<p>On another thread it was pointed out that Franklin and Marshall admitted an astounding 70% of it's first-year class last year through Early Decision. Curious as to how that stacks up against the competition I spent a little time looking at peer institutions and the closest I could come to matching F&M's ED percentage was Colgate University at 51%.</p>
<p>Is F&M a real outlier or are there other good schools out there that I missed that take 50+% of their students through Early Decision? What do CCers think F&M's ED policy says about the school?</p>
<p>I am surprised that it is 70% for F and M. Having visited the school, it was clear to me that they really want folks who want F and M. They have a unique emphasis on practicality combined with a liberal arts environment. </p>
<p>It was also clear to me that they need a high percentage of full pay students. Which ED is a lot more likely to get them. They don’t have a great endowment. They have few scholarships and need the money to keep going.</p>
<p>Admitting 45-50% of the pool ED is pretty typical from many small LACs. But 70% is unusual. Could you post a link to the info? F&M doesn’t seem to make their Common Data Sets public.</p>
<p>I don’t think that admitting a large percentage of the class ED is a problem per se. In fact, it can be a sign of relative strength. If a school is attracting a large, well-qualified ED pool, they’d be crazy not to admit them in large numbers. In return, get security and more predictable yield; kids really want to be there; a lower overall admit rate; a selective RD round; and admitted ED students who are, on average, likely to be richer than applicants in the RD round. </p>
<p>At a school as sophisticated about enrollment management as F&M, I think it’s safe to assume that they don’t believe that they’re paying too high a price in academic quality by letting the ED admit numbers float that high. If they were denying desirable students in the RD round who were markedly better academically than their ED admits, they’d adjust the admit rates.</p>
<p>I think it says much more about a school if they get hardly any ED applications. Not to pick on one institution; it’s just one I came up with right off the bat: Drew University, for example, shows a grand total of 28 ED apps (21 ED admits) on their latest CDS. I’d say that’s a problem.</p>
<p>i just ran through the top 50 or so lacs. i couldnt immediately find data for some (vassar, oberlin, bard, connecticut college, occidental, denison and centre (which does not have ed)), so they were not included.</p>
<p>the percentages are ACCEPTED early decision students divided by total ENROLLED first students. no attempt was made to accommodate for the small percentages of ed admits who did not enroll. 2008-2009 common data sets used when available; a few schools had not updated so 2007-2008 numbers were used.</p>
<p>
Franklin & Marshall 69.7%
Furman 56.2
Colgate 51.2
Trinity 49.1
Hamilton 48.3
Bates 48.0
Dickinson 47.5
Davidson 46.1
Skidmore 45.2
Bowdoin 44.3
Colby 44.2
Middlebury 43.8
Swarthmore 43.5
Gettysburg 42.7
Carleton 42.2
Williams 41.9
Washington & Lee 41.9
Wesleyan 41.4
Kenyon 41.0
Lafayette 40.7
Holy Cross 39.4
Bucknell 38.6
Union 38.2
Claremont McKenna 34.3
Pomona 34.0
Haverford 33.3
Reed 33.3
Barnard 32.4
Amherst 31.5
Colorado College 30.9
Richmond 29.7
Grinnell 29.5
Whitman 26.9
Mount Holyoke 25.8
Smith 25.3
Macalester 24.6
Sewanee 24.4
Pitzer 21.6
Bryn Mawr 18.9
Wellesley 18.0
Harvey Mudd 17.3
St. Olaf 17.2
Scripps 15.4
Rhodes 14.0
DePauw 6.8
<p>many of the schools at the bottom of the list (womens colleges included) drew relatively few early decision applications. as such, it would not make sense to assume that a school at the bottom of the list is more difficult to get into during the early decision round. st olaf admitted 140 of 151 ed applicants last year, for example. </p>
<p>perhaps i will go back and add ed acceptance rate data at a later date.</p>
<p>^Nice work, Erica. Thanks! Acceptance rates would be interesting. St. Olaf only admitted 17% of their class ED, but as I recall, they often admitted 80-90% or more of their ED pool.</p>
<p>its actually much worse than that as 81 students were enrolled from the wait list! assuming 400 of the 410 accepted ed students enrolled, this would mean that f&m enrolled 107 students from an initially accepted group 1530 regular decision applicants. thats a yield of less than 7%.</p>
<p>now, most selective private schools that arent at the top of the food chain really struggle with regular decision yield. but 7%? for comparison, bucknells initial rd yield last year was a bit under 30%. dickinson came in at around 15%. i guess it does speak to the number of quality liberal arts colleges in the area, though.</p>
<p>As I noted in the other thread, their yield of RD admits is less than 10%, so that may be a reason they feel the need to accept so many ED. They also admitted a large number off the wait list --almost 50% of their RD admits came from the wait list.</p>
<p>According to my old copy of US News The Ultimate College Guide (the telephone directory sized one) F and M only admitted about 32% of the class through ED five years ago, so a big change since then. Historically Princeton, Penn, Middlebury, Rice, Tulane, Muhlenberg and many more have made liberal use of early decision.</p>
<p>If those numbers are correct, there has been a big change. We have liberally used EA as even those acceptance numbers were higher than RD at a number of schools. </p>
<p>I know that our S’s high school had over 60% of their kids apply ED. I don’t remember the % accepted but I believe it was more than half of them.</p>
<p>^^(Gasp!) That can’t be! Everyone knows that “need blind” means that your ability to pay has absolutely zero influence on your chances of acceptance.</p>
Facts please. Rice used to have a non-binding EA decision (called interim decision). They accept about 30% of their class through Ed, if I remember correctly. That’s not exactly “liberal” use.</p>
<p>^^^ ED and EA total used to be over 50%(54% according to US News) for Rice just a few years ago, however I see they’ve discontinued EA. In general, I think it’s worthwhile to know how many spots are left for RD in the case of schools who do both.</p>