<p>Wow!</p>
<p>Glad my son got in ED........</p>
<p>The</a> Daily Pennsylvanian :: Record number applies for Class of 2018</p>
<p>^ Indeed! By my rough calculations (based on recent years’ regular decision yield rates, early decision deferral rates, and target class size), Penn will have a regular decision acceptance rate of about 8% this year, and an overall acceptance rate of about 10-11%.</p>
<p>This is exactly why you don’t admit 54% of the class by ED, unless Penn is just trying to drive down its acceptance rate and isn’t concerned about getting the best possible students.</p>
<p>How can you say the ED applicants aren’t some of the strongest students, though? The interdisciplinary and joint-degree programs, as well as Wharton, will always attract a very high-caliber of applicants even during ED because they are THAT selective. The College, SEAS and Nursing also will take the best early applicants as well. Accepting strong candidates in the regular round does not guarantee matriculation, so Penn might not really be losing anything here by taking a slightly higher percentage of the ED pool than they have previously. Well, I guess the gain the lower admit rate lol</p>
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Statistically–average SATs, GPAs, etc.–the ED admits have been comparable to the RD admits for many years now. There’s no sacrifice in terms of overall applicant statistics or credentials in the portion of the entering class admitted through ED.</p>
<p>^To add to that I think it makes sense for Penn to admit 54% because those are the people who have Penn as their top school and will definitely go when admitted. More specifically, they have proven that Penn is their top choice IVY. I’m willing to bet that at least half of the ‘strong applicants’ in the RD round will have applied to more Ivies than just Penn, so if Penn admits them they run the risk of giving a spot to someone who may have better stats than the other applicants but will ditch Penn admitted to HYP.</p>
<p>Yeah, nice thought, but the big reason for ED is it makes sure students/parents are willing to pay without seeing financial aid options from multiple schools. Let’s see them publish the percentage in early and regular decision who need financial aid and how much. They meet all need, so if I am wrong, the dollars given should be about the same for both sets of students.</p>
<p>^ Keep in mind that accepted Penn ED applicants are allowed to decline the ED offer if they find the financial aid package to be insufficient. So although not exactly the same as comparing offers from multiple schools, there is some bargaining power for the accepted ED applicant on FA, who can go ahead and apply to other schools without penalty during the RD round if Penn’s ED FA award is insufficient.</p>
<p>But I agree with you that it would be interesting to see a FA comparison between ED and RD admits. However, there would be other factors complicating analysis of such data, such as legacy applicants only being given an advantage during ED, and some of the most financially disadvantaged applicants being admitted through programs such as Questbridge that are administered during the ED round. In any event, Penn is certainly not unique among its peers in its use of a single-choice early admissions program to fill a large percentage of its class and, as I said, it’s not really a binding program for FA students who find their FA package to be insufficient.</p>
<p>My D was admitted in the ED round. One thing I can say about her stats is that she didn’t need to take the SAT again, her GPA was as good as it could get and she already had leadership, state and national wards at that time.</p>
<p>I thought it was awesome that she could put such an impressive application forward a couple months early. I don’t know why one would imply that there may be differences in the quality of ED vs RD applicants.</p>
<p>Schools that accept a significant proportion of students at ED time can better manage RD yield prediction; schools are in big trouble if the RD yield is higher than expected.</p>
<p>45Percenter–or anyone who knows….does Penn state that legacy applicants are only given consideration during the ED round? I know that Cornell and Brown state this outright and am curious if Penn announces the same.</p>
<p>^ Yes, Penn does state explicitly that legacy applicants are only accorded a legacy advantage during the ED round. Of course, they can apply RD, but they essentially won’t be given a legacy boost if they do.</p>
<p>Incidentally, there generally are only about 300 or so legacies in Penn’s entering class of about 2400.</p>
<p>Lol Penn admits about 20% ED. Where are you getting your numbers from?</p>
<p>bkkacyem, what are you talking about or who are you questioning?</p>
<p>Thank you 45 Percenter! Seems as though others are following same policy. Am surprised at the low # of legacies.</p>
<p>bkkacyem–Penn admitted 25.3% of the ED applicants this cycle but the # admitted represents 54% of the next year’s freshman class.
[The</a> Daily Pennsylvanian :: Early decision admission rate increases by less than one percent](<a href=“http://www.thedp.com/article/2013/12/penn_early_decision_acceptance_numbers]The”>Early decision admission rate increases by less than one percent | The Daily Pennsylvanian)</p>
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<p>Yep. For example, in the Class of 2014–one of the last for which Penn posted the number of legacies on its Admissions web site–there were 325 legacies, constituting 13.5% of the class:</p>
<p><a href=“https://web.archive.org/web/20110814071744/http://www.admissions.upenn.edu/profile[/url]”>https://web.archive.org/web/20110814071744/http://www.admissions.upenn.edu/profile</a> (scroll down to the bottom)</p>
<p>Even though I was admitted ED four years ago, I think they need to limit ED admits to 40% of the class. Even though there are comparable students in each pool, this should be done to promote socioeconomic diversity, as many people who live in rural and/or low income areas are not automatically exposed to the information that would allow them to make an informed decision to apply ED.</p>
<p>Actually I feel like ED applicants’ proportion to all applicants make sense because first off, the ED applicants are those who really want to attend Penn and perceive the school as their first choice. They are the ones who want to be the most committed to Penn. Meanwhile RD applicants apply because they either had another first choice college to which the applied to ED and got deferred or accepted or they are applying to a multitude of schools and just want to at least get in one of them (or something along those lines).
So the ED applicants really deserve more ‘spots’ (I’m not saying they’re more qualified than ED). Plus I mean it’s around 50-55 percent of the actual class each year. It’s very reasonable</p>
<p>@bkkacyem, You make good points and I agree with you… But Penn, like every other competitive college out there, is looking for a well rounded class; not essentially top students who are very interested in Penn.
It is not %100 fair! But I think Penn controles ED:RD ratio because of certain reasons, like the ones @Poeme mentioned…</p>
<p>And keep in mind that because of the larger size of Penn’s entering class, it can accept 54% of the class through ED and STILL have as many RD spaces as, if not more than, all of its peers except Cornell.</p>