<p>OP: I think the main advantage to SCEA is the early nature. Admission officers are fresh from the summer and are ready to start reading apps. During the regular pool, admission officers are tired and won’t give your application a second look.</p>
<p>Again, with the assumptions. I claim no insight into the admissions process - only on the very real effects of admissions, based upon case studies to that end. Now, as I am sure you are aware, anthropological case studies, by their very nature (and yes, I was very much immersed in the Princeton culture), are limited to a few cases (though I have dozens) and seek to bring real-world experience into a research world that is increasingly dominated by a numbers game. As I said, you can crunch numbers all day long and come to conclusions about those numbers, but case studies show otherwise. Now, I also maintain that my sample is in no means uniform; however, I have still seen no single shred of evidence suggesting that there is a minimum level of GPA/SAT required to get into Princeton, regardless of SCEA or RD and in addition, I have seen no evidence suggesting that SCEA gives applicants any edge in admissions. In fact, based upon my observations and conversations with several dozens of friends and classmates, those students who applied SCEA and matriculated exhibited similar, if not higher, GPA/SAT scores as those who matriculated from the RD round. </p>
<p>I am not talking about football players either. I am talking about my friends, with whom I have had intimate, friendly conversations over the course of a year and a summer about the nature of the world. These conversations do get in-depth and I daresay that these friends know many things about me - much of which I would not divulge to even my close relatives. That, my friend, is the nature of living and working together. </p>
<p>I question the validity of data taken from over a decade ago, NO MATTER when the study itself was published. The data was still drawn from an outdated set. Additionally, none of the other articles that cite the one you mention have anything to do with early action and advantages - they are mainly concerned with economics and the market. Further, none of these studies use recent evidence to either corroborate or refute the findings in the previous, outdated study. I maintain that further study is required on MORE RECENT DATA (keep in mind that both Harvard and Princeton recently reinstated their early action programs) in order to make any substantial claim to the effect that SCEA increases an applicant’s chances by 1.5x. </p>
<p>Now, I believe we have reached an impasse. I question the validity of the data used by your source and your only defense so far has been to laud the authority of the authors and the journal. I have seen no desire to critically analyze here. You, on the other hand, doubt the validity of my own observations and the anthropological case study method. Thus, I see no point in continuing this argument any further, as the result will not change. Good day to you.</p>
<p>There are kids and families whose goals are to get acceptances from the very best college possible. ED is used as an additional tool to that end, and the actual college is not important. In such cases, if the chances of acceptance at Princeton are truly abysmal, but that, say Duke or Johns Hopkins chances start looking possible at the ED stage, but would be so good RD, weighing the numbers, an app to Princeton would be a throwaway, or lottery ticket, and trying to decide the pros and cons of schools in that next category would be the focus.</p>
<p>That’s a whole other story than one gets with someone who has been a Blue Devils fan for a while and fervently wants to go to Duke. </p>
<p>This is a discussion worth having with counsellor, parents and student as to what the goal of all of this is. </p>
<p>Not something that has ever come up with my family, as my kids absolutely did not want ED. They wanted the choice later on among a number of schools and could not pick any one school that they wanted to consider any commitment to early in the process, though it could have benefitted them stats wise for acceptances at some schools.</p>
<p>
It’s common knowledge that the early decision group is academically stronger than the RD round at selective colleges, including higher average GPA + scores. This was explained in the study and in posts within this thread. This relates to why the acceptance rate is so much higher among SCEA apps than RD apps. For example, the 2016 acceptance rates for SCEA and RD at some colleges with similar selectivity to Princeton are below:</p>
<p>Princeton: SCEA 21.1% acceptance rate, RD 5.9% – SCEA rate is 3.6x RD rate
Yale: SCEA 15.7% acceptance rate, RD 5.3% – SCEA rate is 3.0x RD rate
**Stanford: **SCEA 12.8% acceptance rate, RD 5.4% – SCEA rate is 2.4x RD rate</p>
<p>Note that the increase in acceptance rate for SCEA varies from 140% higher at Stanford to 260% at Princeton. Most of the increase is obviously due to differences in academic strength and rate of hooks between the two admissions pools. The point of the study was to compare admit rates after discounting the differences in GPA/SAT strength + legacies + various other factors. The study found that the vast majority of this ~3x greater acceptance rate was due to difference in academic strength and rate of hooks, but beyond these factors and others, there was still a notable preference to early apps on the order of 50% instead of 200+ %. Obviously just thinking about which group of your friends seems academically stronger is not going to discount differences in academic/applicant strength, which was the main point.</p>
