HYPS 2011 SCEA Stats (% accepted)

Colleges and Universities A-Z Stanford University
21

<p>Premises:</p>

<p>As long as a school applies the same or higher standards to its early applicant pool, there is no inherent advantage in applying early. Seems to me to be self-evidently true.</p>

<p>Early action programs allow disadvantaged students to shop financial aid offers, thus removing that obstacle. This is self-evidently true.</p>

<p>Early programs on the whole reduce stress, by allowing those students who have a clear first-choice college to fnish their application process with only one application, early. This logically should be true, and in my experience it is - I know many people who got in early, and whose worries are over. Even the ones who got deferred or rejected are no worse off than they were before - and this is a group that includes me. I can tell you that personally, the early app was less stressful than the regular ones were for me.</p>

<p>As to your other criticism, he did in fact use facts:</p>

<p>"At Stanford, we actually apply somewhat higher standards to our early pool, since we do not want to accept students early unless we're confident they would get in during the regular round. This is reflected in the SAT scores for these students: They average 40 points higher than those of students admitted later. It is not, however, reflected in our early acceptance rate, which is indeed somewhat higher than in the regular round."</p>

<p>or</p>

<p>"At Stanford, 36 percent to 40 percent of the students accepted early apply for financial aid; in the regular round only slightly more, 40 percent to 44 percent, seek aid."</p>

<p>Those sound like facts to me. No, he didn't use hard numbers, but realistically whether the number is a couple of percent off in admit rate is not material to the argument - you either think he's right or completely wrong, a number isn't going make a significant difference.</p>

<p>So what are you getting at here?</p>

22

<p>Have you read the research published by Christopher Avery, Andrew Fairbanks, and Richard Zeckhauser that got everyone talking about this issue? </p>

<p><a href="http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP01-049/$File/rwp01_049_avery_rev1.pdf"&gt;http://ksgnotes1.harvard.edu/Research/wpaper.nsf/rwp/RWP01-049/$File/rwp01_049_avery_rev1.pdf&lt;/a> </p>

<p><a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2248/is_150_38/ai_109027888%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2248/is_150_38/ai_109027888&lt;/a> </p>

<p><a href="http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0DXK/is_24_21/ai_n9485394%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0DXK/is_24_21/ai_n9485394&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>I am an owner of "The Early Admissions Game: Joining the Elite."</p>

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<p>the Princeton/Harvard Ea/ED drops did not have a logical argument .... they throw in the phrase "hurts the disadvantaged" and nobody dares question it. </p>

<p>Nobody on this board supporting HP actually has a response to this, other than making personal attacks on some Stanford administrator who follows logic</p>

<p>HP will wonder why all the top students are going to Stanford. The reason will be that they got in SCEA and bonded with the school that reached out to them.</p>

25

<p>
[quote]
HP will wonder why all the top students are going to Stanford.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>How do you define "all the top students" for testing that prediction?</p>

26

<p>how about when Stanford & Yale take the top spots on USN&WR</p>

27

<p>
[quote]
how about when Stanford & Yale take the top spots on USN&WR

[/quote]
</p>

<p>So is it your prediction, O Oracle, that Stanford and Yale will both </p>

<p>a) hold fast to their current SCEA policies </p>

<p>and </p>

<p>b) rise in U.S. News rankings AS A CONSEQUENCE of having SCEA? </p>

<p>I'm not so sure I agree with prediction a), for the reasons already given in this thread, and I am even more doubtful of b). But even if both of those predictions come true, that wouldn't prove "HP will wonder why all the top students are going to Stanford," which was your first prediction. It's not entirely clear that having top students is the one and only thing that raises a college's U.S. News rankings. </p>

<p>Good luck in this year's application process. Have a happy New Year.</p>

28

<p>I read the article, 1of42, a long time ago. </p>

<p>I'm completely in agreement, tokenadult.</p>

<p>Stanford and Yale will see significant yield rate drops next year. Kids that might have gone EA or ED to HP now will play it smart and go EA to SY, while their top choice will remain Harvard, most likely. </p>

<p>Students don't bond that easily, and many are smart enough to play it strategically, rather than honestly. That's why EA is unfair. I would totally go Yale EA even if Harvard was my first choice, and being accepted EA wouldn't change that. </p>

<p>No one really conceptualizes how much early admission is a secret. I went to an elite public high school. A lot of kids applied HYS, and less than half went EA, although all of them should have. </p>

<p>Etchemendy cannot prove that the EA pool is better, because it's not. Sure, on average it might be, but it's a much smaller sample size. </p>

<p>The math: there are say, 4000 EA kids and 16,000 RD kids. The average SAT for EA will be say, 2200. The average SAT for RD will be say, 2100. BUT assuming a relatively normal distribution, there might be 2000 kids with 2300+ in the RD pool and only maybe 500 in the EA pool. </p>

<p>All of the 500 will be accepted, while only a quarter of the 2000 top RD kids will be accepted.</p>

29

<p>That's a good mathematical analysis of why some claims about EA not being advantageous are misleading.</p>

30

<p>You have to remember that those first 4000 are applying solely to Stanford at that time, while the other 16000 are applying to numerous places at once. Even if only a quarter of the 2000 get acceptances from Stanford, you can bet a higher proportion of the 2000 will get acceptances in general than do the SCEA kids.</p>

31

<p>But that doesn't matter. It's hard to generalize at that level, because it's hard to get into any of the top five, and more than half of the students who do get in early.</p>