Many who applied EA to MIT/Caltech also applied to UChicago EA. Ask @TheVulcan.
They have not published anything other than overall yield.
Of course. But we already know they didn’t apply to H, Y, P and S. Whether they’ve applied ED or EA to other schools among the Ivy + (since that’s the group we are discussing) would be the question. What I’ve found is that Ivy and Ivy+ deferrals are more common in the ED2 round rather than among EA admissions. Most who apply and are admitted EA to UChicago have a strong preference for the school, with financial considerations being one reason for uncertainty.
Correct. I was referring to admissions not applications. Anyone not applying SCEA can apply EA to UChicago and many will apply ED or EA elsewhere as well. That hasn’t really changed over time. UChicago gets a large number who apply because it’s first choice (or near first choice) and they tend to select those “UChicago Types” who want to attend the school. But that doesn’t mean that everyone who applies is serious about attending UChicago.
Correct - we can only glean information via crowd sourcing, conversations, etc. Edit to update: yield for EA can be derived based on overall yield. We’ve calculated those estimates in prior threads.
Yep, that can’t be all that unusual. Edit: I wonder how many get into both and, if so, which is chosen by what ratio. Everyone I know who has gotten into MIT EA has attended. Early admission in general tends to have a pretty high yield.
We’ve known quite a few who applied to UChicago EA over the past few years since they introduced early decision. Only one was admitted that route and that was because the applicant was a great fit. They would have applied ED1 had they been able to but they needed merit. Not everyone who needs aid qualifies for need-based. For the remaining EA applicants (none of whom was admitted), UChicago ranged from first choice to one among many with perhaps an ED to an Ivy+ or a top LAC.
I’ve told this story before that prior to the introduction of ED we even knew someone who applied EA to UChicago and ED to an Ivy and immediately pulled the Ivy app. when admitted to UChicago since the latter was really their first choice. It’s a great example of why UChicago opted to introduce ED.
Not getting pulled into another UChicago thread 
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There are numerous possible colleges students can apply to besides just HYPS. MIT and Caltech have been mentioned, but those are far from the only ones. It’s hard to guess at what portion of EA applicants might apply to or prefer other colleges, with so little relevant stats about EA applicants/admits.
You can also have kids whose first choice is an ED/SCEA/REA school, yet still apply EA for strategic reasons . For example, a kid might apply to several EA schools during first round that have a variety of selectivities. He has a much better chance of getting accepted somewhere during EA than if he applied to just a single first choice reach during ED/REA/SCEA. After he has the not-first-choice EA admission in hand, he does not need to apply to safeties in RD. Instead he can focus his efforts on the few unlikely reaches he would choose over the first choice among his EA admissions. If things don’t go as planned and he is rejected by everyone during EA, then it is also useful information, as he knows he needs to focus on less selective colleges during RD… more so than he would have without the EA decision knowledge.
I did something like this when applied to college. After getting an EA admission to a school that was my 5th choice favorite, it was a big load off my college applications. I no longer needed to deal with applying to safeties or casting a wide net among colleges that I was not that enthusiastic about. Instead I only needed to apply to the ~4 reach colleges I would choose above my EA admission and could focus all my efforts on those few colleges. Some highly selective colleges have cited this lock in backup admission at a not-first-choice group as the reason for switching from EA to ED, implying that it is not an insignificant number of students at many colleges.
No doubt. Kids who apply to HYPS as their first choice are not supposed to apply EA to Chicago or other private, but they may still apply to Chicago ED 2. It’s not a coincidence that the ED 2 application deadline is shortly after early decision results are available for HYPS and similar. So you may have kids who prefer MC or others that apply EA, and may have kids who prefer HYPS that apply ED 2, or possibly EA for strategic reasons. ED 1 is the only admission option where you can be highly confident about being a first choice, without knowing more information.
That would be possible if Chicago only offered ED and RD. If you know the number of ED admits and assume ~100% yield on ED, then you can calculate yield on RD.
However, I don’t see how it is possible at a college that offers all of ED, EA, and RD unless you know something about the yield among either EA or RD applicants. You need to know the yield for 2 groups to calculate the missing 3rd.
It depends on the college. Colleges with high overall yield generally also have a high EA yield, including MIT. Early action yields are usually significantly higher than RD, but not always. For example, the article at Admissions Yield Holds Steady mentions Georgetown had a EA yield of 51% vs 48% overall – relatively little difference. I expect Chicago, MIT, Caltech, Georgetown, and other colleges that offer not-single-choice EA all show a different pattern from one another.