<p>
Nobody said there was a minimum GPA/SAT to get into Princeton. Instead as has been stated in this thread, the chance of acceptance decreases substantially as both GPA and SAT decrease, as can be seen in the Princeton class of 2016 stats at [Admission</a> Statistics<em>|</em>Princeton University](<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/admission/applyingforadmission/admission_statistics/]Admission”>http://www.princeton.edu/admission/applyingforadmission/admission_statistics/) . For example, the 2300+ SAT group had 19% admit rate, while the ~1800 group had a 2% admit rate. If you removed hooks & URMs, the rate of decrease at the low end would be even more dramatic.</p>
<p>
You are entitled to your opinion, which is not obviously not shared by the Stanford and Harvard professors who published the study recently using older data. Sure it’s possible that colleges have suddenly started admitting using totally new criteria, such as your earlier example suggesting that Princeton might have stopped considering ECs and instead be looking for intellectuals. However, talks with some of your friends suggesting the well known difference in applicant strength between the two admissions pools exists is not sufficient to show the study is incorrect. In contrast the study also found a difference in app strength in the two admissions pools.</p>
<p>
There are several. One is at [Early</a> decision and college performance](<a href=“http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775710000051]Early”>http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775710000051) .</p>
<p>You are focusing on a mere anecdote. I have yet to see “borderline” applicants, who would not have gotten in RD but got an admissions “boost” from applying SCEA. You can say that I do not have all parts of my friends’ applications at hand, but I can tell whether their stats/ECs/background are weaker than other Princeton students simply because I have lived and worked with them for so long and have learned so much about their life story. Now, in your theory, at least one of them should have been a “borderline” applicant (by your definition of the term and by fact of mere statistics). The fact is that none are - all are exceptionally talented students who were admitted because of their academic excellence, which justifies the higher SCEA ratings. But, again, none of them were your “borderline” applicant (by your definition of the term) who were admitted in spite of their weakness, by a perceived “boost” attained via SCEA. Perhaps this is due to a skewed sample, but then again, there are dozens. </p>
<p>Again, you can cite the numbers all day, but what is the substance of a 2% chance of admission versus a 19% chance? Is that a difference that translates materially? I’ll tell you - again, I have met Princeton kids who had low GPA/SAT and “weak” ECs, with no conceivable hooks or background advantages, each of whom is living his/her dream at Princeton. Your numbers would have said they were extremely unlikely to get in but there are a large number of them who are attending Princeton in spite of - rather, in defiance of - your beloved numbers. </p>
<p>Again, with your name dropping. Have you offered your own critical defense of the data besides the fact that two professors happened to decide to publish it? Plato and Aristotle, considered much greater authorities in their day than two college professors, wrote several works describing a geocentric model of the universe. Now, if everybody decided to cite Plato and Aristotle based upon their perceived authority, we wouldn’t be getting anywhere, would we? That also makes for a very boring paper - yes, I think that the Earth is the center of the world because the authorities say so. I don’t think that the NSA is monitoring us because they say they’re not. I don’t think the North Koreans are building nukes because they say they aren’t. </p>
<p>Finally - you didn’t actually read that study, did you? First, the study is about how early decision round 2 applicants perform less well academically than their round 1 and RD peers. And I quote:
Hold on, it gets better:
And second, the study was done for Hamilton College, with a very different applicant pool and a very different admissions policy. I don’t recall Princeton having two rounds of early action, but then again, who am I to know? I really don’t see how that applies. Try again.</p>
<p>
In an earlier post you wrote, “Princeton admissions is so much of a crapshoot that nobody really knows the chances of an applicant.” If you don’t know the chances of an applicant like you said earlier, how are you determining chances to the precision that you can tell who is borderline at just below the threshold where they would have been admitted RD?</p>
<p>
