<p>Davidson is exactly the kind of school where ED does matter.</p>
<p>Macalester ED is around 50% too, but drops significantly RD.</p>
<p>
[quote]
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.
[/quote]
Do you have any actual evidence to back up these claims, or should we just take your word for it?</p>
<p>I'm not sure whether it's truly harder to get in RD than ED for a lot of these colleges.
For instance, most of the people I know who got into Duke ED are just as qualified as those accepted RD (when you take out the legacies and athletes who apply ED, SAT averages are probably very similar). I would fail miserably in guessing who got in ED and who got in RD if I simply did it based on 'how smart I think they are'.
The main difference is that the ED group possesses a greater enthusiasm for Duke than the RD group does.</p>
<p>
[quote]
For instance, most of the people I know who got into Duke ED are just as qualified as those accepted RD (when you take out the legacies and athletes who apply ED, SAT averages are probably very similar).
[/quote]
Maybe that's true at Duke, but studies have found its not true for ED programs in general. Evidence shows that the ED applicants get in at rates similar to RD applicants with SAT scores 100 or more points higher.</p>
<p>There is a book written by 2 academics. One is Christopher Avery is Professor of Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he teaches classes in microeconomics, statistics, and game theory. The second is Andrew Fairbanks who among his other jobs served as Associate Dean of Admission at Wesleyan University, where he was actively involved in the administration of the school's early decision program between 1990 and 1997. In other words, 2 people qualified to analyze the data on ED. They wrote a book published by the Harvard Press titled "The Early Admissions Game". In that book they show the following [ul] [<em>]an analysis of two extensive data sets indicates evidence that applying early to a highly selective college improves an applicant's chance of admission by an amount equal to a 100 point increase in SAT score. [</em>]Early applicants receive a statistically significant gain in admissions chances at every Ivy League college. The effect is most pronounced at Princeton, where applying early has approximately the same effect as an increase of 200 points in SAT.[/ul]</p>
<p>then there are the demographic factors; if a certain "type" of student tends to apply to a school ED, the college can accept those with acceptable stats and know they have "covered" that demographic, whatever it is. When RD comes along, they can "mold" the class demographically by rejecting/waitlisting those who are "similar" to the ED acceptees and accepting different demographic students to round out the class.....sometimes, it's not all about the #'s or the stats.....</p>
<p>Right, because in the ED round (top schools) it's all about the athletes and the legacies, and increasingly, locking down the top URMs.</p>
<p>^^^Colleges aren't that evil are they?^^^
I hope schools don't give all these advantages to anyone that wouldn't enrich their college (whether because their parents are rich sponsors, they just had huge job pressures, they are athletes, etc..)</p>
<p>Regarding ED, I try to believe that whatever the college says is true. I can't prove it either way because of confounding variables. Cornell says ED is an advantage because it shows desire to attend.</p>
<p>
[quote]
in the ED round (top schools) it's all about the athletes and the legacies, and increasingly, locking down the top URMs.
[/quote]
Its funny hmom5 keeps posting that same stuff. There are verifiable quotes from the man who headed Penn admissions for decades (her alma mater) that he intended to give preference to ED applicants. Yet somehow we are to believe the admissions director was lying and that an anonymous internet poster is telling us the truth.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the book "The Early Admissions Game" directly addresses her claims and rebuts them. From pp 136-37
[quote]
... we had records for 505,054 applications at these 14 colleges, with at least 15,000 applications from each college. Our second source of data is from 3000 high school seniors who completed surveys about their backgrounds, academic qualifications, and college admission outcomes. This survey selected students at random from the top of the senior classes at prominent high schools around the country.</p>
<p>Using these two sets of data, we can learn how much an ED application improves a students chances of admission even though the ED and regular pools of applicants differ in average qualifications and demographic backgrounds (recruited athletes and legacies tend to apply early and minority applicants tend not to). We have enough data to exclude so-called hooked applicants (recruited athletes, legacies, and targeted minorities) for whom admission may be an institutional priority, and still be able to compare ED and regular applicants with similar qualifications. </p>
<p>Our analysis of both sets of data leads to a consistent and emphatic conclusion: *applying early provides a significant admissions advantage, approximately equal to the effect of a jump of 100 points in the SAT<a href="ed.%20italics%20are%20in%20the%20original">/i</a>
[/quote]
In other words, real evidence shows there is an advantage to applying ED. You can believe the evidence, or you can believe anonymous claims from the internet. Up to you....</p>
<p>As an alumni I watched that man for many, many years. He's the guy who said Penn was the first choice for 80% of it's applicants! Adcom say a lot of things with marginal truth, how do you think top colleges get enough applicants to reject 9 of every 10 applicants? </p>
<p>The facts are what they are, 40% of every class is a recruited athlete, legacy or URM. Most of the first 2 categories come in ED.</p>
<p>Which part of this would you like to debate? It's astonishing to me given all the books that make all this clear that it's still a debate for anyone!</p>
<p>And chicken, who's to say these groups don't enrich the colleges? They absolutely do or they wouldn't be there.</p>
<p>An interesting read, as is The Price of Admission and A is For Admission:</p>
<p>Dirty</a> Secrets of College Admissions - The Daily Beast</p>
<p>And let me clarify, my argument is only at ivy league schools and their equal, I totally agree ED helps at lower ranked schools.</p>