<p>I was searching through CMU's common data (its at their website) to find out more about the school, when I came across a rather strange fact: their ED acceptance rate was 23% (226/995), even though the overall rate was 28% (6259/22356). Why did that happen?? </p>
<p>Shouldn't the ED rate be higher, due to guaranteed yield (goodness, it's low enough at CMU) and demonstrated interest? Can anyone explain this?</p>
<p>My guess would be that this is caused by the breakdown of what schools they applied to.</p>
<p>For instance, if you had a majority of ED applications to the harder schools, SCS, CIT, and CFA, you would have a higher acceptance rate than you would during the normal period.</p>
<p>However, during the normal period you have more applicants to the 'easier' schools like H&SS, so that drives the overall acceptance rate up. Does that make sense?</p>
<p>With CMU's system of per-college admissions, you really need to see the stats broken down and can't go by the overall rates.</p>
<p>yah, i guess that makes sense. lol, i can't see anyone applying ED for CMU's philosophy program. with that said, now i wish i had per-college data on this.</p>
<p>Yes, that puzzled me as well. Perhaps they have a particularly low target for how many ED students they want, I sort of inferred it was the result of a sort of over-saturation of ED applications.</p>
<p>Yeah, I was quite surprised when my friend who has great stats was deferred. Maybe has something to do with there being two EDs.</p>
<p>ED applicants may not be as competitive as the RD applicants as well. Some applicants (me ._.) like to take their shot at HYPSM before committing to CMU</p>
<p>The reason probably is that some of the deferred kids get accepted RD, which in the end raises the 23% above the 28%... just my opinion</p>
<p>Maybe you can help with my question related to this. My D put down four different programs in her application. Will they consider her for the first one and then if the school doesn't want her then consider her for the next program and so on? This also seems to make the acceptance rates difficult to calculate since you have the same student applying to several different programs.</p>
<p>yep. thats how it works. even says it right on the app though...</p>
<p>At one of the first freshman meetings of SCS they asked something like, how many of you had MIT as your first choice college and 3/4 of the class raised their hands. If CMU had Early Action, I'm sure they'd have higher acceptance rates, but ED is binding. Not only that, but CMU does not exactly have a reputation for being generous with financial aid. So I think it suffers from being a top choice, but not necessarily THE top choice, and there are too many kids who don't want to be locked in to one financial aid offer.</p>