<p>1) As the early action deadline is coming up in a few months, I have been asking friends and heard that in general, Stanford REA/EA is more competitive and harder to be accepted because all the discoverers, founders, and athletes apply and are accepted, whereas an applicant who is unique and faced extreme adversity, such as in my case, would have a higher chance getting in regular decision rather than early action. Is this true? </p>
<p>2) I cant seem to find the number of early decision applicants and early accepted freshman in the most recent common data sets from Stanford (for example, 2010-2011). Does anyone know the numbers?</p>
<p>3) In an application to Stanford, or any other college for that matter, if I was to mention programs/internships that I had done, is it better to mention that it required a rigorous application process, had a low acceptance rate, and was completely paid by the hosting organization/university? In other words, will colleges know the differences between [competitive programs] and those [paid ones that anyone with money can get into] if you do not mention which type is the program you participated in within your application?</p>
<p>I am only eligible to answer question 1. During a seminar I attended, the admission office claimed that they would not look at people’s profile with lesser than a certain amount of GPA and SAT among the Early Decision Pool.</p>
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<li><p>This is a common misconception that the admissions office has continually debunked. Yes, it is true that the early pool is more competitive (which the admissions office has admitted many times), i.e. there is a higher proportion of students who are more qualified. But that does not mean that it’s harder to get into early, because of an additional factor: deferral. If a student were, in theory, more likely to get in during the RD round than in the early round, he or she would be deferred to the RD round. So while it’s true that the early round has lots of very competitive admits, in addition to special cases like athletes, they only reject the ones who they’re certain will not be admitted in the RD round. For those who might get in depending on how competitive the RD pool is, the admissions office defers them. But as they’ve said many times, they’re committed to giving as many final decisions as possible during the early round, so that means they are certain that a) the ones who are admitted would be admitted no matter what, b) the ones who are rejected would not get in during RD, much less the early round, and c) the ones who are deferred have a chance in the RD round (about 10% of those deferred get in).</p></li>
<li><p>That data isn’t in the CDS. Google turned up this site which has archived results (see bottom) from past years for lots of top schools: [Ivy</a> League Admission Statistics for Class of 2015 Hernandez College Consulting, Inc. and Ivy League Admission Help](<a href=“http://www.hernandezcollegeconsulting.com/ivy-league-admissions-statistics/]Ivy”>http://www.hernandezcollegeconsulting.com/ivy-league-admissions-statistics/)</p></li>
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<p>This past year for Stanford, 5,929 applied and 754 were admitted. For c/o 2014, 5,566 and 753 were admitted. For c/o 2013, 5,363 applied and 689 were admitted. For c/o 2012, 4,551 and 738 were admitted.</p>
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<li>In general it’s not worth it to say so, especially if it’s a well-known program (like MIT’s summer programs, Telluride, etc.). If you do, state it in the additional info and don’t spend more than a line or two expounding on its selectivity.</li>
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<p>@phantasmagoric: From what my friends have told me, I was so worried about applying early decision, but I really love your logic behind your answers, because it just makes sense :). I will definitely be applying early decision this year. Thank you so much.</p>