<p>I have The Chosen on request from my local public library. It looks like it will be an interesting and controversial book. Thanks for mentioning that aspect of the book's contents.</p>
<p>A lot of the book is irrelevant to the situation today, however. More history than useful advice.</p>
<p>Before I jump into this, is there any information on the approximate number of students admitted to both Harvard and either YPSM? I think Byerly had posted a link on the Princeton board stating that there had been 540 students admitted to both Princeton and Harvard in the late 70's. Is there any more recent data?</p>
<p>Also, when did schools start using ED, and in the early days of early admissions, were the elite schools filling such a large portion of their calss through ED/EA?</p>
<p>The cross admit numbers don't answer the HYP question anyway. The real question is if you thought you could get in anyplace you wanted and could pay for it, where would you go? A lot of people just apply to the best school, and don't get counted among cross admits. If the best school is Princeton, and you can apply ED and get in, you don't count as a conquest over HY. But you should.</p>
<p>You ask a long question to which I will give a relatively short answer:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Yes, Harvard is still taking in excess of 3/4 of the common admits from its chief rivals, Stanford, Yale, Princeton and MIT.</p></li>
<li><p>EA had its origins in the "ABC" system by which HYP divvied up applicants of the top prep schools in the 1950's.</p></li>
<li><p>In the mid-1970's, HYP and others adopted a form of "open EA". Under this system, Harvard began to win the overwhelming majority of cross admits - to the point where in `1994, Yale's yield rate stood fully 22 points below Harvard's.</p></li>
<li><p>By 1995, "Yale and Princeton concluded that EA was doing them more harm than good in a market in which Harvard controlled the largest share." Thus in 1995-6 Yale and Princeton switched to binding ED (joined by Stanford, which hadn't had an early admissions program earlier), and saw their yield rate jump 5-6 points immediately, (as did Stanford) since the overlap pool with Harvard was reduced, even though Harvard continued to take the lion's share of common admits from each.</p></li>
<li><p>By 2001, however, Yale found that its binding ED pool was too small to provide applicants in sufficient number to provide the "diversity" they needed even while filling between 40-50% of the class that route - as did Princeton. Princeton, which had benefitted disproportionately by the artificial restriction of the overlap pool, and was less confident that it could compete as an SCEA school, stuck with binding ED.</p></li>
<li><p>Yale convinced Stanford to join it in a less-risky form of EA - "single choice early action" - where those admitted could apply elsewhere RD, but couldn't apply early elsewhere (ie, Harvard.)</p></li>
<li><p>Harvard, after considering a move from open EA to a position where it would not defer at all to "exclusivity" claims by other schools to potential applicants, "compromised" by joining Stanford and Yale in SCEA, although this was not, arguable, in its best interest.</p></li>
<li><p>SCEA served to further reduce the size of the overlap pool (which was its intent) although Harvard continued to take the bulk of common admits from its "rivals", and does so today.</p></li>
<li><p>HYPS all fill close to half their class via early programs - and perhaps a bit more, in the case of Yale and Princeton, if you consider the number of early applicants who are deferred and later admitted with the RD pool. This subgroup, of course, had signalled that the school was its "first choice" if admitted, and appears to gain admission at a higher rate than "regular" RD applicants.</p></li>
</ol>
<hr>
<p>I have seen HYP cross admit data for the last few years, but am not at liberty to disclose it in detail. Much cross admit and yield info for the 1950-2000 years is given in the latter portion of "The Chosen".</p>