<p>The fact is, that in recent years, EA deferreds have been admitted to Harvard at a rate similar to - although often slightly below - the rate for "regular" applicants in the RD pool.</p>
<p>By way of contrast - last year at least - EA deferreds at Yale were admitted at a rate substantially higher than the rate for "regular" RD applicants, and, indeed, at a rate only slightly lower than the rate for "original" EA applicants.</p>
<p>I do not have similar data for Princeton or other Ivies.</p>
<p>Byerly, do you know how Harvard goes about re-evaluating deferred applicants? I read in "A is for Admission" that in Dartmouth, the regional director chooses the deferred applicants that he/she likes most and argues these cases in front of a committee and most of the times, they are admitted.</p>
<p>Harvard does not operate the way Dartmouth does - and indeed, DARTMOUTH does not necessarily operate the way it did back in the brief period the "A Is For Admissions" author was a low-level staffer in Hanover. </p>
<p>At Harvard, each region has a sub-committee that reviews all apps and brings a package of recommendations to the full committee. Every application - including every deferred application - is individually acted on when apps from that region are considered by the full committee.</p>
<p>Thank you for the information Byerly. </p>
<p>I wonder why the discrepency between Harvard and Yale regarding the EA deferred acceptance rate? This just seems odd to me. I also know at Columbia, EA deferreds have a higher acceptance rate. </p>
<p>Where are you getting the Harvard numbers from?</p>
<p>I get the Harvard numbers every fall at the Cambridge Admissions Conference.</p>
<p>The Yale numbers are posted on the Alumni Schools Committe site.</p>
<p>Without having full stats for the deferred group vs. the RD group, and also stats for the subsets of each granted admission, it is hard to explain why the different admit rates exist at each school.</p>
<p>It is surely true that the deferred pool is a more "motivated" group - since they chose to apply EA or ED in the first place - and that schools may expect a higher yield rate when admitting them.</p>
<p>I have heard that at some schools - Stanford specifically - telephone calls are made to the deferreds prior to formal admission to ascertain their continued interest. (This is somewhat akin to the technique widely used with waitlist admits - which insures a satisfying 100% yield - or close to it - on names taken from the waitlist.)</p>
<p>Interesting insight. This seems very strategic on the part of some schools. </p>
<p>I've heard thats its very rare for schools like HYPS to use the wait list as their yields are already sky high.</p>
<p>All four (HYPS) used their waitlists for the Class of 2008 to a lesser or greater degree.</p>
<p>Increasingly, the technique at most elites is to "go light" on regular admissions while planning to fill in if necessary from the WL. This allows schools to cherry-pick the WL to fill specific needs (more URMs, a tuba player, a potential French major, a resident of South Dakota) while keeping the admit rate as low as possible and the yield rate as high as possible.</p>
<p>Consider: if the normal RD yield for a school is 50%, it will have to admit 200 people to fill 100 slots. If it intentionally under-admits by 100 in the RD round, it will be able to fill the empty slots with a juicy 100% yield rate from the WL, needing to admit only 100 people for those 100 slots.</p>
<p>thats the way washu works</p>
<p>btw</p>
<p>"lesser or greater degree"</p>
<p>which one is it, I think you meant greater</p>
<p>No, I said what I meant. The use of the WL varies from school to school, from year to year. </p>
<p>For example, the yield rate was less than anticipated at Princeton last year, and so it made fairly heavy use of the WL to baqckfill. Yale took a far smaller number. This year, the schools may possibly flip-flop on this score.</p>
<p>well, that would help me out as I think my best shot at the top 3 is at yale, but, we'll see what happens come 3/31</p>