It’s really not useful to try to extrapolate from the stats of a single high school. What can give you an idea of whether ED offers a real advantage to the unhooked applicant is looking at a school’s own statistics. I’m a little too lazy to do all the math at the moment but…
Dartmouth’s Dean of Admissions said in 2011 that approximately 19% of each incoming class is recruited athletes. According to Dartmouth’s 2016 stats approximately 10% of all students accepted were recruited athletes. (Both can be true because recruited athletes have a close to 100% yield while the yield for the rest of the class is considerably lower.) She also said that legacy applicants (8.1% of admits) are accepted at approximately 2 1/2 times the rate of non-legacies. In 2016 494 students were accepted ED. Since legacies, development admits, and particularly recruited athletes apply ED in much higher than representative numbers it means that somewhat more than half of ED admits were hooked applicants. If one were to look only at the unhooked applicants it doesn’t seem the ED admit rate would be better, or at least not substantially better, than the RD rate.
Colleges tend not to want to publicize the extent to which the ED group is filled with these special cases because it’s to their advantage to receive a lot of ED applications, knowing they’ll have those applications in hand and that they can always defer kids they couldn’t admit ED to the RD round.
ED definitely helps but how much it helps does depend on the college, if say 40 or 50% of the class is admitted via ED then you should strongly consider applying. If the ED rate is 30% and the effective RD rate is 7%, you should consider applying. As others have said above, if you’re unhooked with strong stats, you should consider applying ED as well.
How does Val and Sal even factor into this equation? They aren’t announced at my daughter’s school until way after college applications have been submitted.
ED demonstrates to a school that you believe you can commit to that school financially .
It would be interesting to see stats that break down how many deferred ED applicants ultimately get acceptances in the RD round.
Val and Sal decisions are made and announced publicly after grades are submitted for first semester senior year. But our high school Guidance Department knows the class rank of in-coming high school seniors even though they don’t publicize it or have an official class rank. It’s available because oftentimes for scholarships or upon request by a highly selective school the Guidance department is asked for the specific rank of a particular student. In my example the Val and Sal were the two top students in the class at beginning of senior year and remained so after first semester. It’s not known to me but possible that the guidance counselor could have indicated on the guidance counselor letter of recommendation form and checklist that this was the top one or two student in the class. And if they applied ED to Ivy League schools their gpa would have been higher than all the other applicants from our high school against whom they would have been compared to by admissions officers. I believe they would have stood a much higher chance of admisson. My example is generally applicable not just to the Sal and Val but also to any extremely high stat applicant who is competitive for Ivy’s or other elite universities. Applying ED definitely increases the odds of admission. Of course there is more to selecting applicants than high stats–extracurricular activities, leadership roles, terrific essays and sparkling letters of recommendation all certainly play a role. But I am fairly certain that these two top students at our high school had all this, they just didn’t put their hat in the ring–so to speak-- for ED and had they done so I am fairly certain that at least one of the Ivy’s they applied to would have been an admit (or at least in the case of Cornell, a deferred admisson for sophomore year, which Cornell offered to several ED applicants they could not accept for Fall).
“Val and Sal decisions are made and announced publicly after grades are submitted for first semester senior year.”
I guess it is different in different schools.
This may apply to a small subset but my experience is that if you are a legacy at an IVY, you had better apply early if you hope for that hook to be given weight. One of the advantages of a legacy is presumed interest in and connection to the school. Applying early just underlines that . If you apply RD, you are more likely to be considered to be not so emotionally attached to the school. It can have an impact. I can’t put a percentage on it, but it is a consideration