Is it easier to get into Harvard or Yale for early action?
Please note that I know it would be easier to ED somewhere such as Penn or Brown in terms of admissions. As a student with high test scores, strong extracurriculars, and a high GPA living in Kentucky, I know that admissions to these schools are highly competitive.
Also, I was talking to one of my friends who goes to a highly competitive boarding school. She said that there, people wanting to go to one of these schools are advised to apply to Yale early instead of Harvard because Harvard takes more legacies/developmental admits in the early round. Is this true everywhere?
Harvard of course is harder to get into than Yale, that is true both fro SCEA and RD. They are both super difficult to get into, but Harvard is more so (similar to Stanford), while Yale is overall closer to Princeton in terms of difficulty. (Again the difference is small at this level).
Of course as you mention non-HYPSM ivies like Columbia, Penn, Brown etc are generally easier to get into, especially ED.
There is a ~1% difference in admissions selectivity between these schools. You’re splitting hairs at that point; for all intensive purposes, the schools admitting ~5% (Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and Columbia) have equally competitive applicant pools and equally difficult admissions.
@1d51jklad1 Not really. Columbia tends to get a lot of extra applications due to its NYC location which are not quite qualified. It gets a disproportionate number of apps compared to its class size purely because of NYC. Plus its yield rate is not on par with HYPSM but more on par with places like Penn or Chicago. HYPSM are definitely harder to get into than Columbia.
Also there is a difference, albeit small between Harvard/Stanford and Yale/Princeton. Virtually most Harvard/Stanford admits were also Yale/Princeton admits but that is not true the other way around.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
I’m going to assume that there will be no further discussion here about cross-admits, Stanford vs. Princeton, or any other topic not asked by the original poster, and all have been covered in other past threads. Additionally as CC is not a debate society, if one feels that there is a statistical significance IN Ea rates at H vs. Y, then let’s all agree to disagree.