This is getting silly. If you don’t think there a big difference between a 19% chance and a 2% chance, I can see why you aren’t concerned with an early application boost. Sure it’s possible to get accepted with lower stats. Nobody said it wasn’t, just that the chance of acceptance goes down as stats go down. Maybe your group of friends is full of persons with weak stats, but the data reported by Princeton for members of the class does not show this pattern. Instead Princeton has one of the highest 25th percentile test scores of any college in the US (tied with Harvard), with 25th percentile SAT scores of 700+.</p>
<p>
The link was in response to your incorrect comment that the cited studies were unrelated to early admissions. I specifically quoted your comment in the response to avoid confusion. It was not an effort to show colleges favor ED apps, but if you want another cited study that draws a similar conclusion, one is at <a href=“https://www.msu.edu/~dickertc/Early%20Decision-full.pdf[/url]”>https://www.msu.edu/~dickertc/Early%20Decision-full.pdf</a> . It found among a similar academic pool between ED and RD, yet the acceptance rate varied with 86% acceptance rate for ED vs 38% for RD.</p>
<p>My daughter had some regrets about not applying SCEA to Stanford, where she was rejected as a RD applicant. They only accepted <6% RD, double that SCEA, and she was a very high stat (salutatorian, 2340 SAT) legacy. My sense is that if your stats are close to those of other applicants, you have a better shot at getting in if you apply SCEA or ED, when available. (The applicant pool is stronger for SCEA and ED applicants to top schools, so keep that in mind when making your decision.) </p>
<p>The early deadline and her uncertainty about a top choice is what led her to apply ED everywhere. This isn’t a bad choice, but if you do have a favorite school, definitely make sure they know it. (Personally, I’m skeptical of anyone who wants to get into “an Ivy.” They’re not all alike, except perhaps in prestige, and that’s not really worth pursuing for its own sake.)</p>
<p>I’m not determining whether an applicant is “borderline” - I thought I made that abundantly clear by the additional parenthetical statements. I merely stated that these people would have been “borderline” by your standards - weak GPA/SAT, weak ECs, and/or unhooked, nonsignificant background. I also said that ALL the people I know (sample size: dozens; small, I know, but a 100% rate warrants some attention) who applied SCEA were as qualifed as, if not more qualified than, their RD counterparts. Therefore, I have not seen any “borderline” applicants, as that would insinuate that they had “lower” or “average” scores/ECs. If I have seen NO “borderline” applicants admitted SCEA (again, by your definition of the term), then my statement holds. </p>
<p>If you can’t tell me what that 2% to 19% difference amounts to physically, then I can see why you are misguided. For instance, an 8% admit rate means that 8 out of every 100 students are admitted. What does a 2% chance of admittance for a SINGLE student mean versus a 19% chance? In concrete terms, please - none of that “Oh, that’s such a HUGE statistical difference”. Again, there is a discrepancy between the (outdated) data you report and what I observe. I’d rely upon personal observation over some numbers on a sheet of paper any day. Perhaps you would too if you had come to Princeton. This is why it is pointless arguing. </p>
<p>Incorrect again! Would you please stop misrepresenting my words? It makes me look bad. I said the cited studies were not pertinent to “early action and advantages”. The previous study you cited was clearly only about early DECISION and its impact upon academic performance, NOT advantages. “And” is called a conjunction and it is a very specific type. You see, it implies inclusivity - NOT either/or. Or else I would have just said “early action OR advantages”. </p>
<p>Again, the study you cite, while published fairly recently, contains no specific data about Princeton and so I question its applicability to Princeton. Moreover, it studies early decision, which is binding, and not early action. Third time’s the charm?</p>
<p>
In many posts, including my first post of the thread, I made it clear that weak GPA/SAT + weak ECs does not equal borderline applicant (unless there are other factors in the rest of the app).</p>
<p>Let’s review the quoted Princeton admissions data and suggested theory. It has been posted that in 2016 Princeton SCEA had a 21.1% acceptance rate, and Princeton RD had a 5.9% acceptance rate. The implication was that the majority of the difference in acceptance the rate is due to different strengths of applicant pools + different rates of hooks, and a minority is due to favoring SCEA. If you had a sample size large enough to be statistically significant, we’d expect your SCEA friends as a whole to be academically stronger than your RD friends, but a higher rate of acceptance among the borderline apps that could go either way via a combination of stats, ECs, awards, LORs, essays, personality qualities, achievements, etc. You did not mention any apps who were less qualified among your small sample size, suggesting that you are looking for a large difference in some measure to be unqualified. We are not talking about unqualified apps. The vast majority of apps are qualified at highly selective colleges, and most of those qualified apps get rejected, with both SCEA and RD. Instead we are looking at minor differences among the qualified apps.</p>
