I’ve looked around and saw that colleges like Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Cornell, and Dartmouth have ED acceptance rates of around 25-30%. Does that sound correct? Wouldn’t it imply that, statistically, you have the same odds of getting into Northwestern ED as you do Bates or Tulane RD? It just doesn’t sound right to me.
I don’t think you can make that statistical comparison because the pools of applicants are different.
That said, ED does give a significant boost at many schools. I suggest the best thing is to compare the ED and RD rate from the same school.
ED is a fine way to go if both of these are true: 1) the applicant has one top choice college AND 2) the school appears affordable (run net price calculators) and the family has no need/desire to compare financial offers among different colleges.
Bear in mind some schools use ED to give offers to hooked applicants (athletes, legacies) and others don’t, so knowing which type your target school is also helps you judge how much of a boost you really get at ED (if you are an unhooked applicant). Here on CC it seems to be common cause that the ivies fall into the former category.
Btw I don’t know the number but I am pretty sure Tulane RD is now way below the numbers you mention. Wasn’t their overall admit rate in the lower teens this year?
And remember that many recruited athletes are driving up those ED admit numbers as well as certain programs like Questbridge if the school participates and sometimes legacies if the school tells legacy applicants they need to apply early to get a boost.
Tulane’s RD acceptance rate is far lower than 30%. They had a 13% acceptance rate overall which included ED applicants.
ED almost always gives you an edge in admissions. It’s great for yield, nails down some things a college wants in a class, takes demonstrated interest and preference for another school out of the picture.
In the many Naviance charts I’ve seen, ED clearly helps. It is not going to get someone outside of the lines into a school but it’s a huge plus for those who are strong matches for highly selective schools but due to the sheer numbers of applicants, such schools are reaches for everyone.
It depends on the college. However, colleges are not transparent about how much the higher ED admission rates are due to different applicant pools (e.g. the inclusion of most recruited athletes in the ED pool) versus an actual preference for ED applicants over similar RD applicants, so you may as well be guessing.
If the college considers “level of applicant’s interest”, applying ED is the strongest possible way to express a high “level of applicant’s interest”.
- You are a compelling match, in every respect. (And you know what a full, holistic match is, at that college.)
The early pool does have a higher admit rate, where any of us have checked. But that’s not just because you submit early and promise to attend, if accepted. First, they have to want you. That’s serious stuff. No magic wand. They don’t say, “We’ll take every 4th kid no matter his suitability.”
So, only a tip for the best qualified. As shown in their complete app/supp.
Or recruited athletes.
@SJ2727 @collegemom9 yea i just figured that out, i went off what i saw on the front page of google, which said it was 25%
Your Northwestern info is generally correct. This past year, the ED acceptance rate was 25%, while the RD acceptance rate was 4.8%, for a blended acceptance rate of 8.9%, pretty much on par with the lower Ivies.
Northwestern and Vanderbilt always take students from our HS during the ED round. This is not the case during regular admissions, where kids are rarely accepted anymore (from our HS). They are either waitlisted or rejected.
@DWM1967 when you state…“Your Northwestern info is generally correct. This past year, the ED acceptance rate was 25%, while the RD acceptance rate was 4.8%, for a blended acceptance rate of 8.9%, pretty much on par with the lower Ivies.”
Your numbers and resulting conclusions are factually wrong once again (“the RD acceptance rate was 4.8%”), per Northwestern’s own press release. NU RD acceptance rate was 6.9%…
“The acceptance rate was about 25 percent for Early Decision applicants, who are expected to make up 53 to 54 percent of the class of 2023, Watson told The Daily in a December email. After considering Early Decision numbers, the Regular Decision acceptance rate becomes about 6.9 percent. For the class of 2022, the Regular Decision acceptance rate was about 6.4 percent.”
For context…While NUs numbers are impressive for ED at 25% they remain above Ivies as follows:
Brown 18.2%
Columbia 14.6%
Cornell 22.7%
Dartmouth 23.2%
Harvard 13.4%
Penn 18%
Princeton 13.9%
Yale 13.2%
Total Acceptance Rate at NU once again impressive at 8.9% (up from last year 8.5%) and for context see below (Not including Stanford and Vandy who don’t publish)…
Harvard REA + RD: 1,950 out of 43,330 (4.5%)
Columbia ED + RD: ~2,171 out of 42,569 (~5.1%)
Princeton SCEA + RD: 1,895 out of 32,804 (5.8%)
Yale SCEA + RD: 2,178 out of 36,843 (5.9%)
UChicago ED + EA + RD (5.9%)
Brown ED+RD: 2,553 out of 38,674 (6.6%)
MIT EA + RD: 1410 out of 21,312 (6.6%)
Duke ED + RD: 3,064 out of 41,613 (7.4%)
Penn ED + RD: 3,345 out of 44,960 (7.4%)
Dartmouth ED + RD: 1,876 out of 23,650 (7.9%)
Rice ED + RD: 2,364 out of 27,084 (8.7%)
Swarthmore ED1 + ED2 + RD: 995 out of 11,400+ (8.7%)
Northwestern: 40,579 applicants (8.9%)
Bowdoin ED1 + ED2 + RD: ~831 out of 9,332 (~8.9%)
Johns Hopkins ED+RD: 2,950 out of 32,231 (9.2%),
Colby ED1 + ED2 + RD: 1,295 out of 13,584 (9.5%)
Cornell ED + RD: 5,183 out of >49,000 (~10.6%)
Amherst ED + RD: 1,144 out of 10,567 (10.8%)
USC: 7400 out of 67,000 (11%)
Well positioned ahead of Cornell, JHU, USC and behind Rice, Duke, UC and 7 Ivies.
Lastly note the corrected NU RD rate of 6.9% while extremely competitive remains well above those of non Cornell Ivies.
@DMW1967 NU is a great school that carries prestige in the absence of falsehoods. Please stop expressing opinions based on demonstrably incorrect data (3rd time you have erred to the benefit of NU) it calls into question your credibility.
Bates’ acceptance rate for the last three cycles has been under 20% I believe.
“It just doesn’t sound right to me.”
With the caveat that, yes, the applicant pools won’t be exactly the same, it is what it is, man. Wrap your head around it.
It’s not like Tulane and Bates take any warm body, after all.
Your take-away should be that the RD round for selective schools (even just below the Ivy/equivalent level) is really tough where plenty of average-excellent kids get rejected (though they also get in). At the Ivy/equivalent level, the RD round is downright brutal.
BTW, while I had never heard of Bates (or several tiny LACs) before joining CC, I always thought Tulane was highly-regarded in it’s locale, being regarded as the Vandy/Emory/WashU of Nawlins.
Yep ^^. And @Nocreativity1 is spot on as well.