<p>"Although Harvard College saw 1.9 percent fewer applications this year, the acceptance rate looks likely to decrease nevertheless. Since the admissions office plans to count on a yes from the vast majority of students accepted through its renewed early action program, Harvard may admit as few as 3 percent of the students waiting to hear their decisions this Thursday.</p>
<p>Overall, Harvard might admit about 5.5 percent of students who applied under early action and regular decision to the Class of 2016—a drop from last year’s record-low 6.2 percent.</p>
<p>If the admission rate does fall this year despite the slightly reduced applicant pool, it will be due to a new calculus in the admissions office centered on predicting the number of students accepted in the early round who will choose to come to Harvard.</p>
<p>Though Harvard has not yet announced the number of acceptance letters that will go in the mail on Thursday, the College will look to roughly replicate the size of this year’s freshman class—1,661.</p>
<p>Already, 772 acceptance letters for the Class of 2016 went out in December.</p>
<p>From this point, anyone with a pencil and paper can approximate the math going on in the admissions office. To be safe, assume that the admissions office, behaving cautiously, makes room for every student who has been accepted early to attend. That leaves about 900 freshman beds open to regular decision candidates. If the yield for that cycle is high as well—say 80 percent—Harvard can admit just over 1,100 more students on Thursday to count on 900 of them showing up.</p>
<p>In total, that means that about 1,900 acceptance letters will go out this year, plus perhaps more to waitlisted students after the first crop of accepted students make their decisions by May 1. Last year, Harvard initially accepted 2,158."</p>
<p>I think the med school has an even lower admit rate…</p>
<p>PS: Are you making plans for Harvard grad, assuming that you have been rejected? Come on, think optimistically. I know it is hard. This article disheartened me, too, but we cannot change anything now. Let’s just hope that the decision is favorable. :)</p>
<p>This highights that if you want a decent chance at the upper and mid Ivies, Stanford, and Duke you should defintely apply via their ED or EA program. That is definitely the mnessage we will tell our two junior twins based on stats like this.</p>
<p>^The EA rate for regular applicants is not much higher though. Think about it…
Harvard admitted 772 students early (or something fairly close to that number). The admit rate was about 17%. This may sound really high and definitely higher than 3%, but if you think about it twice you will get the ostensible quality of that data. During the EA cycle a lot of the accepted students are legacies, recruited athletes and URM’s. Also, the non-hooked applicants in the EA pool tend to be a bit stronger than the ones in the RD pool, so if one is an “average” Harvard applicant, then the chance might not be that higher during EA as it seems. In fact, if you are surrounded by weaker applicants in the RD pool, your application will have a greater chance to stand out. So, I don’t know…</p>
<p>PS: Talking about “average” and “weaker” Harvard applicants is kind of…strange?! :D</p>
Come on, think optimistically. I know it is hard. This article disheartened me, too, but we cannot change anything now. Let’s just hope that the decision is favorable. :)</p>
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