<p>How big a deal is it if another person other than me is applying ED? Will it hurt my chances decently? We have a similar average, and SAT scores.</p>
<p>It is not going to be a straight numbers game. School is also going to look at recommendations, essays, peer recommendations, ECs and other factors.</p>
<p>“Will it hurt my chances decently?” What hurts your chances are all the ED applicants. Not just the few that might apply from your school. Your (and their) individual merits will trump any fear you have of some “quota” limiting the no. of EC accepts from your HS. If you get in, it won’t be despite them. If you get rejected, it won’t be because of them.</p>
<p>Everyone’s chances are poor the moment they hit the “submit” button. Those are just the numbers. GL to you.</p>
<p>The year my S applied RD, D took 3 students ED from the town next to us. Two were recruited athletes, and one was a legacy.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that over 60% of the ED pool is hooked; recruited athletes, legacies, developmental admits, facbrats. Not necessarily URMs (unless they also have another hook) because they will still be under represented in the RD round).</p>
<p>Doesn’t Dartmouth look at every applicant separately? Meaning that applicants from the same school wouldn’t really be the issue, but rather the general ED pool as others have said?</p>
<p>T26E4 is right, but it is also true that colleges do not like to take a lot of kids from the same high school because they want to have wide representation in their class. I went to a Catholic high school where Georgetown was a very popular college to apply to, and many qualified kids got rejected. I, however, wanted to go to Middlebury and ended up getting waitlisted RD without a very competitive application. I think part of it was that I was one of only a couple kids to apply to Midd from our high school. </p>
<p>This is just the reality of it. There’s not really anything you can do it about it or anything I would do differently. If you want to go to Dartmouth and you are a competitive applicant, apply ED and see what happens!</p>
<p>I believe the truth of the matter is that it depends on the secondary school. For some schools, in higher socioeconomic areas, super selective schools will normally accept several ED/RD applicants. In more rural areas, the number of acceptances is lower. While part of this is a population concentration phenomenon, the strength of the school (as conveyed in the ‘School Report’ that is sent for each applicant) is also a factor in the applicant’s chances. That is, each applicant’s achievements are evaluated in the context of the school they come from.</p>
<p>I have noticed that in our area, a non urban northern new england region, Dartmouth rarely accepts more than one or two students per school class and fellow applicants do feel a sense of competition with each other. For the 2016 class in our school, there were a handful of ED applicants. One was accepted, two, who were both legacies were deferred (later rejected) and the rest were rejected.</p>
<p>Earlier posts are accurate in that the applicant with the unique demonstrated talent (recruited athletes aside), assuming high SATs and GPA, has the advantage over the same student who is strong in everything but not unique from an admissions point of view.</p>
<p>I sat in the Dartmouth Admissions session in June 2011 and listened while the admissions counselor described the process of reading applications including the designation they use when they come across the ‘strong in everything’ kind of student - LMO which stands for “Like Many Others”. I found this discouraging but it did help my son construct his application more “strategically” and he was ultimately accepted.</p>
<p>Good luck to all the aspiring 17s!</p>