@intparent, it’s in that link. H & S with RD acceptance rate <4%. Y & P <5%.
Some seriously high ED admit rates in that chart posted earlier. Conn 70%?
None of those are ED schools. (I’m not sure why that matters wrt the point you were making in your original post, but @intparent seems to think it’s relevant. Maybe re solutions? Or the possibility of filling all slots early? ED is close to a guarantee --EA doesn’t represent the same commitment.)
FWIW, I just took your point to be “regular” decision is becoming the exception rather than the rule at highly selective schools. So RD is irregular and EarlyWhatever is increasingly the norm.
Right… and they all offer SCEA. Which is in no way binding… and there is no real reason for anyone to not apply through that method if they think they have a reasonable application. None of those are schools with ED. The OP says it is the “top 10-15 schools” with RD rates approaching 3% – not seeing that data.
Also, I looked at that link, and it is 7 pages of posting that doesn’t lead off with the actual analysis that shows that in the end, the % of total apps accepted in the RD cycle. If there is a specific comment in it that summarizes to that point with all the schools, please post a link to that comment. I don’t want to read a whole different thread of 100 posts to find the point.
All you have to do is go to the end and look at the latest version of the list to see the data – no need to read the thread. Sorry for not pointing that out when I posted the link.
That is just one aspect of fit. From that point of view, any school in the Top 20 and the honors college was a fit. Other than Dartmouth which K1 considered in the middle of nowhere, K1 could not choose among the Top 20 (no did not apply to all). Lets face it Columbia is very different from Duke, yet K1 applied to both and would have been fine going to either. I do not recall saying ANYONE should go to their in state if that is not what they want and other options are not financially impossible or do not make sense otherwise.
There are many aspects of fit that have nothing to do with academic prestige but in the end a lot of these decisions made by kids and parents are arbitrary and most kids do fine where they end up.
The other post was about someone WANTING to go to their state school where they felt they fit in better OVER a Top 20 and the State was MORE expensive but not prohibitive.
Found it. So the fact is that the top ED schools are approaching 6%… not 3%. Still not great, but ED has taken a significant amount of the class (athletes, legacies, etc) for many years. Plus, the overall acceptance rates have gone down significantly over the past several years due to huge increases in the number of applicants. It is not statistically that easy to parse out how different the RD acceptance rate is due to an increase in the ED acceptance rate vs. just an overall drop in the percent of students accepted. Not rocket science analysis to do, but I am not going to do it. If someone else wants to, please post. 
Apologies to @intparent and others. I’m a lawyer by training not an engineer so I’m more prone to hyperbole and less to precision. I didn’t mean to suggest that all these schools were at 3% exactly for RD. I just left a reception for UChicago admitted students and they were at a little under 4% this year for RD. DS and I both just observed that once the EA/ED season was over, every top 20ish school seems to turn into Stanford. The RD rates are mid to high single digits for so many schools that at some point kids (and parents who are paying for the apps) are going realize what a fools errand it is to even try. No matter how special your snowflake is. And the ED/EA rates really are higher in most cases. Even if you take out the legacies and athletes from the numerator and denominator, the rates are at least double in most cases. So I guess the lesson is that if you are really set on a top 20 school you better pick your EA and or ED choices carefully because that is probably your only real shot.
And I will always maintain that SCEA is evil. If you aren’t a world class oboe player, you need hedge your bets more than SCEA allows.
Can you clarify why you think SCEA is evil? It gives you a shot at your favorite school WITHOUT committing for sure. Sure, EA has looser requirements, but the SCEA colleges could all go ED… then where are you?
Don’t forget the existence of EDII, too. Quite a few schools have that option as well if you miss on your ED or SCEA attempt.
I think this issue is more that some people can’t stand that their kid (or the kid can’t stand) that they probably aren’t going to get into a top 10-15 school. There are literally thousands of colleges in the US, and an awful lot of them provide a great education. I don’t think the issue is ED (or SCEA) at all. I think it is jonesing for prestige and being unable to look beyond the tippy top prestige factor.
The lesson is don’t get really set on a top 20 school. Find schools in a lower tier than you really like and would be happy to attend. Sure, it is more work than just reading the USNews rankings. It takes more visiting and more research. But there are plenty of good choices. Getting over the prestige fixation is really the solution.
@intparent, personally, I think the lesson is to not shotgun the Ivies/equivalents and to understand the probabilities, competition, and your goals.