<p>
The stats I have listed in reference to the 2% admit rate vs 19% and percent of existing students with weaker stats were all reported by Princeton from the class 2016, not outdated information. </p>
<p>A 2% acceptance rate in a low stat range usually indicates the actual acceptance rate is well below 2% for unhooked apps due to the higher rate of hooks in lower stats. For example, the ivy league athletic league requires that recruited athletes have average stats no worse than 1 standard deviation below the general population, and permits a small portion of recruited athletes to have stats several standard deviations below the mean for the overall student body. Recruited athletes are almost certainly heavily overrepresented in this 2% low-stat group. Many other hooks are as well. Once you remove hooks, athletes, URMs, and similar you may be looking at an acceptance rate far below 2%, maybe far below 1%. It’s not impossible to be accepted in this range, but it is extremely unlikely unless you stand out in a really exceptional way. The vast majority do not do this by definition, indicating extremely unlikely odds of acceptance for the vast majority. Most on this site would probably say don’t bother applying with a chance of acceptance in this range. Personally, I think there isn’t anything wrong with applying to extreme reaches like this, so long as you are aware it’s extremely unlikely odds and apply to some other schools with better expected odds, along with a safety (or safeties).</p>
<p>
If you read the study and review the reasons why the study states that early decision had such a large impact on acceptance rate among the subject group, you’ll find that the same reasons apply to Single Choice Early Action. I’d consider a large increase in chance of acceptance to be an advantage. Wouldn’t you?</p>
<p>If the vast majority of apps are qualified, then it does make sense that it comes down to minor differences between the apps. Now, these apps vary only by content, not by value. That is, one student may be a violinist and another a cellist, but that says nothing about the quality of the application itself - nothing quantifiable. That is, an admissions officer will admit someone over another because Princeton is looking for a cellist to fill out the orchestra, and not a violinist. Or some other small difference like that. Therefore, it’s an inherent characteristic that counts, not because someone applied SCEA. If the cellist applied RD and the violinist SCEA, the violinist would be denied and the cellist accepted. The results would be the same either way, if we’re talking about these differences. </p>
<p>Now, I have seen Princeton students who should not be there by virtue of their statistics. I do not know if they applied SCEA or RD. I just know that of the dozens of people I have had in-depth conversations with who had applied SCEA, NONE would have been considered “borderline” within any standards. These are people who are strong all around. I suspect that this is due to either A) the small sample size being nonrepresentative of the overall SCEA applicant pool or B) the fact that less-than-qualified applicants - your “borderline” applicants - were routinely denied during SCEA because they did not receive any extra “boost” that you allege. </p>
<p>The 2% vs. 19% stats were not what I was referring to. I was referring to the data in the study you cited which I have repeatedly questioned the validity of, due to it being outdated. And which I still have yet to see a critical defense of (because they said so is not a viable defense). </p>
<p>The most recent study you cite takes a bunch of data from a bunch of schools and makes a generalization about all the data. Due to the large size of the data set, a discontinuity at Princeton’s data would be obscured. For instance, I could take a survey of everybody in America and “discover” that Americans prefer watching football over soccer. However, in making such a generalization, I would be ignoring the fact that a subset of the population (which I chose NOT to distinguish in my data set) would rather watch soccer over football. For instance, it could be that Spanish-Americans would rather watch soccer while everybody else would rather watch football. The large size of my data obscures this fact. Second, I see nothing in the study that applies specifically to Princeton. You’re making a generalization from a lot of data and applying it to the specific. That’s a no-no.</p>
<p>
You have two apps that could go either way. One app indicates Princeton is his first choice by applying SCEA (I realize it’s not first choice for all, but it is for the vast majority). The other doesn’t. He may have applied to HYS, all schools that cross admits usually choose over Princeton. You don’t think Princeton cares about whether they are a first choice or backup, or that Princeton cares about it’s yield, or that Princeton cares about being able to better plan their class by knowing that the accepted student has a much higher chance of attending?</p>
