<p>Out of the ~720 people who are admitted EA to Yale each year (I think that is the right number), how many do you think get in on the pure merits of their applications?? No legacy, not a recruited athlete, not a special case at all---out of the 720, I doubt that is considerable. According to a post on this site, Yale admitted ELEVEN women's rowers EA a year ago. If Yale will admit so many people EA for a single sports team, the outlook for "normal kids" seems rather bleak.</p>
<p>I agree that at first it does not seem too encouraging. Afterall the early pool is comprised of recruited athletes, development cases and legacies. Here is what I have noticed however by reviewing the statistics of those cc members who posted on line and were admitted early versus those who were admitted regular decision who were not one of those categories.
In the early round, those who were accepted and not a legacy, recruited athlete, developent case, tended to be those who had evidence of great passion, special talents, special accomplshments, even if their SAT scores and rank were not perfect or near perfect although they were competitive. Also admitted were those with perfect or near perfect scores who might not have had unusual outside talents, but had great intellectual achievements in addition to the top scores and grades.
I did notice that in the regular decision round, many were accepted with very high SAT scores and rank with leadership and community involvemment but not necessarily out of the ordinary. I wondered whether the elite schools accept a number in the regular decision round who have near perfect SAT scores to balance out those in the early round who might have been athletes, legacies ect who were not as competitive in terms of their standardized test scores, and also balance out geographic areas that were under represented.
When I look at the numbers, if there are 700 spots, probably about 300 of them will go to legacies, development cases and recruited athletes. That leaves about 400 spots or a 10% acceptance rate for the rest of the applicants who do not fall into those categories which is about the same for regular decision. Thus, there is probably not a great advantage to applying early. Those who are accepted early and who do not fall into the categories of legacies, recruited athletes, and development cases would have been accepted in the regular decision round anyway.
Probably the applicant who has interesting passions, talents ect that have been developed over time have the best chance of getting accepted early when not in one of the categories mentioned. This is just based on reviewing the statistics and extra curriculars that have been posted on cc by those accepted early. However it is not representative of the entire population.</p>
<p>Interesting analysis. Encouraging, though, because I would have expected it to be even less than 400. I guess some of us "normals" do have hope, after all.</p>
<p>assuming you fall into the male/female division, wouldn't you need to halve those spots to determine how many spaces then remain, so that for each representative of a gender, 1 out of 200 will then be available?</p>
<p>Technically yes, but there is no hard rule that they have to take half female and half male in the early round. They could take more of one sex but balance it out in the regular decision round</p>