<p>is the RD round more competitive generally?</p>
<p>I believe so</p>
<p>Sure: there are tons more kids, including very qualified kids who were deferred, and kids who were accepted at EA schools and still chose to apply to other places (cough cough trophy hunting cough). Just kidding, I'm sure there are often financial reasons for that too. But yeah I would say that theres a whole mixed bag regular decision.
However, I don't think the difference in competition is as pronounced at Yale as it would be at other schools, especially those that offer Early Decision.</p>
<p>ah ok</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>I think the early action acceptance rate is 18%. The regular decision acceptance rate is about 8 or 7%. (last year's data)</p>
<p>The lower acceptance rate can be attributed to a huge amount of incredible students applying who have already been accepted early to schools like harvard, princeton, stanford, mit, caltech, etc...</p>
<p>At the same time, however, you get a lot of students applying who simply aren't qualified. Hence the low acceptance rate. Overall, I still think it's harder to get in regular...</p>
<p>Really? I was under the impression that it's more difficult to be accepted EA. Many colleges claim that the higher %age acceptance is due to the higher quality of applicants who apply early. Generally, I've heard, the calibre of students who apply RD is lower, resulting in the fall in acceptance rate.</p>
<p>I was under the assumption that the RD round was weaker... hhm...</p>
<p>I think the RD round has weaker applicants. It seems logically correct.</p>
<p>yeah, there are just a lot more people. And filmxoxo17, there are financial things that people have to deal with. I was accepted EA to a school but I'm still applying to look for somewhere I can actually afford to go.</p>
<p>I think the whole "early round is stronger" is just what they say to justify the much higher early acceptance rate, which is only attributed to their need for a high yield. In any case, why would people say that applying early gives you the same edge as an extra 100 pts on your SAT? If anything, if I was a weaker candidate, I would apply early to give me the edge.</p>
<p>Now that I think about it</p>
<p>The Early round would probably be a bit more competitive as far as #s are concerned.</p>
<p>The regular round does produce more numbers, but some of those applicants may not be as qualified...</p>
<p>Either way Early round is best.</p>
<p>that's what I did. My stats, etc. weren't as strong as they could be, so I applied early because a) I really wanted to go and b) I thought there might be a boost. And it worked, 'cause I got in.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.yale.edu/oir/ComDatset.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.yale.edu/oir/ComDatset.html</a></p>
<p>I came across this article a couple of months ago. It's long, but there's a lot on Yale in particular. What do you think?</p>
<p>this comes directly off of Yale Admissions Website:</p>
<p>Is there an advantage to applying Single-Choice Early Action to Yale?</p>
<p>Historically, the rate of admission among early applicants has been higher than the overall admission rate. On the other hand, this higher rate reflects the fact that many of our strongest candidates apply early. </p>
<p>The last sentence is key.</p>
<p>SCEA is considered to be more competitive, but at the same time, gives candidates an edge.</p>
<p>This seems paradoxical on face, but makes sense.</p>
<p>Many of the best candidates apply early, and more get accepted. You can probably sneak in early, but not regular. You can only help your chances by applying early - if you get rejected early, you wouldn't have been taken regular (or else they would have deferred).</p>
<p>On the other hand, I believe that deferred kids get an advantage in RD rounds, because they appear more committed.</p>
<p>Thank heavens my ears are normalsized.</p>
<p>do you think the record size of the early action pool will affect this at all? Since it's EA and not ED, I'd bet that most of the increase came in people who would have otherwise applied regular. Since nearly half got deferred as opposed to smaller percentages in previous years, the admissions office might be expecting a smaller RD pool. I don't know what effect this might have on the relative strengths of the two application times, but it's interesting to think about.</p>
<p>It's true that the average RD applicant is less qualified than the average SCEA applicant. However, there are TONS more RD applications, so even though a smaller fraction of the RD applicant pool would be considered as the most qualified or whatever, the raw number of qualified applicants far exceeds that of the SCEA pool.</p>
<p>but lets remember they admit MORE RD's than the actual percentage. so if EA admissions fill in 48% of class, they'll actually admit like more than 52% in RD round because they know not all applicants metriculate. (got this info from harvard board, i believe)</p>