<p>I'm a senior at an extremely competitive high school in CT, and over the past couple weeks the early decision results have been trickling in. My school sends 92% of the grads to a four year college, many of them top universites</p>
<p>This year, however, it seems like everyone got screwed over ED. Almost no one was accepted to their top choice school. It seems that there is a general trend to not accept people ED, or at least not give them an advantage over RD applicants. I believe this is partly due to the fact that Harvard changed their policies on early decision, but I'm not sure.</p>
<p>We had some ridiculous deferrals from schools like Yale, Columbia, Georgetown, and many others. What is the situation like at your school? Do you think the days of early decision are done?</p>
<p>Same here for my school. Early people got owned. They send 99%+ to four year schools. Deferrals at Yale, Williams, MIT, UPenn. Acceptances at Northwestern, Hopkins, and Georgetown.</p>
<p>My old school is a competitive private school and people from there were accepted early to Stanford (2), Duke, Columbia, UPenn, Notre Dame, and Skidmore. I guess that doesn't mean early is an advantage, though.</p>
<p>I know what you mean, though ...seems like Early admission is the new Regular. For the top schools, everyone I know applied early.</p>
<p>Yeah, it is definitely getting VERY difficult... We usually get more than 1 person into Stanford, but it looks like it's not happening this year. Same thing with Columbia and even Cornell.</p>
<p>If you're really interested, just look up some statistics. Of course there's lots of variance between schools in terms of how many students each one accepts/rejects/defers.</p>
<p>I'd suggest that in general colleges don't really lower their admissions standards for ED, but because there's always an element of chance in the process, having two shots can give an applicant a slight advantage. It's especially good for students like myself who tend to crank out their best essays in a weekend and benefit little from the extra time that comes with RD. Just my two cents.</p>
<p>I think ED still has an advantage, because the school KNOWS they're going to get you, they don't have to worry about competing with another college.
But if the person applying is of lower caliber than what usually attends the school, its really not going to help so much, but if the applicant is in the top half of who usually matriculates, applying ED will solidify your chances!
I think most of the problem this year, especially for the top tier schools, is that Harvard and Princeton got rid of their early programs, so all of those potential early applicants are flooding elsewhere, EA in particular, making the entire pool much, much more competitive</p>
<p>ED is still an advantage. As more people learn about that advantage, ED becomes more competitive at any college that has it. This year is a very competitive year because of the large number of seniors in the "Echo Baby Boom."</p>
<p>It seems the advantages of ED vary among schools based on their selectivity and yield profiles. </p>
<p>At the most selective schools with relatively high yields, the advantage to an ED applicant, appears to me to be primarily this. You get your application looked at (perhaps more thoroughly) from amongst a smaller pool.</p>
<p>With these schools, while the overall ED admit rate is somewhat better than in RD, the ED pool includes two special preferences in relatively large numbers -- legacies and recruited athletes. Historically, many of these schools would not see their most outstanding candidates in large numbers in ED because of the advantages to these applicants of "playing the field." However, this year it seems, due to the perceived and real nature of competition, more of these top students are "going early" with the hopes of "locking in" a postion at a top school sooner, gaining a first mover advantage if you will. I think this is why ED is seemingly more competitive this year. </p>
<p>Interestingly some top schools, like Dartmouth, have upped their percentage of students taken early a bit (e.g. Dartmouth took 40% of the 2012 class in ED) and thus made the RD round more competitive (more bums chasing fewer available seats). </p>
<p>At less selective schools with lower yields, there is still a significant advantage statistically that flows from making the early commitment. However, some of the same dynamic described above is in place. where many schools are seeing relatively more outstanding students earlier in the process.</p>
<p>Sadly, I do not think this bodes well for the RD round this year, where many schools will be now focused on filling their URM, economically disadvantaged, diversity, etc. quotas.</p>
<p>Anecdotal evidence here is that ED is becoming less of an advantage and may be no advantage at all in some cases. I think Adcoms struggle to keep the bar as close to equal as possible between the two pools sometimes erring one way or the other.</p>
<p>Our school is a very competitive public school. Although only 84% gose to 4 year college. But the top students always doing very well to make into the ivies and other top schools. However this year, they went 'mad'. With HP drops out the ED, so far just after then EA/ED round 4.5% (that's only the number I heard of) got acceptance to the top schools (the lowest ranked is Cornell).....in previouse years the school usually send around 20 to HP (legacies, recruiters, etc.).</p>
<p>for evidence that a few years ago, early decision applicants who ended up being admitted were not the "best" in quite the same way as regular action applicants who ended up being admitted. In other words, there used to be a very clear advantage to applying early, especially applying ED rather than EA.</p>
<p>I have had this discussion this year more times than I can even remember, but just a couple of added thoughts....
1. Doesn't it depend on what school you are talking about? Isn't it possible that there while there may be no advantage in one institution, there may be a large one in another?</p>
<ol>
<li>It's very difficult to determine "ED advantage" in terms of percentages admitted when it is obvious that the ED pool is significantly smaller in absolute numbers...(i.e. when an EDI pool is 800 students and 400 are admitted vs. an RD pool of 12,000)...Naturally, you are not going to have a 50% RD rate.....If that ED pool jumps to 1100 and the school still takes 400, the "ED bump" is almost eliminated.......This is not necessarily a function of the ED qualifications of the group, but rather pure statistics....It also does not mean that a particular student rejected this year would have been accepted in a smaller pool last year.....</li>
</ol>
<p>"
for evidence that a few years ago, early decision applicants who ended up being admitted were not the "best" in quite the same way as regular action applicants who ended up being admitted. In other words, there used to be a very clear advantage to applying early, especially applying ED rather than EA.
"
IMO, this could be one of the main reason HP drop their ED (or was it EA single choice?).</p>
<p>Harvard and Princeton dropped Early Admission because they felt it unfairly biased the admissions process towards those students whose families could afford to pay full fare and against those needing financial aid. </p>
<p>Neither school ever worried about the academic quality of the applicant pool. A benefit to Harvard and Princeton from dropping EA is that they now have a longer season to recruit students from underrepresented sectors.</p>