My first choice is MIT and it says there is no positive or negative prejudice associated with or conferred by applying during EA or RA but statics shows that admission rate for EA is slightly more and it can happen either by more ready and organized application pool or admission officers themselves.(maybe unintentional)
in another hand, Stanford REA admission rate is much higher than its RA, just about 3 times and if I apply early for MIT and Caltech, as a consequence, I will lose Stanford, I can’t find out which approach is better! MIT and Caltech or just Stanford.
this is my dataset:
MIT Stanford Caltech
Relative values for me 1.00 0.90 0.55
EA Rate 8.5% 11% 14%
RA Rate 5.3% 3.7% 6.7%
oh and one more problem that makes it more compilicated: I have two national science olympiad medals from a top 10 nation house, a gold in IPHO prep team and a bronze in IOAA prep team and I think they will help in MIT more(they mentioned on their website which Stanford didn’t), do they help more if I apply for MIT first or it doesn’t make any differance?
You should trust what the MIT admissions committee claims. It tries to be transparent. What I’ve noticed is that those with hooks (high level science competition winners, URM, and athletes) are accepted in the early round; the rest are deferred. If your medals qualify you as a hooked applicant and assuming other parts of your application are solid, you stand a good chance of being admitted in December and won’t have to apply anywhere else. It’s a much less stressful route than applying regular.
Acceptance rates aren’t a good way to judge. For excample, Stanfords acceptance rate presents an artificially high example of how hard it is to get in compared to say MIT because their applicant pools are less competitive versus say MIT because of common app. They’re about evenly difficult to get into EA and RA because of discrepancies like this. (You don’t want to go to Caltech tbh, even if/when you get in, so I won’t factor that in)
EA for both schools should actually be HARDER to get into. Applicant pools are more competitive in EA. So the question becomes more, which school does your resume fit better? Which are you more likely to get into?
Stanford sounds better if you can demonstrate “intellectual vitality”, which is a concentrated interest and passion, mediated by action, in a certain subject. Stanford students also have entrepreneurial and extraverted personality traits.
MIT sounds better if you can demonstrate a strong passion for some of the sciences, mediated by a hobby in an art/something that’s not a science, to show you’re not one dimensional. MIT students are also more introverted, and have a more “I wanna help the world” characteristic.
If you’re a better fit for one school it’ll show naturally in your application and help you get in.
I, for example, personally feel like im a better fit at Stanford, (I dabble in entrepreneurship l, I’m more extroverted), but I ended up going to MIT on pure gut feeling. I hope this helps.
Source: Stanford 2021 RA Admit, MIT 2021 EA Admit
^^^^ @sweatearl I second your post. specifically regarding MIT, Stanford
Sweatearl, great post and great choice picking MIT. You’ll have a blast in Cambridge.
such a wonderful comparison, Sweatearl, I believe you did a right decision.
I’m more like an "I wanna help the world"charecteristic so I hope it helps.
Stanford, for a better chance of getting a firm yes or no answer.
We can’t tell you where to go. Just apply to your #1 choice school. Honestly the acceptance rate variance between the these schools are so low that a couple percentages won’t matter
Look up the admit rates by GENDER. Its out there on the net. That makes a huge difference. If you are male, the rate is less than you quote. If you are female its easier for two of the three schools (Caltech and MIT) Stanford, the gender admit rate may be more even, I do not know.
It’s still harder to get in as a boy for Stanford, just not by as much as MIT