<p>Is it true that if you apply early action and you are deferred, you can still add things to your application for the regular decision round? Not just test scores, but extracurricular achievements, etc.</p>
<p>If you are deferred, you should definitely send the admissions office an update if you have noteworthy new accomplishments. However, don't send them an update just to send an update if you don't have much new/interesting to report.</p>
<p>Does anyone know what the stats are on how many are deferred/rejected/accepted SCEA? I'm sure they're on these boards somewhere but I'm not sure where exactly.</p>
<p>Yale accepts 17% of the 3,800 who apply early. Yale however does not defer almost everyone it does not accept early, as does Harvard. Yale, rejects early 33% of the remaining applicants who were not accepted early, and defers the other 67%. Of those who are deferred, approxinately 11% of them are accepted in the regular round.
Harvard has about the same number of applicants who apply early and accepts around the same number as Yale. Harvard however only rejects 5% of the applicants early and defers everyone else. Harvard however also only accepts about 10% of those who were deferred in the regular pool.</p>
<p>Your statistical claims are incorrect. Did you just make them up, or what?</p>
<p>For the class of 2010, Yale rejected about 33% of the SCEA applicants, accepted 17%, and deferred the rest. My son was among the deferred group. His deferral letter indicated that his chance for admission in the RD round was around 13%. He did send an update in February and was accepted in April.</p>
<p>Those numbers were based on an SCEA app total that included apps which were incomplete or withdrawn; the actual total of completed apps was lower. </p>
<p>For the preceding class, Yale admitted 249 deferrees (about the same fraction projected, but not yet reported, for this year - which was far higher than the admit rate for "normal" RD applicants) while Harvard admitted 92 deferrees. I do not yet know the number of SCEA deferrees admitted by Harvard this year.</p>
<p>No Byerly. I got them from several college counseling websites that posted last years statistics on the web</p>
<p>Where do you think those sites got the numbers, and from when do they date? I know these sites, and they just cut and paste press releases they find on the web. These early press releases are seldom accurate. First, they are based on preliminary app numbers - inflated by apps that are later withdrawn or incomplete, and second, the admit numbers do not take into account either "summer melt" or the extent to which the final matriculation total was altered by backfilling from the waitlist.</p>
<p>yes, byerly, the statistics are skewed, BUT... in the harvard / yale comparison made here, is it not safe to assume they are skewed in the same aggrandizing fashion?</p>
<p>Not necessarily.</p>
<p>I would point out, for example, that the relative fraction of each class at Harvard and Yale ostensibly filled via the early applicant pool differs substantially when you aggregate both "original" early admits and deferred early applicants admitted later.</p>
<p>Byerly then here is my question. If there was a 17% for SCEA at Yale this past year, and assuming that a significant number of those accepted early are legacies and recruited athletes who tend to apply early, and possibly development cases. what would the acceptance rate be for those not in those categories? I put that rate at lower than 10%
I am basing my estimate on this: (all numbers rounded)
1. Assuming an average early applicant pool at around 4,000
2. Assuming 1800 accepted both regular decision and SCEA
3. Assuming 700 accepted SCEA
4. Yale has a on average a 40% acceptance rage for legacies, and legacies typically make up 10% of the entering class. Thus, first assume 1500 of the 1800 accepted enroll(just an estimate).
5. Assume that of the 1800 accepted, that 180 are legacies. (round to 200)
6. Assume that 500 legacies applied combined regular decision and SCEA with a 40% acceptance rate
7. Assume that of the 500 legacies that applied, that 400 of them applied in the early pool as the legacy advantage tends to go with applicants who applied early. Assume 160 of the 700 who were accepted in the early pool were legacies (ie.
8. Yale tends to take approximately 15% recruited athletes, many of whom apply in the early pool. This number can vary. Assume 250 recruited athletes accepted to Yale and that half are taken early. Thus, perhaps another 125 accepted in the early pool
6. This would put approximately 300 of the 700 applicants going to recruited athletes or legacies in the early pool. Assume 5% of the 1800 (round to 2000) spots go to development cases in the early pool. That is another 90 spots (round to 100) That is 400 of the spots taken in the early pool not including any other categories mentioned. That leaves 300 spots left for applicants who are not development cases, legacies, or recruited athletes.
