I’ll be an applicant for the engineering program taking a set of very engineering-relevant courses senior year (AP Calc BC, AP Chem, Honors Physics, AP Stats, Engineering Projects). How much of a difference will it make in an REA decision to be able to see only mid-semester grades which I can send during the REA review window, rather than official semester end grades available for Regular round?
If Stanford is my first choice, is it better to go REA knowing they won’t see official grades for the first semester senior year, or wait and go Regular Admissions with those grades to show?
How are your grades up until now? If your school ranks, what is your current class rank?
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It will always be better to be in the REA pool than the RD for the simple reason that the student is restricted to one choice. The students in the Stanford REA pool will be very strong but you know who won’t be in that pool?
The Harvard SCEA kids, the Princeton SCEA kids, the Yale SCEA kids, all the ED kids applying to Penn, Duke, Columbia, Brown, Chicago, etc…These kids could all be in the RD pool.
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Better to go REA unless your current GPA/rank is likely to improve materially after your first semester. You will at the very least pick up some intelligence on the strength of your app, especially if you are deferred, as to how high to shoot RD. Make sure you are also applying EA/rolling to some state schools to try to secure at least 1 acceptance before the RD deadline.
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