<p>
By definition, someone has to be right on threshold of acceptance and rejection. I think the most likely explanation is you don’t have a good sense of which persons are on this border.</p>
<p>
They were the ones that most applied, considering the you made the comment about outdated info immediately after discussing the 2% vs 19% rate.</p>
<p>
Note that my response was in regards to your comment about all of the studies that cited the original study did not relate to to early action and admissions, then it was a problem with the study not discussing the same issues. I described why the 2011 study did this, which has data on similar issues. Now it sounds like you are changing your position and instead requiring that the recently cited study be specifically about Princeton’s recent class. Also note that the 2011 study looks at 2 schools, not “a bunch.” The author phrases it as, “Using admissions data from two liberal arts colleges, we add to the knowledge of the early decision process put forth by Avery” (Avery was the author of the original study).</p>
<p>My argument is Princeton does care about what choice they are to a student - but only after that they decide that they want that student or type of student. For instance, if they’re looking for a violinist and you’re a cellist, it’s not going to matter if you apply SCEA even if you have “borderline” statistics. Now, if you have two violinists and one applies SCEA and one applies RD, then the SCEA one might get in over the other one. That’s what I mean by inherent characteristic. These characteristics are highly variable from year to year. Does SCEA give an slight advantage? Yes. Does it give an advantage that is predictable from applicant to applicant as you allege? I don’t think so. </p>
<p>I think the most likely explanation is you have no idea what my sample looks like. If you have visited Princeton/been here, you would see and I would accept that perhaps there’s something wrong with my sample. But you keep on making assumptions about my observations and my sample. We’re not going to reach a conclusion here. </p>
<p>Are we going to now argue about the petty things like how I use my words? Fine. Here we go: Proximity does not imply connection.
Not only do I separate those two things by a sentence, but I use “Again” to signify that I have moved on and am re-iterating something else. I have also made no claims about observing a 2% to 19% difference, or lack thereof, in any post I have made. My only claims have been in relation to the Avery study. Further, the only data you provided that I have claimed is “outdated” is the data provided in the Avery study. I would not have made a claim that the new data (2% versus 19%) was outdated without devoting a paragraph or so to substantiation. For any of the above reasons, I could not have been referring to the latter statistics, if you had been thinking with your noggin. </p>
<p>The 2011 study looks at the same issues, but with different schools and with a slightly different perspective (ED vs. EA). If you want to validate the Avery study by claiming the sources that cite it, those sources should at least be applicable to Princeton. If they are not applicable to Princeton, then again, I maintain my claim: the data used by Avery et al. was outdated and I question its validity. Citing the two studies that cite the Avery one does not make your case any better in this regard. </p>
<p>As I said, we have reached an impasse. I see no point in discussing this with you further, as we have been reduced to discussing the petty issues. Have a good day.</p>
<p>Will you two stop it or take it offline, it is very tedious to page through these large chunks of crapola and you have hijacked the OP’s thread.</p>
<p>
At least we are making some progress in that you agree it gives an advantage. I have said that the advantage is only expected to change the decision for a small portion of apps. This is not far from what you wrote. </p>
<p>
Earlier you wrote, “nobody really knows the chances of an applicant.” Now you are saying that I am incorrect in claiming the most likely explanation is you don’t have a good sense of which persons were close to the border between acceptance and rejection. You can’t have it both ways – if nobody knows the chance of an applicant, then you can’t accurately determine who was close to the border between acceptance and rejection, and you need to identify this near-border group to determine whether SCEA has an effect on the group (SCEA is not expected to change admissions decisions outside of the near-border group).</p>
<p>
I reported data about the 2% and 19%. You mentioned observing data about the 2% and 19% (the number of low stat admits). The obvious conclusion is that you are referring to the 2% and 19% data I reported, even if it is separated by a whole sentence with a punctuation mark. And “again” signifies that you are repeating a point you made earlier in the post with a different type of data.</p>
<p>
