<p>Hey so I've been looking at some of the ED threads on here, and I saw that people with stats similar to mine have been getting in ED to some of the schools I will apply/have applied to. Does this mean I have a good chance of getting in or is it harder to get in RD?</p>
<p>Yes, its usually harder to get in RD rather than ED. Because the applicant pool is much smaller for ED there is less competition, and schools will be more likely to select you if they know you will go to their school if you get in, which is why ED is easier than RD</p>
<p>Totally depends on the school. At less selective schools that worry about yield, ED makes it a bit easier. At highly selective schools it doesn't matter much.</p>
<p>^^disagree with hmom. ED does matter even for highly selective schools (Penn, for example).</p>
<p>Yes, at my alma mater Penn it can be a slight boost as they take 50% of the class ED including most legacies, yet in 25 years of interviewing and keeping stats, I see almost no difference in stats between the 2 groups. I also think Penn is an exception in taking such a large class ED and there's talk of this ending with the new director of admissions in place.</p>
<p>Other than Wharton, Penn has long been (with Cornell) the red headed stepchild of the ivy league and worried about yield. This has changed with the increasing global popularity of the ivies.</p>
<p>The only school that I've heard it to be harder in ED is Boston College (which is EA, actually). I'm sure there are others, but it's generally easier to get into a school ED than RD.</p>
<p>Slight boost at Penn for ED? Taking at face value your statement that you see little difference in stats between ED and RD applicants, they should have similar acceptance rates. Yet on the Penn site at Penn</a> Admissions: Incoming Class Profile they say in 2008 the accepted 29% of the ED applicants in December, and another 10% of the deferred in the spring. Overall this means 35% of the ED kids ended up getting in . If you then massage the stats on that page you can calculate that 19,023 applied RD and they got 2,508 acceptances. This is an acceptance rate of 13.2%. So far from being slight, applying ED raises your chances by nearly a factor of 3!!!</p>
<p>Now there is a confounding factor here; Penn gives preference to legacies, but gives more preference if they apply ED. On the page at Penn</a> Alumni: Alumni Council on Admissions they list the legacy ED admit rate at 42% vs. 29% for all other ED applicants. Since they don't give absolute numbers you can't calculate the true advantage ED gives to non-legacies, but given the numbers from the previous paragraph it looks like it is still huge.</p>
<p>As for why Penn does it, the choice was quite deliberate. According to an article in the Atlantic monthly a few years back
[quote]
In 1978 Willis J. Stetson, known as Lee, became the dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania. The new job was quite a challenge. Penn at the time was in a weak position. In an era when big-city crime rates were still rising, its location in West Philadelphia was a handicap. Its promotional efforts took pains to point out that despite its name, the University of Pennsylvania was a private university and a member of the Ivy League, like Yale and Harvard, not of a state system, like the University of Texas. But within the Ivy League, Penn had acquired the role of backup or safety school for many applicants. "I would estimate that in the 1970s maybe forty percent of the students considered Penn their first choice," Stetson told me recently. For the rest, Penn was the place that had said yes when their first choice had said no. </p>
<p>But under the unusually candid Lee Stetson, Penn has exposed some of the inner workings of the black box that is the admissions process. "We have had a policy in place for close to thirty years that legacy applications are given special consideration only during early decision," Stetson told me last spring. The reasoning, he explained, is that if a legacy candidate is not sure enough about coming to Penn to apply ED, then Penn has no real stake in offering preferential consideration later on. It made sense, he added, for Penn to extend the policy to applicants in general: if they are extra serious about Penn, Penn will make an extra effort for them. "We've been very direct about it," Stetson told me. "Everybody likes to be loved, and we're no exception. Everybody likes to see a sign of commitment, and it helps in the selection process." "I would say that these days eighty percent of our students view Penn as their first choice," Lee Stetson concluded. "You can't overstate what that does for the mood of the campus."</p>
<p>It does something else as well, which is understood by every college administrator in the country but by very few parents or students. The more freshmen a college admits under a binding ED plan, the fewer acceptances it needs from the regular pool to fill its class—and the better it will look statistically. That statistical improvement can have significant consequences.