Up to relatively recently it was not uncommon to see EA’s commit early in order to be prioritized in the housing queue. This happened even when ED1 was introduced. Admittedly, however, since the College eliminated the housing queue that information can’t be tracked anymore. And, of course, EA’s may choose not to commit early due to financial aid considerations, even if UChicago is one of the top choices (if not the top conditioned on merit). Naturally, there are many other schools one can apply to EA. However, admit rates in the 4-5% range are typically not associated with backup schools which is why a good number apply EA to UChicago as a first choice rather than a throw-away application. That is, assuming they were aware that the paper odds were that low; there is evidence that some this year were not. There is unofficial data on EA applicant numbers and admit rates from prior years and they have been discussed in the forum before. That the College doesn’t publish them doesn’t mean they don’t exist at least through the Class of '23. (class of '24 admission events were disrupted by Covid and the information isn’t as forthcoming as a result).
Clever strategies may not work for most, given the enormous number of EA applicants and the relatively few admits in this group. UChicago tends to do things a tad different from other schools, even in the early round.
There are indeed many who apply ED elsewhere and EA to UChicago. I’ve seen that combination often and it’s clear in that case that UChicago isn’t a first choice school (it might be a clear second choice, especially if the candidate switches to ED2 if deferred from EA). ED most everywhere has a higher admit rate than RD so it doesn’t make sense to hold off on an ED application elsewhere if the school is your first choice and meets need (if you need merit that’s another matter). As to applying EA as a fifth choice, given that the admit rate for that admission plan is so low - lower than some SCEA admit rates - it might not be a wise idea. Better to apply to UChicago in the RD round and apply early action to that 6th choice state uni and perhaps SCEA or ED to one of those reaches. UChicago needn’t be top choice in any of those scenarios but at least now you have chosen the proper admission plan. Dean of Admissions Jim Nondorf has been very clear in the past: successful EA candidates are more interested in the school than those in RD. If UChicago isn’t one of your top choices, then you are probably better off applying in the regular pool.
ED2 at UChicago is to RD what ED1 is to EA. Both ED2 and RD have the same application deadline but ED2 allows you to signal that UChicago is first choice at that point. Often this means that UChicago is 2nd choice overall. My son is a great example. He applied SCEA and when deferred followed up with the ED2 application to UChicago at the same time as his RD apps elsewhere. Had he been admitted SCEA, he would have been done; like 99% of others who apply SCEA, that school was his first choice. But he knew he’d be happy with either the SCEA outcome or the ED2, and other ED2’s he met at UChicago felt the same.
My D was in the first applicant pool under ED1/ED2 and she switched and was admitted ED2 once deferred EA. She was chasing merit and was hoping to compare offers between UChicago and another excellent school that she was applying to RD. Many still employ this strategy but I think it’s less successful than it used to be. Her year in particular, the back end of the application cycle was notably smaller in numbers than it had been in the prior year and would be in the year following. My D was a fine candidate, but in all fairness she also benefitted from not having many in that ED2 pool. I don’t believe that would be the case anymore.
If you know the ratio of ED1 vs EA admitted, as well as the goal percentages of ED overall, you can calculate binding vs non-binding yields. This information has been posted in prior threads and is based on unofficial but reliable sources. You can also play with the unofficial admission rates for early admission - these were shared in admission events and also posted on this forum in prior years. For instance, we know that the early admit rate (ED1+EA) a couple years ago was 7%, and the overall admit rate was 6%. Someone also posted the number who apply ED1 (can’t remember if it also included ED2). So the information’s out there although the numbers are all pre-Covid and things might have changed now.
One thing about that non-binding yield is that it has risen over time, reflecting the increasing popularity of UChicago as a top choice. It’s pretty clear that UChicago’s overall yield, had they not opted to introduce ED, would have been north of 70% a couple cycles ago. Compare to 63% for the Class of 2020.
Now, knowing what the non-binding yield is doesn’t tell us much about the EA yield specifically. I believe there are estimates of each posted on the forum as well. But even if the blended rate isn’t broken out into EA vs RD, we know that the EA yield is going to be higher. And how? A few reasons: 1) EA offers are more likely to come with merit. 2) RD is the last chance to apply to UChicago with three prior chances to demonstrate a bit more enthusiasm. 3) Admissions considers RD to be the lowest interest applicant group. and 4) The numbers admitted tell the story: RD is a larger admitted pool than EA. The lower the yield, the larger is the number of admits to compensate for it.