So the problem isn’t so much SCEA at HYPS but thinking that you have a decent shot at those schools when the reality is that you only have a decent shot or better at schools with early admit rates of 25% or more (and don’t draw many of the most amazing 18 year-olds in the world).
The tragedy is that some of those schools can provide opportunities just as good as HYPS can to those kids.
Well… we beat that drum out here all the time, and try to steer people to the right info. Every time I meet someone with a teenager looking at colleges, I tell them about CC, too… If we could just get everyone out here taking our advice, wouldn’t the world be a better place? 
I have to say, though, that I’m glad HYPS have SCEA as that would tend to draw away many of the prestige-hunters, leaving more ED slots open at other schools for kids who truly have that school as their #1 choice.
@intparent my problem with SCEA in particular is that it takes the kids out of the running for all the other EA and ED schools. These kids are giving up a shot at places like MIT, UChicago, USC, ND, and any other top tier rolling/EA program plus one ED school. I’m looking at all this through the lens of the parent of a full pay kid who has a lot of full pay friends with great stats that overestimated their awesomeness. But like @purpletitan, I’m also forever grateful for SCEA because DS didn’t do it and got into his top choice. Maybe because most of his high stat buddies thought they had a shot at HYPS.
I still don’t understand. Why should your full pay kid or their friends or anyone else get more than one early admission school? If they overestimate their awesomeness, then they will still have a shot via ED II or RD at lots of good schools. There aren’t just 10-15 good schools in the US. If those SCEA schools went to ED, I doubt the pool of who applies there would change much – they will still overestimate their own awesomeness.
@intparent, if everyone went ED, actually, you may see some of the kids who are prestige-hunting to ED to where they think is the best fit.
With SCEA, some top stats kids may figure that they might as well try SCEA to HYPS (because ED success elsewhere would close out the possibility of HYPS to them) thinking that they’re so awesome that they’d do weill in RD.
BTW, the few ED2 rates I’ve seen tend to be pretty bad (compared to ED1 rates or even RD rates). Likely in part because it’s a weaker pool, but also possibly because many schools put a premium on getting kids who have them as a top choice.
I also have a feeling that most kids who struck out in SCEA to HYPS aren’t applying ED2 to Tufts/Vandy/Emory.
^ Any idea what the ED2 rates are? Seriously considering it as a strategy for K2.
Not saying full pay kids are inherently owed any extra chances. But I do feel bad for these few kids who made a bad bet on their awesomeness and never got a shot at MIT or CalTech or UChicago. They’ll do great doing EECS at UCB or something similar and have great lives so no tears for them on that front. That said, I’m a recent convert to the potential benefits of some private schools. I’m a public school product (Michigan) and it has always served me well. I’m a donor and always will be and always thought my kids should follow a similar public school path. But after doing some tours at a few mostly high ranked privates, I’m kind of blown away at the resources they put behind the kids. I’m sure I’ll get hammered for going against the CC conventional wisdom that any school is perfect as long as you can afford it and that you get out whatever you put into it. But just maybe there is some advantage to going to an elite private school. And if there is, you better apply carefully.
@SeekingPam, they’re not well publicized, so you have to hunt for them. But if you have a clear second choice (and do not have to hunt for scholarship money), I don’t see why not.
I went to Michigan as well. My youngest has great stats (2380 SAt, 800s on Marh Ii & Lit), and guess what? She decided to apply to Chicago EA because it was the best fit, and she did not want to commit anywhere else. She didn’t apply to any Ivies, thought they were too snobbish. She ended up getting in everyplace she applied, including Chicago, Swarthmore, Harvey Mudd, Carleton, and several other schools with great merit aid. She isn’t deprived, and her strategy worked fine.
It sounds so greedy to feel bad for those special snowflakes who missed out on the ED pool at top 10 schools because they just couldn’t forego that SCEA shot. And they are pretty much all wealthy kids, because poor kids often don’t even know about ED, or SCEA. You admit yourself that you have done very well from your public flagship – and your kids can do very well if they aren’t at HYPSM. It isn’t the great tragedy you make it out to be.
I did very well with a UM degree. But I worked insanely hard for a lot of years, and still do. And I got very lucky in finding a couple of incredible mentors who opened doors for me that would have normally never been opened. In hindsight, my success is as much about having some good luck as it has been about my intelligence and work ethic. DS with his UChicago degree probably will have to work just as hard as me to be successful but he won’t have to rely so much on getting lucky.