<p>...so (in theory) more people apply, thus making the admission rate lower.</p>
<p>Ah, yes, this will encourage the masses.</p>
<p>Anyway, that doesn't address the point I was making -- if the EA deferees are reconsidered from scratch during the RD selection process, how does that make them EA admits? Doesn't that instead imply that, in the context of the RD pool, they were among the top 13%? </p>
<p>I just think it's a little disingenuous to call them EA admits when they weren't admitted EA. At schools which admit ~50% of the class outright during EA, only 50% of the seats remain, period. At MIT, 70% of the seats remain, and how they are filled depends on the relative strength of the EA deferred pool and the RD pool. MIT doesn't have to admit any of those deferred students, while schools which admit half of their class early have, well, already admitted half of their class early.</p>