The</a> Atlantic Online | September 2001 | The Early-Decision Racket | James Fallows
[/quote]
</p>
<p>ED definitely has an advantage. Acceptance rates at many top schools for ED hover close to 30-40%, WAY higher than RD acceptance rates. Besides, adcoms are arguably less tired when reading ED apps, you could be the first applicant of your type versus the hundredth, etc. There are absolutely benefits, especially at schools concerned about yield.</p>
<p>also, there will be less cross admits to muddle up the system because in theory, each applicant only applies to one school (unless you apply for rolling school/EA schools)</p>
<p>This difference in admit rates has most to do with athletes, virtually all of whom come in ED and with legacies an development candidates to a lesser degree, who apply ED or lose the boost.</p>
<p>First choice for 80%? Purely Stetson BS. That's pretty much only true at Harvard and very far from true at Penn.</p>
<p>Wouldn't colleges admit it if it were an advantage for the unhooked? Surely it would benefit them. Yet HYPCD et al say it is not a benefit to apply ED.</p>
<p>Recruited athletes=17% of class
Legacies=12% of class
development=3-5% of class</p>
<p>
[quote]
Wouldn't colleges admit it if it were an advantage for the unhooked? Surely it would benefit them. Yet HYPCD et al say it is not a benefit to apply ED.
[/quote]
Apparently they thought it wouldn't benefit them to say so. As the book "The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton" points out, all the Ivy's made the claim you're repeating and yet statistical analysis shows it wasn't true. You probably don't trust that book or the studies the author relied on. The former head of UPenn admissions admits in a nationally published magazine giving preference was exactly what he was doing. You can read his exact words above. He's lying. There's a theme here ...</p>
<p>Moreover your numbers seem suspect. Take athletics. In 2006, for example, there were 829 varsity players at UPenn. If 1/4 graduate each year that means they need about 200 each year to replace them. Yet you say recruited athletes represent 17% of the class. Even if we make the heroic assumption that every single athlete playing on the varsity was recruited (eg. Penn does not have, and never has had, a walk-on player) it still seems quite inflated. 17% of the 2445 students who enrolled this fall is 415 students. That's 415 recruited kids to replace the approx 200 that graduated :confused:</p>
<p>^ They admitted more as athletes than walk-on, especially at a school like UPenn. I know tons of people who have been admitted as athletes and then quit after a year. Walking on, I imainge, at a school like Penn would be uncommon.</p>
<p>I don't think you guys are looking at the bigger picture. I mean wouldn't it be harder to get in with ED, because the people who apply for ED in the first place are usually more qualified. I would think the competition was harder with ED. The RD pool has all types of people, while the ED pool has the more competitive ones.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Wouldn't colleges admit it if it were an advantage for the unhooked?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yes, they certainly do. Dartmouth says ED is worth a "few percentage points." The Duke adcom said it's close to ten % advantage.</p>
<p>Harvard does not have ED, neither does Yale, nor Princeton. Not sure who the C or D applies to. (If EA at Harvard and ED at Princeton offered zero advantage, why did they drop their early programs?)</p>
<p>
[quote]
I mean wouldn't it be harder to get in with ED, because the people who apply for ED in the first place are usually more qualified.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The only definitive study on this issue demonstrated that ED was worth 100 SAT points after adjusting for hooked candidates and recruited athletes.</p>
<p>The 17% athlete stat is widely published. Legacy numbers differ slightly by ivy but none is under 10%. My son is a freshman at Dartmouth and they told us zero benefit last year. Penn told interviewers little beneit this year. I think in years past things were different, but as schools move away from early admission of any sort and competition gets stiffer, it's not the same as it was.</p>
<p>Penn ED definitely helps A LOT</p>
<p>bump(10char)</p>
<p>For Boston University, I applied ED and found out the ED acceptance rate is 39%. </p>
<p>Regular Decision acceptance rate is 59%!</p>
<p>Im not exactly sure why people think it is easier just because admittance rates are higher. The students who apply to schools early have all their business in order and are more of a self selecting applicant pool that the normal decision is.
The quality of students that get into schools early are the strongest applicants and would have gotten in regardless of when the applied.
It is true that schools like to lock up students in the early decision process....but in this round of admissions they are DEFINITELY NOT in a shortage of very very qualified applicants for each respective institution</p>
<p>We went to the Davidson info session here last fall. They said the ED admit rate is ~ 50%.</p>