<p>Do you know if college admissions officers read applications in the order that they are received or randomly pick ones from a hat or something?</p>
<p>I'm planning to apply SCEA to yale but I don't know if I should try to get my application earlier to "beat the rush" or take my time to make sure everything is perfect. </p>
<p>thanks!!</p>
<p>No advantage if submitted early. Disadvantages if you submit after the due date. Your application won’t be considered if you submit it in late.</p>
<p>yeah i agree w/ plinz</p>
<p>I called them and asked about this; basically they said for SCEA they don’t start looking until after Nov. 1 so there’s no point in sending it early. (Because the adcoms are still touring the country for visits, etc)</p>
<p>the following statement is from Yale’s website:</p>
<hr>
<h2>Though the Single Choice Early Action deadline is November 1, we strongly encourage you to submit all of your materials to us sooner. We expect a rise in early applications this year, so admissions officers will begin reading applications after mid-October. The earlier your application becomes complete—meaning you have submitted both the Common Application and Yale Supplement, and we have received the necessary school documents and your fee or fee waiver request—the sooner we can begin to evaluate it.</h2>
<p>^ That doesn’t answer the question.</p>
<p>It isn’t really going to make a difference. It’s not as though if they had LOADS of applications submitted way before the deadline they’d go through them all and pick all the ones they wanted and be like “weeeell, the deadline isn’t for another week, but we’ve already found enough good people here so let’s just not bother reading the rest”. They have to review them all. So as long as you’re not after the deadline you’re all good.</p>
<p>maybe submitting the application early gives the impression that you’re really committed to yale…</p>
<p>I don’t think they would assume that from applying really early. There are all sorts of reasons why people wouldn’t have time to sit down and give their application all the attention it required for a really early submission.</p>
<p>i was wondering this too. I always had the impression that if you submit earlier (since they will start reviewing mid october) you would be reviewed among a fewer number of students and it might be easier to stand out
either way it cant hurt to submit early</p>
<p>I think the only way it will really make a difference to how early you’re accepted is if you’re a truly outstanding applicant. The kind of applicant who they KNOW they have to accept. I’m sure it’s not as simple as - read an application, then put them into the Yes, No, or Deferred pile, keeping a tally of every acceptance so they know how many more are left.</p>
<p>If you’re amazing, you’ll probably be accepted. And if you’re not great at all, it might be an immediate rejection. But if you’re in the middle, you’d probably go into some kind of median pile to be compared against everyone else when all the applications are in.</p>
<p>Either way, you won’t get your decision any earlier so I still think it doesn’t matter.</p>
<p>yeah no I am thinking of MINISCULE differences, as in 2 or 3 percent difference in change. but still every bit helps ;)</p>
<p>have you ever wondered if they mistakenly put somoene in the wrong pile??</p>
<p>Avoid the straw grasping here. When your files are submitted, your area rep reads it through and makes notations. Then it gets passed to another reader, who also makes notations. Then they are bundled together and brought to committee.</p>
<p>For the hypothesis that getting a completed app in on Oct 5 versus Oct 25 is an advantage would have to assume that the readers even KNOW or CARE about when the app was submitted. 5000 SCEA apps got read last year. That means roughly 20 first readers go through 250 apps each in a relatively small timeframe.</p>
<p>If you consider what really happens to the apps, I think one would have to be very wishful to assume any conferred advantage to being “first in”</p>
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<p>…How would anyone ever be able to measure such a thing?</p>