No doubt. My question would be how well a strategy of three early applications to three top elites tends to work out. With respect to the three in question, it’s pretty obvious that there are differences between UChicago and the other two just in the essay requirement. Someone who sparks to the simple, straightforward, short-answer prompts of the MIT or Cal Tech essay might not spark to the Uncommon Essay with its open-ended, long-form response and offbeat prompts. MIT downplays “uniqueness”; UChicago definitely encourages it. And so on. Now, each school clearly wants to get to know the applicant through their essays. But UChicago goes about it a bit differently than the other two and perhaps is looking for a distinct set of attributes (and the other two, in turn, are looking for their own “right-fit” attributes). That doesn’t mean someone isn’t qualified for all three, but it can mean that they will have a comparative advantage (and hence better admissions chances) at one type of school over the other.
Sigh. “Just when I thought I was out…”
OK, I will chime in (probably at my own peril), since I see so many of my old CC friends here - hi everybody! 
Leaving aside divinations about which school looks for the most “unique” candidates, the undeniable fact is that among the three schools mentioned (MIT, Caltech, UChicago), one is not like the others.
MIT & Caltech use EA as their only early round, in which they admit at the same rate as RD, and let the yield chips fall where they may (and fall they do, to approx. 75% at MIT and 45% at Caltech; a Caltech rep lightheartedly complained in a meeting with prospects that they have lost the few admitted students from our state to MIT in recent years). In contrast, UChicago uses EA largely as a device to attract more applications to juice up selectivity without sacrificing yield.
Could Caltech do something to raise their yield rate if they wanted to by, oh, perhaps adding a binding round or two to which they would then proceed to shepherd 99% of their EA pool? Sure they could. But why would they? They know what their yield is, and they admit accordingly, focusing solely on selecting the best applicants, period, USNWR rankings be damned.
That is what an institution with a purpose and integrity does.
Running to Stay in Place: The Stability of U.S. News’ Ranking System
“In the 2000 rankings U.S. News standardized all variables in its ranking model, a procedure that catapulted CalTech into #1, displacing first-ranked Harvard, Princeton and Yale. The following year, after a hefty dose of criticism from baffled readers, including some from the displaced Ivies themselves, U.S. News adjusted each school’s research spending according to the ratio of its undergraduate to graduate students and applied a logarithmic adjustor to deal with “so-called statistical outliers.” CalTech (the statistical outlier) was pushed back into fourth, and Harvard, Princeton and Yale were back on top.”
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To calculate yield for EA vs RD, you need to know something about the yield of either EA or RD . If you know one (or relative ratio type information), you can calculate the other. With admitted information, you can calculate number or portion admitted in each group, but it is still insufficient to distinguish between the yields for EA and RD.
For example, the profile page at Class of 2027 Profile | College Admissions mentions 2511 were accepted and 1848 enrolled for a 1848/2511 = 73.6% yield. Suppose the admissions groups were split up as follows. What are the missing yields? You could calculate the combined yield of EA+RD, but not EA alone… and not confirming whether EA yield is much higher than RD yield.
1311 students admitted ED, yield is estimated at near 100% for simplicity
600 students admitted EA, yield is ?
600 students admitted RD, yield is ?
Overall – 2511 students admitted, 1848 enrolled, overall yield = 73.6%
It depends how you define a successful admission result. In 2019/20 both MIT and Caltech had a <5% admit rate on male applicants. Chicago’s wasn’t much higher. I doubt that most applicants who understand the implications of these admit rates in a high achieving applicant pool expect to have a large number of acceptances at such colleges to choose from. I think most applicants would be happy to get a single acceptance to any one of the 3. It’s possible that the kid could have a better chance during RD than EA at Chicago as you suggested, although this is different from information provided by other EA systems, which suggest similar or better odds than RD among similarly qualified applicants.
