographic considerations, I cannot see why or how any cross-applicant would want to choose Rice over Princeton.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Soon Rice will be less of a stand-out in this fashion when it expands enrollment and/or if it merges with Baylor Med.</p>
<p>that chart is extremely old and needs to be redone. Considering how I chose Duke over both Columbia and Cornell, how the majorty of Dukies now chose Duke over Cornell (this is not to bash on Cornell…), and is DEFINITELY as selective as Penn and Cornell, Duke is doing just fine. It has long forgone it’s title as an “ivy backup.”. Stop being so stubborn and elitist. Chicago and Duke are as good as the middle ivies. I agree that they are not HYPSM, though. I never said that.</p>