<p>Well, to be sure both numbers require a fair bit of sophistication to really understand. The early admission numbers are misleading in that they combine a fair number of athletic recruits – people with an admission rate of 90-100% – with somewhat-stronger-than-run-of-the-mill candidates to produce an admission rate that looks much better than RD, and probably is somewhat better, but not that much. And the waitlist numbers require knowing how many students stay on, and what different components the waitlist has – the nominal waitlist and the real waitlist being significantly different.</p>
<p>They would have to disclose a ton of information, not just CDS numbers, to make the disclosures really meaningful. Even the colleges that disclose a lot of that information (e.g., comparative test scores for ED vs. RD) don’t say how many athletic recruits are in their ED pool. I feel like I am pretty good at understanding these numbers, and what I “understand” is really an educated guess with a wide margin of error.</p>