The primary reason the vast majority of athletes in the Ivy League, not only at Brown, come through the ED/EA process is so that the schools can try to compete for athletes who are also candidates for D1 athletic scholarships. While filling up sports teams is important for Brown, I don’t think it is the “first priority”. Let me try to explain.
The early signing period for National Letters of Intent and athletic scholarships for most NCAA D1 sports is usually the second week of November. Football is a notable exception with its signing period usually in early February. If an athlete has a D1 scholarship offer by the second week of November and does not know at that time whether he or she will be admitted to an Ivy, it can be a real big risk to turn down the athletic scholarship.
So the Ivies recommend that their recruits apply Early. Likely letters may go out as soon as October 1. By issuing likely letters prior to the NLI early signing period, Ivies have a better chance of getting recruits who are also being courted by D1 schools that give athletic scholarships. This also applies to football, even though an RD application by a football player could result in a likely letter before the February signing period for football. But even in the case of football, ED/EA certainty is a nice thing to have.
So I agree that athletes are an ED priority at Brown, but I do not think it is the top priority. I also think a plurality of ED admits at Brown and other Ivies are probably athletes, but as the math done by @iwannabe_Brown shows, it is definitely not the majority.
(If anyone is really bored and does not believe Dean Miller’s statements about 26% or iwannabe_brown’s math, you can go to the Brown Athletics site and add up all the freshmen on the 2014-2015 rosters, and correct for a few walk-ons.)
Again a disclaimer for anyone who might need it: This is based on personal experience, not on any affiliation with Admissions or inside information
Last year, a consultant who was previously in admissions at a top LAC told my daughter, “ED, we take who we want. RD, we take who we need.” He believed that personable, well qualified candidates without hooks do better ED. The schools just don’t take many people in certain categories (think no hooks and specific locations) and the slots fill up fast.
This is an oblique answer. It is not clear how much it helps.
Similarly, people ask if High School summer programs help.On their face, they don’t. But it does help if you learn something about the school and curriculum. You may meet some students and faculty, though most people at these programs are not from the school. And you may learn if you want to attend the school.
So OP ^ , are you implying that the consultant was saying that the ED applicant to Brown has to be stronger because they don’t have “hooks”?
The interesting thing is that my D was invited to the admissions seminar and when she asked Brown about ED, they were clear that ED most favors recruited athletes and would offer no real bump to other applicants. And every kid hearing this in that room was a high stats URM that had been invited to the presentation. There were at the most 12 kids there.
Besides recruited athletes, you have to take into account legacies and children of faculty in the ED round. No admissions officer is going to speak about this in front of a group of people. According to the Harvard Class of 2019 survey released yesterday, 16% of the class reported they had one or both parents attend Harvard. Further, they reported that most of them applied early which meant that 22% of the attending SCEA admits was a direct legacy. Of course, there is overlap in that number with recruited athletes but it tells you that legacy is highly significant in the early rounds. This is not even taking into account children of Harvard employees.
Of course, the survey isn’t scientific but the numbers have remained stable the past few years.
Even more sobering is that 28% of the incoming class reported they had a relative attend Harvard (parent, sibling, aunt, uncle etc.). if most of these kids applied early than an even higher percentage of the early admits had some sort of connection to Harvard .
I believe the legacy percentage at Brown is 10- 12%. So using 11%, if these kids applied ED in order to take advantage of the legacy boost that means that potentially 179 of the 617 or 29% of the ED acceptances were direct legacy (not even taking account sibling or other ties). Add in the recruited athletes who were not legacies, children of Brown faculty and other employees, celebrities, development cases and you see how the ED advantage quickly disappears.
Again, no admissions officer is going to open up the can of worms concerning legacy admits in front of a group of people but they know that it exists and the ED pool is heavy with them. Just my opinion YMMV.
Cannot come up with a distinction between ED and SCEA as it may affect the selectivity of either type of early program. Welcome others’ thoughts. For now I am taking to heart the comments of Dean Miller (ED) and Dean Fitzsimmons (SCEA) that ED/SCEA do not increase the odds of admission at their respective schools.
Just looked at the Early results at Penn and HYP.
Penn says it admitted 54% of its expected class in ED.
HYP, as we know, are SCEA. Applying a yield of 80-90% to their SCEA acceptances and comparing them to likely respective class sizes for 2020, I come up with about 50% for each of them.
Brown admitted 669 ED, and yield should be close to 100%. Class size should be somewhere between 1650 and 1700. This means about 40% of the class will have been accepted early.
Cannot clearly articulate why, but I think early acceptance ratios should be below 50%. Otherwise we should refer to Early Decision as Regular Decision, and Regular Decision as Late Decision…I think.
I guess given the schools (and in particular, Harvard) that use SCEA you’re right that it’s probably not a factor because of the high yields - which I didn’t really consider when I wrote my earlier post. At other schools, the lack of a guaranteed matriculation in SCEA vs. ED could be meaningful.