<p>I agree that Princeton is making a conscious effort to change the type of student it admits in the Rapelye era. This years change was to
go to common app. As I have written before, will this change which
seems to have created a significant increase in apps this year cause the
yield to go down for RD? What percentage of that increased apps
do you think is HYS SCEA admits just applying RD because it is easy
this year and they want to see if they can get In??</p>
<p>I think the number of EA or SCEA admits who insincerely scatter RD applications about in order to gather a bunch of "trophies" suitable for framing is much smaller that some ED apologists have always alleged.</p>
<p>The best evidence is that the size of the HYS common admit pools have not increased substantially since each moved to SCEA. Note also that about 90% of SCEA admits stay with their first choice, although free to go elsewhere. </p>
<p>Apparently (surprise, surprise) need-based financial aid awards "just happen" to be about equal at competing elites. </p>
<p>I would wager that the "lost" SCEA admits are largely in two categories: (1) "tactical" applicants whose SCEA application was not submitted to the "real" first choice, but to the school where that applicant thought he/she had the best chance of admission; or (2) SCEA admits who were offered - and found it impossible to turn down - large "merit scholarships" to go elsewhere.</p>
<p>Byerly- I guess I am an exception then.
I applied SCEA to Stanford thinking it was my first choice (and Yale was my second; almost applied SCEA there instead) and am now going to Princeton (which, when I applied, was behind HYS on my preferences and which I picked out of HYPS). I neither was offered better scholarship money at Princeton nor applied to Stanford "strategically"- it was my first choice at the time of my SCEA application.</p>
<p>I was deferred by Stanford, and then accepted, but bitterness towards Stanford did not determine at all my final selection. I still love Stanford (it was so hard for me to turn it down) but I realized that Princeton was the better fit for me.</p>
<p>I think that there are a number of applicants (maybe a small number) who honestly have a change of heart for reasons other than strategy or money that choose an RD school instead of the EA they first applied to. My opinions of the schools I applied to and got accepted at changed drastically from when I looked during the spring of junior and fall of senior year to now.</p>
<p>senioritisO4, would you have applied RD to Princeton if you had been
accepted SCEA to Stanford instead of deferred? Would you have applied to Princeton RD if they didn't use the common app this year?</p>
<p>You weren't an SCEA admit then, were you?</p>
<p>Basically you were picking among choices open to you only after April 1 from the RD pool. </p>
<p>Despite what you say, I expect the odds on your "switching" would have been considerably lower if you had been admitted SCEA to Stanford in the first instance.</p>
<p>Hmm... I think I fall into category (1). I thought I had a good chance of getting into Yale EA (based upon people who had been accepted ifrom my school in the past) and taht's why I applied.</p>
<p>I definitely would have applied to Princeton with or without the common app or even if I had gotten into Stanford SCEA- my brother is graduating from Princeton so I kinda had to.</p>
<p>And Byerly, I guess we'll never know for sure if I would have switched (I don't want to be overly hypothetical)- but it still felt like a major switch for me that would've been made even with a Stanford SCEA admission, even though Stanford has been my #1 choice until just recently... it just took me longer to realize that Princeton was the place for me...</p>
<p>There have been several posters here who earlier acknowledged making such "tactical" SCEA applications, which are quite reasonable under all the circumstances. (Lindsaylujh is one who comes to mind).You only get one shot at the huge admit rate edge given to early applicants, and you don't want to "waste" it by applying to some place where you feel your chances of admission may be disproportionately small - particularly if you'd be perectly happy to attend any of the three - as is true for most cross-applicants.</p>
<p>I think it would be really interesting to know how many SCEA admits
at HYS then applied RD to Princeton, were accepted RD at Princeton
but went to their SCEA admit school anyway. Of further interest is
if they would have applied RD to princeton if they didnt' take the
common app.</p>