<p>What the title says... I'm a little worried about this :(.</p>
<p>It depends on the year. But according to the chicago maroon(school news paper) their EA acceptance rate last year was about 13.4%. <a href=“Laureate discusses themes in contemporary poetry – Chicago Maroon”>Laureate discusses themes in contemporary poetry – Chicago Maroon; They’re overall acceptance rate was about 8.8%. So it’s hard but not impossible. I’ve heard that the school has received a smaller number of applications this year than they expected (only by a few hundred though) so I’m not sure how this years numbers are going to compare. If you don’t mind me asking why didn’t you apply EA? At my school applying early was really common but it seems like on the whole it’s not as common as I thought it was. Just curious</p>
<p>@collegebound1515</p>
<p>I was going to, but I felt my essays were subpar, and that would be a huge issue for UChicago</p>
<p>@yikesyikesyikes don’t worry. My essays were definitely subpar, but I still got in. If the rest of your app is good, you should be fine.</p>
<p>Well, last year it was around a 4% RD acceptance rate leading to an 8.4% overall, so it is harder–but not all that much. Don’t worry about it.</p>
<p>4% vs 13% seems like quite a difference 
</p>
<p>But remember, 10% of the deferred students from EA get accepted in the RD round. Deferred students statistically have a better chance of being admitted during the RD round than that of a brand new applicant.</p>
<p>Eh, I doubt that 10% of the deferred applicants get in nowadays seeing how much the acceptance rate has fallen over the last 10 years or so. </p>
<p>@bradybest<br>
<a href=“Advice for Deferred Students - University of Chicago - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/1261060-advice-for-deferred-students-p1.html</a></p>
<p>The UChicago rep said it herself. </p>
<p>@NateChortek Edit: Never mind, I retract whatever statements I made in this post because I don’t think I have enough knowledge to make a clear statement on this.</p>
Be careful comparing acceptance rates between the two application times. We can argue that EA applicants are more “committed” to UChicago because they are willing to apply early, so they might have a higher yield rate. So, the university might be attracted to accepting more in EA.
@KMizzle EA applicants are not more committed. UChicago EA is non-binding. Applicants are not obligated to attend if accepted like in a binding ED program.
@lslmom Personally, I only applied to colleges that I was positive that I was interested in attending during their early admission periods, and I’m sure others did the same. Also, other schools that UChicago applicants often apply to often have either SCEA or ED programs. So, if a student is applying EA to UChicago, they are more committed to UChicago than to other competitive schools. Does that make sense?
Well, it is out of my hands now. Al I can do is hope.
@KMizzle you’re right – I forgot about SCEA
Yes, foregoing an early shot at the SCEA schools shows the commitment to Chicago, since there is often an overlap in the types of students who apply to Chicago and those schools.
As far as I can tell, the fact that the Chicago EA program is open makes a substantial difference. That makes it possible for someone to apply ED at Dartmouth for example, and also apply EA at Chicago. That student would have to go to Dartmouth if they got in there, but could apply to Chicago simultaneously. Some of the ED schools allow applying to another early program as long as it’s non-binding…
Someone couldn’t apply ED to Dartmouth (again as one example) and also EA to HYP or Stanford though, as those schools have single choice/restrictive EA programs.
I think the net result is that Chicago gets a lot of EA applications and also admissions knows the program is open. So I wouldn’t expect applying EA to Chicago to carry the same advantage that it does at some other schools (especially ED ones where admissions knows they can increase yield by admitting ED applicants).
Applying EA to Chicago clearly does not carry the same relative advantage that an early application does at most other schools that have ED or SCEA. But that does not mean that it doesn’t carry any advantage. (Assuming, for purposes of argument, that there is any advantage anywhere to early applications, and that the relatively higher admission rate isn’t entirely due to things like athletic recruits or a stronger pool.)
Chicago, Harvard, and Duke all have about the same class size. Harvard and Duke maybe have 150-200 more slots per class than Chicago, but they’re close. And all three seem to want to admit about half of their classes in the early round. Harvard has SCEA, Duke traditional ED, and Chicago of course open EA.
Harvard got 4,600 early applications last year, >13% of 34,300 total applications. Duke, with its binding commitment requirement, got 3,200 early applications, <10% of 32,500 total applications. Chicago got an astounding 11,100 early applications, over 40% of its total applications.
From that pool, Harvard early-accepted just under 1,000 students, about 22% of the early applicants, and just under half of its total acceptances including RD. Duke early-accepted 800 students, or 25% of the early pool, but less than 23% of its total acceptances. And Chicago early-accepted 1,350 applicants (12%), which represented 59% of all acceptances.
Chicago’s early admission rate was by far the lowest, because it got such a high percentage of its total applications in the early round. But, still, it actually accepted more students early than in the regular round. Having used close to 60% of its total picks from 40% of the pool, it was left to spread the remaining 40% across 60% of the pool (probably more like 80% of the pool, given deferred EA applicants). The early admission rate was more than twice the regular admission rate. The equivalent comparison at Duke would be a little more than three times the regular admission rate, and at Harvard more than six times the regular admission rate. (The difference is actually larger than that due to deferred early applicants, but this suffices to see the differences among the schools.) The advantage is smallest at Chicago, but still pretty significant.
The way Chicago does it isn’t the only way, though. Georgetown – which does not permit EA applicants to apply ED elsewhere, but is not otherwise restrictive – got almost as high a percentage of its applications early as Chicago, 35%. But it gave out only 30% of its total acceptances early, and its early admission rate was apparently a little below its RD admission rate (they were probably close to the same, taking into account deferrals). MIT – with exactly the same EA rules as Chicago – got 37% of its applications early, and gave out 43% of its acceptances early, with an early admission rate that was about 1.5 times its regular admission rate. (Which, by the way, is about what Chicago looked like until the last couple of years when the number of early acceptances relative to total acceptances soared. But, back then, MIT looked like Georgetown does now – no meaningful difference in admission rate.)
@JHS Interesting analysis. By the way I do agree that there’s still some early advantage after accounting for athletes, legacies, development cases etc. At least that’s what Avery and colleagues conclude.
One number I’ve seen is for athletes - in the Ivies, maximum of 205/year and for some schools they use more like 180 of those slots. So that’s roughly 20% of the Harvard number noted above.