Can’t answer about Class of '24. For Class of '23 the proportions were something like 1,070 admitted E1/EA and another 1,070 admitted ED2/RD. Early (blended) and RD admit rates were shared with the incoming class at various admit days. In the past they have admitted the early class in approximately a 2:1 ratio ED1 vs. EA. One has to be careful, however, because there are no hard and fast rules on how many are admitted from each pool - it totally depends on the applicants themselves. The overall 81% yield that year supports an effective 100% yield from about 50% of the class admitted via ED and about a 63% yield from the other 50% admitted non-binding. The 50-50 ratio works well with the other stats shared and since they have had a lot of luck with ED there’s no reason to think they aren’t continuing to push the envelope there. If ED’s went under 50% of total admits, that means that non-binding yield would be even higher.
Agree.
EA admit rate has been estimated to be about 4% and RD is around 4% as well. They admit very very few from EA/deferred so that admit rate is pretty much reflecting new applications. Before ED1, the early round used to have a higher admit rate than regular and I believe more deferreds were admitted in the regular round, so they do things a bit differently now. And there is the fact that paper odds don’t exactly equate to personal chances. The reason someone’s personal chances might improve in the RD round is that EA has a higher number of enthusiastic applicants who are admitted. If you are less enthusiastic, you are better off competing against others who are less enthused. Historically, UChicago has tended to look for those who love being at UChicago. Whether that will continue to hold going forward remains to be seen.
Or another way to look at it is that someone might not have done their homework before applying to UChicago. That might suggest not being a good fit. 
UChicago has had well over 12,000+ applications per year in the early round for several years now - yes, even before introducing ED. With that many applicants, early admission at UChicago will be fairly selective, period. BTW, I notice that MIT Class of '24 had a 7% early admit rate. No complaints there, however - eh, @TheVulcan?
Ah, @TheVulcan , I thought you would have recovered from your wounds by now. You’re a hard case. Sometimes, as Dr. Freud said, a rejection is only a rejection.
I ask the same question of you I asked your tag-team partner, @1NJParent : Why do you Caltech-MIT advocates come on our board to cast your slurs when we Chicagoans never have anything bad to say about your favored schools? Is it something about a technical world-view that admits only a single model of excellence? Or can recognize no human motivations not governed by numbers? --I didn’t get an answer from him, I don’t expect to get one from you.
Oh, we had no illusions about UC’s EA.
Just kinda threw it into the hat with the other two.
But kids that throw their early application away by applying to UC EA exclusively are indeed taken for a ride.
Same as their RD rate. As advertised.
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@marlowe1, I’m only here because I was summoned:)
No wounds, and it wasn’t a rejection, but a deferral with which DS chose not to proceed;)
Happy 2021 to all.
@TheVulcan Sorry to drag you into the hornet’s nest. 
@marlowe1 To answer your question, I, and I’m sure @TheVulcan too, recognize excellence in many different fields. Unfortunatelly, I must have missed it on this board, unless this excellence is supposed to be exhibited by the constant bravados or the pitiful insecurity.
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I gotta admit though that despite our disagreements I really like this colorful @marlowe1 character:)
The original contention was, "yield for EA can be derived based on overall yield. We’ve calculated those estimates in prior threads." Nobody has questioned whether you can calculate yield for the combined EA+RD. In fact I’ve explicitly said this is possible in each of my posts on this subject. The issue is whether you can calculate EA yield, as was originally claimed, and what the actual EA yield is. Combined RD+EA yield is not the same as EA yield. They often are notably different from one another.
My guess is that this strategy tends not to work out if it’s a “throw into the hat” kind of thing.
MIT provides a level of disclosure on their admits that isn’t replicated elsewhere among the top schools. I like their full-disclosure philosophy and wish that everyone else followed suit.
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Caltech is equally forthcoming.
More slurs, always more slurs.
@1NJParent , “Your mother wears combat boots” does not count as logical discourse. If “constant bravado” and “pitiful insecurity” are revealed by the propensity of us Chicagoans to make actual arguments, then we plead guilty as charged. Hurling hateful epithets and decamping in a huff is really a bit cowardly. Shall we meet at sunrise?
@TheVulcan , I never doubted that MIT was your son’s first choice and that he would prosper there. However, a fair reading of your previous correspondence indicates incredulity that he could be accepted by MIT and yet be rejected by Chicago. You ascribed this to no motivation except juicing the numbers - and on that basis you proclaimed the entirety of Chicago EA to be a sham, something you baldly assert again above, citing an old article that gives no evidence for this at all but merely critiques the arbitrariness of the USNews ranking system (with which critique I heartily agree).
The sting of rejection can be all the greater when it comes from a potential partner one really didn’t want to dance with in the first place. That’s understandable, but it’s not an argument.