Data10:
In the national pools, these colleges do certainly admit kids in the RD round. At nearly all ED colleges, the vast majority admits come from the RD pool rather than the ED pool. …Note that the relative admit rate difference does not consider the higher rate of hooked kids applying ED than RD. The actual degree of boost for ED is probably significantly less than suggested by the relative difference in admit rates.
Northwestern ED – 1077 admitted with 27% admit rate
Duke ED – 879 admitted with 22% admit rate
Vanderbilt ED – 852 admitted with 21% admit rate
I agree with your “conclusion”, but when data are presented as these, they just reinforce our (likely erroneous) belief of the “huge” ED boost, almost a 3-4fold! It would be great if we had the data to show of the 879 Duke ED admit, 600 are with hooks.