I am in agreement with Nick and my experience with an athlete gave me a front row seat in the ED process at 15 schools.
First, its even less beneficial with small schools. Someone mentioned Bates having a rate of 55% but more than half of ED acceptances are preselected applicants like athletes, legacy and URM through the Prologue program. They are counted in that figure. Athletes go through admissions during the summer. Also the non-hook applicants are higher than average stat students.
So, the ED applicants this year were just 6% of total applicants, with the remaining 94% accepted at a 17.8% rate. Clearly, more people would apply ED if there was an edge.
ED is beneficial if your stats are above average and you want the adcom to really focus on it because they aren’t as busy during ED.
I don’t think any student should think it is beneficial otherwise.