The whole cited tangent was originally brought up to confirm that other studies published by researches in peer-reviewed journals take the results seriously and are not “laughed out of the room”, as you wrote. As well as that the cited results were not all unrelated to early action and admissions, as you claimed. The Avery study continues to be cited as a reference for early college admissions, including in expanding the results to more recent data that shows similar conclusions to the Avery data, like the 2011 study did. </p>
<p>One could argue that SCEA is more like ED than EA by the relative effects it has on yield. This can be seen both by the yield rates for SCEA acceptances and how overall yield always has a large jump in the year a selective college implements SCEA, including with Princeton’s recent change to SCEA. I think a fair statement is that the effects of SCEA are expected to be somewhere between the effects of unrestricted EA and fully restricted ED, as I wrote in my first post of the thread. Yes, there is not a study that specifically focuses on the recent class of Princeton students.</p>
<p>Brown - sure thing, bro.</p>
<p>93tiger16’s anecdotes about students he knows at Princeton are confirmed by my own anecdotes at our son’s medium-sized public high school. In the last 3 years, there have been two students who went to Stanford, two to Harvard, and two to Yale. Not a single one of them won any national or regional awards. They were just smart, interesting kids who were active to some extent in their school. Two of them were the student body president. Some of them were among the better athletes at the school.</p>
<p>Now, these are just anecdotes. But they have the advantage that they are randomly chosen from students who are attending HYPS. By contrast, the problem with Data10’s technique of analyzing data posted on College Confidential about Stanford acceptances is that the students who post here are the college obsessed. Because they are obsessed, they do what they perceive will increase their chance of acceptance, and that includes loading up their resume with a lot of awards, etc.</p>
<p>You don’t get data on CC about the students who are not college obsessed, because they do not post here. Typically, they are not trying to load up their resume with awards, but instead do what interests them. Imagine you are a college admissions officer, and you are choosing between a lot of interesting kids without awards, and other kids with awards. Most of your acceptances may come from the first group. Yet since that group does not post to CC, the students in that group are not in Data10’s data base.</p>
<p>More generally, all of the result threads on CC contain information on the students who are college obsessed. Yet what percent of HYPS students post their results on CC? Only a very small percentage. You won’t find any information here about the non-college-obsessed. Therefore, much of the analysis on CC about how to get accepted at HYPS could be based on information that is not representative of the typical HYPS student.</p>
<p>
Note that my example showing acceptance/rejection decisions among posters appeared to highly predictable for the vast majority of posters, contained the following statement:</p>
<p>“Obviously these rules would not apply well to all apps since the posters on CC are a unique subgroup that tends to be high-stat, well-informed students who attended quality high schools and took rigorous courses. There is also likely a bias towards posting accepted results and not posting rejected results.”</p>
<p>In my original post, I essentially gave the same limitations of the data that you listed. CC posters as a whole are in no way average, and there are plenty of other groups besides CC posters who attend colleges, with completely different characteristics. For example, I don’t recall anybody in the decision threads being a first generation college student, yet these make up a double digit percentage of the overall admitted class at Stanford, and this group likely has a very different admission pattern. Or the most obvious difference is the dramatically different rate of acceptances, as I listed in my original post. Nevertheless, this doesn’t change my point that the decisions appeared to be highly predictable among this unique subgroup. </p>
<p>Also note that my short list of rules that led to the correct decision for the vast majority of CC RD posters (not all, exceptions are expected) phrased it as “ECs/awards”. I meant grouping them together as a single unit, rather than requiring that both ECs and awards be at a high level. For example, one admit might have a passion for science as reflected by some amazing ECs that were impressive on a regional+ level, but no science awards – that qualifies. Another might being have state level science award without ECs that were noteworthy beyond a school level, which also qualifies. I expect that Stanford looks favorably on applicants who are passionate about something and achieve amazing things in that passion, which is often reflected in ECs/awards, leading to a acceptance among CC posters having a high correlation with ECs/awards. It’s similar to how GPA or test scores are highly correlated with an increased chance of admission, even though many admits did not have high GPA and test scores. I certainly didn’t have high GPA/scores (by CC standards of high), but I did show I possessed the same qualities that they were looking for in GPA & test scores in other ways.</p>