7. Assuming that there are 4,000 applicants applying early, that shows a less than 10 acceptance rate for all other applciants.
I am curious how you see it.</p>
<p>yale has a 30% acceptance rate for legacies. This was a point of contention in the past but Byerly will concur as he once cited a YAM article on the subject. He tried to mischievously alter his source, thinking no one would actually look up that while H+P had 40%/35% legacy admission rates respectively, Yale's was 30%. Maybe this is one of the reasons Harvard felt so compelled to drop SCEA. </p>
<p>That is a lie. The fact is, the admit rate is now - and was then - higher for the alums of Yale College than it is for alums of the University as a whole.</p>
<p>of course its higher, I'm not debating that. I'm not sure what you mean by Uni as a whole since legacy is just college based. Are you saying the YAM lied? Then where is your source. You might be right especially considering Brenzel was the AYA head.</p>
<p>No. I am saying that YOU lied. Admit rates differ for offspring of "Yale College" grads and offspring of other University grads. And both DO gain some legacy edge. See HERE where it is stated that:</p>
<p>"14% of matriculants were Yale College and/or Graduate and Professional School legacies 14%."</p>
<p>I have seen elsewhere data indicating that perhaps 25% of the legacy admits
are the offspring of people holding professional or grad school degrees, who are apparently given a bit less of a tip.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.yale.edu/oir/pierson_update.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.yale.edu/oir/pierson_update.htm</a></p>
<p>There are so many assumptions in your hypothetical - many of them at variance with what I understand to be the facts - that it is hard to answer directly.</p>
<p>Suffice it to say that there are many sub-groups with differing admit rates, including males/females, legacies, facbrats, athletes and URMs - and it is possible that the admit rate for these groups, also, may differ depending on whether they are in the early pool, the deferred early applicant group, or lumped in with the lowly "regular" applicants.</p>
<p>It is likely that the early pool has a disproportionate number of legacies and jocks, but that the "regular" pool has a higher number/fraction of URMs.</p>
<p>In either case (if the authors of "The Early Admissions Game" are to be believed) applying early affords you a substantial advantage - whether or not you are "hooked."</p>
<p>Thank you Byerly for getting back to me and your thoughts. I too read that book but believe that much of the authors reasonings and statistics apply to the circumstances several years ago before all this admission frenzy. In the last few years there have been more college entrance age students than at any other time in US history. Also the availablity and use of the common application have greatly bolstered the number of applications at these schools. I believe that the advantage talked about in that book apply today to schools including ivy leagues that are not as competitive to get into such as Cornell. I know of students who applied early who did clearly did receive a significant advantage over regular decision applicants. Many were accepted with SAT scores that would never have been considered as competitive in the early round. Schools like Cornell that have a significantly lower yield than other ivy leagues like HYP, will try to increase that yield in the early round. They will take applicants with lower SAT scores who are willing to commit as many very top applicants do not choose Cornell as their first choice. I know first hand of applicants who were accepted early decision with scores of 1200 for example who would never have had the same opportunity regular decision.
I believe that the signiciant advantage referred to in the book no longer exists for Harvard, Yale, Princeton and several elite others. I believe there advantage is that the applicant is considered in a smaller pool where they might have more of a chance to stand out, and there is also the additional opportunity to show their interest in the school and to have a second look if they are deferred. However it is not the significant advantage as has been in the past</p>
<p>I respectfully disagree with a number of your points.</p>
<p>Cornell, for example, does not rely on EA/ED to boost its yield to anywhere NEAR the degree that Yale, Columbia and Penn do. For this reason, surprisingly, Cornell may be the other Ivy most likely to join Harvard and Princeton in renouncing (what I call) the early admissions scam.</p>
<p>I have seen no statistics whatsover to indicate that the advantages for early applicants have abated anywhere. </p>
<p>The only possible exceptions may be at Harvard and Stanford for the class of 2010, where the fraction of the class filled from the early pool was substantially reduced this year - apparently as a matter of policy.</p>
<p>It would be great if you were right Byerly. I do believe that at HYP applicants who are not in one of the categories I mentioned will not be accepted early unless they would have been accepted in the regular decision pool, whereas at other schools, applicants are accepted in the early pool who might not have been as competitive in the regular pool.</p>