^^ @lifebreath ,Ah - did not see that part. Yes, then much of the increased yield would be attributable to ED; not all but most.
@DeepBlue86, what may work for prep school students (who are not scholarship students) will be very different than for public high school students. While I agree with you that schools and parents can do a much better job of forcing the child to decide their true preferences (rather than ego), I just don’t agree on the method. I just don’t see why a child, prep school or public school, should have to limit themselves to Harvard if they happened to get accepted early (okay, that sounded a bit weird but you get the point).
From what I can tell (not much) many private schools already limit the number of applications their students can send out. If there is a limit on the number of applications the school allows, then the counselor and parents can work with the student to make the hard choices of which schools to apply. One has to consider the role of the parent in the college application process. Many parents want their child to apply to these schools and may drive up the anxiety level by focusing only on top schools rather than a range. (of course, my previous post said I didn’t really want top kids to look further down…)