<p>Number of completed 1st full-time early action applications received: 2,432
Number of 1st full-time early action applicants admitted: 1,201
Number of first-time full-time early action admits enrolled: 533 </p>
<p>That's almost 50% admitted EA (49.4%)... I thought the EA/RD data was "the same"... I've been hearing tons about that.</p>
<p>What do you guys think about this?</p>
<p>I believe those numbers may include EA applicants who where deferred to RD and later admitted. If one does this across the board for EA or ED admits one finds the EA or ED admit rate jumps way up for many schools. I saw an analysis somewhere, on the parent's forum I believe, that showed that Yale's true early admit rate was in the mid 20's and Stanford in the mid 30's. Likewise the true RD admit rate is in fact lower, Yale's I believe was near 6.5%. Chicago's true RD rate may drop to the low 30's. (Also, the numbers in that link were from 2004, not 2005.)</p>
<p>what do i think? safety school!!!</p>
<p>One is apparently safer to apply to any school EA or RD, as long as one's best case can be at that time.</p>
<p>seriously though, i have never heard of a school who deferred or waitlisted ea or ed candidates to rd and then count them as ea or ed students when they subsequently get admitted. that's just counterintuitive to what ea or ed is supposed to do. there were some postings in other threads that said that ea and rd stats for uchi were about the same. now all of a sudden uchi's true rd rate is in the low 30's? i don't think so. Since ea is not binding, there really shouldn't be any difference in admit rates for ea and rd. anyone who wants to apply to uchi can just apply ea and obtain whatever benefits it affords and still be able to reject uchi if something better comes along. i think that it is because of this type of thinking that harvard went scea instead of straight ea. they felt used.</p>
<p>remember, the source of the data is Peterson's, one of those companies that write college books. Peterson may use a different methodology than USNews, which reports a 40% acceptance rate both EA & RD.</p>
<p>I couldn't find UofC's common data set (or is it uncommon data set???) to see what the real numbers are.</p>
<p>The only #'s I could find were from the overall '09 admissions.
Applied: 9,039
Accepted: 3,642
Admit rate: 40.29%</p>
<p>No, Harvard did not switch to SCEA because they felt used. They switched because they had an enormous deluge of EA applications.</p>
<p>The schools don't parse their admit rates, but others who have looked at so-called true admission chances have done so. A student who applies EA or ED and is deferred and and then accepted, is a part of the pool of EA/ED students who eventually were accepted. The rate of acceptance for this "pool of applicants" is typically much higher than for those who only apply RD. The analysis for Yale, as an example, showed that when the entire ED pool was considered, the admit rate was in the mid to upper 20's in percent. When the deferred ED students who were later admitted were eliminated from the RD pool, the admit rate for those who applied RD only fell to 6.5%. Applying EA/ED dramatically affects one's overall chances of admission vs. the RD only pool at many schools.</p>
<p>I just found this table comparing EA/ED admit rates for many top schools. The numbers are a little different for Yale than the analysis I read (perhaps it was based on 2004 numbers), but it is still in line with the argument:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ivywise.com/Parents_stats.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.ivywise.com/Parents_stats.htm</a></p>
<p>What is fascinating is the legacy admit rates for some of the schools, Harvard at 40% and Brown at 54% for example.</p>
<p>When one considers that the ED admits are binding and the SCEA do not allow for other EA applications, one sees how these schools use their higher ED & SCEA admits to drive yield statistics.</p>
<p>ed and scea predominantly affect admission rates and not yield statistics. while it is true that with ed, you get one hundred percent yield, it mainly allows the schools to fill seats in their incoming class and thus allows the school to lower their rd admissions rates. those students who are obligated to attend because they applied ed identified those schools as their first choice and would have accepted a place in the class even if there were no ed. therefore the effects of ed really have minimal impact on yield. yield is most often used to identify prevailing student thought on what a school is. the lower the yield, the higher the likelihood that the school is considered a safety by the majority of the students applying. any analysis that attempts to place any type of emphasis on the link between ed and yield is faulty. ed is used by schools to inflate their admissions rate (or technically, the schools lack of acceptance rate).</p>
<p>This is simply not the case. ED greatly affects yield. There have been several studies that show that schools that have gone to ED admissions have had profound effects on yield. One such school was the Univ of Pennsylvania in the 1980's, which went from not being listed in the top 25 to the top 10 in USNWR simply by moving to an ED system, which greatly affected their yield and selectivity rating.</p>
<p>wow, upenn wasn't even in the top 25 until they had to use the gimmick of ed? is that statistic true or was it made up? hard to believe that one of the venerable educational istitutions of our country needed to resort to ed to improve its standing in the educational world. well, heck, they should be expelled from the ivy league. who should we substitute in its stead? hmmm, how about uchi?</p>
<p>You can read the whole story in the Atlantic article: THE EARLY-DECISION RACKET Sept. 2001.</p>
<p>From the article:</p>
<p>"...U.S. News & World Report publishes every fall, but a college is quick to cite its ranking as a sign of improvement when its position rises. When U.S. News published its first list of best colleges, in 1983, Penn was not even ranked among national universities...</p>
<p>...Penn coped with that change by investing in its curriculum, faculty, and physical plant. It also made unusually effective use of the most controversial tactic in today's elite-college admissions business: the "early decision" program.</p>
<p>Early decision has helped not only Penn. It holds so many advantages for so many colleges that its use has grown steadily over the past decade and mushroomed in the past five years. But the advantages it gives these institutions are outweighed by the harm it does to most students and to the college-selection process."</p>