<p>Hey, I hate to be ignorant, but what is SCEA? What does it entail? And why is it allegedly harder to get in if you apply SCEA instead of regular?</p>
<p>SCEA = Single Choice Early Action. If you apply to a SCEA school early you can’t apply to any other school under SCEA/EA/ED. I think you can still apply to rolling schools though. It’s “harder” to get in SCEA instead of RD because Stanford “defers” very few applicants to the RD round. Most either get rejected or accepted.</p>
<p>Not true, llpitch. EA applications get exactly the same consideration as RD applications, and the admissions office makes the same decision that they would make in the RD round. They only defer if the student has a good shot, but they want to wait a little bit before deciding. You should think of it as “turn in your application early, and we’ll give you the same decision, but we’ll tell you in December instead of April.”</p>
<p>Actually, the admit rate for EA is higher than RD, but this is because the EA pool self-selects to some extent.</p>