due to personal reasons, i’m not going to be able to apply before the ED1 deadline. is there a significant difference in acceptance rate between ed1 and ed2 for bates bowdoin or middlebury?
Middlebury’s ED acceptance rate, for example, was recently 50.9%, which is substantially higher than their RD rate. If you search their sites, you should be able to find statistics for the other schools.
My son applied and was accepted Bowdoin ED2 (Class of 2020). I think there is a significant difference in the acceptance rate between ED1 and ED2 at Bowdoin. Unfortunately, I don’t believe Bowdoin openly publishes much on stand-alone ED2 stats.
The reason for a higher ED1 acceptance rate at Bowdoin (and I suspect all three schools) is the acceptance of students with hooks applying through ED 1 (majority will be recruited athletes). I suspect (but can’t back it up with stats) that if you are an unhooked applicant, your chances of admission are pretty similar in ED1 or ED2. A binding ED application will have a higher admit rate than RD. In Bowdoin’s case, the percentage accepted in ED is ca. 25% compared to a 13.4% overall acceptance rate.
Good luck!
Of those three, only Middlebury separated out the stats for ED1 (51%) and ED2 (35%) acceptance rates. So, yeah, ED1 might be a tad better, but I agree with Red87 that that’s also when the pre-read athletes get in, etc., so it is hard to separate out the odds for different types of applicants. In any case, since you have no choice at this point, as per your original post, why worry? You can’t change what you can’t change. And ED2 is still better odds than RD!