I know that many institutions accept around 50% of their incoming class from the ED pool (which in most cases tends to have significantly less applicants). And I feel that it has become pretty well accepted that “your chances are higher if you apply ED.” But I wonder if this is ACTUALLY the case.
I say this because although acceptance rates are higher for ED pools, it must be noted that a lot of people who apply during this time are recruited athletes, legacies, children of donors, etc. So in these cases it makes sense that more people would be accepted (because a lot of them were going to be accepted anyways, or at least had a higher chance to begin with).
I’ve seen many cases where someone (who is not one of the special cases I mentioned above) will apply ED to a college and get deferred/rejected, but then get accepted into the schools they applied to RD (that are even more selective). So I wonder if ED applications are looked at under more scrutiny (because of the high level of the pool), and you have WORSE chances at getting in.
The two schools at the top of my list are Vanderbilt and Duke (both of which i’d be equally happy to go to, and would choose over every other school on my list). And I obviously want to maximize my chances at acceptance, so I was considering applying ED to one of them, but I wonder if applying to both RD would actually give me the best chances at admission.
(If you had any weird ED/RD decisions, or can offer any insight to help me make my decision, feel free to comment!)
First go by what the schools say…Duke straight up says there is an advantage to applying ED, in multiple places/blog posts on their website. Here is one link: https://admissions.duke.edu/application/timeline
Regarding the athletic recruit piece, as Vandy and Duke are DI some proportion of the recruited athletes at go thru RD as NLI signing is now basically continuous for most sports Nov 13 thru August 1. And relative to many selective DIII schools, athletes make up a smaller proportion of the ED admits for Vandy and Duke as well.
If you have a clear first choice and the NPC suggests the school is affordable, ED probably offers an advantage at many schools, even though it’s not as large as it looks when comparing ED vs. RD acceptance rates.
I would read very, very carefully what Duke says about early decision and what they don’t say. They say ED is an advantage but they don’t say for whom it is an advantage (e.g. recruited athlete, legacy, URM, QB, development cases, faculty brats, etc)
Last month my D and I spoke with the Dean of Admissions about about whether recruited athletes are in the ED acceptances number and he said “yes, about 100” but we know there are more than that based on the # of D1 recruited athletes at Duke (more like 150 freshman). He also said about 45% of the accepted ED class is “people of color” which includes asians.
Lastly, the data referenced in the above link is for 2015-2016 year (4 years ago!). In 2019, only 18% of the ED class was accepted. When you factor in the “hooked” applicants, my best guess is that the ED acceptance rate is less than 10% for the average excellent white kid.
IMO, the only real advantage for the latter group is you might get deferred and get another bite at the apple in RD where 10% of the deferred applicants get an acceptance.
So to summarize, for the highly selective colleges (less than 20% ED acceptance rates) there is little, if any, advantage for the “unhooked” applicant other than deferral and possible acceptance in RD.
“but I wonder if applying to both RD would actually give me the best chances at admission.”
Even an ED skeptic like @socaldad2002 would agree this makes absolutely no sense.
And of course Duke itself says this is nonsense:
“Myth: The Early Decision process is more competitive than Regular Decision.
Fact: While some schools make this claim, at Duke we appreciate that we are your unquestioned first choice. There’s an advantage in applying early to Duke—last year we admitted 23.5% of our Early Decision candidates and only 8.7% of our Regular Decision candidates. There are students for whom applying Early Decision can make all the difference.”
No one believes your chances go down by applying ED. Most agree your chances go up by applying ED. The only argument is how much is the ED boost. IMO, the boost varies among the schools.
After adjusting for athletes and legacies, the boost at say Brown or Dartmouth is not so big. At larger schools that play full P5 D1 scholarship sports (like Duke and Vandy) it is clear that the ED boost is bigger and not so impacted by the Ivy/Nescac athlete effect. Duke and Vandy may fill some athlete slots on their non-revenue teams like the Ivies do. But there’s no way in heck that they are filling spots on their P5 hoops and football teams on the Ivy League model.
Duke may fill spots on its high end mens lacrosse team (which is largely non-scholarship) in the Ivy way. That’s because Duke lax competes directly with the high-end lax programs of Cornell, Princeton, Yale etc. for lax players. But no way that Vandy (reigning NCAA baseball champion) fills out its baseball squad on the Ivy method. That’s because Vandy baseball competes for high end baseball talent with other power baseball schools like Texas, USC, UCLA, UNC and UVA that don’t even have ED (n.b. UVA added ED this year).
So if you like Duke and can afford it, you are nuts if you don’t apply ED. If you like Vandy (where my kid attends), you’re nuts not to apply ED. You’ll get some measure of boost and you’ll also find out sonner (helpful in itself). You can always apply to the other RD (or ED2 in Vandy’s case).
First off, this is old data. The ED acceptance rate for the class of 2023 was 18% (not 23.5%). Why are they using old data on the website from 3 years ago? Secondly, they never address the question "is ED more competitive (i.e. is the average student more qualified in ED than RD) and we don’t know that answer. One would guess that if you are “unhooked” you would need to be a very competitive student to have any chance in ED otherwise you wouldn’t apply.
All Duke says is “there is an advantage in applying early…there are students for whom applying early can (not “will”) make a difference”. Sure there is an advantage for some (read “hooked”) students, but not for others. Since they (and other selective colleges) will not give us a detailed breakdown of admitted students in ED, all we can do is use the data they do provide and common sense.
With that said, IMO the real advantage is that 20% of students are deferred from ED to RD and of that group, 10% get in RD. So you might get a second opportunity for acceptance if you apply ED.
Full disclosure, Duke is my D20’s top college and will apply ED but we know that her chances in ED are a lot less than the stated 18% acceptance rate. Her likely best hope is for a deferral.
Yes, the numbers are old, but the text is what is important:
Class of 2023 ED acceptance rate was 18.2% and RD 5.7%. If you remove athletes and other hooked applicants from ED, you also have to remove them from the RD numbers…lots of URMs and first gen in both pools. So for athletes assuming the 150 and split is accurate, remove 100 from ED and 50 from RD…still leaves a benefit to applying ED.
It’s important to read the words on the page (approved by Chris Guttentag, head of admissions): in the first Myth/Fact section: “There are students for whom applying ED can make all the difference.” I don’t believe Duke is referring to hooked applicants in this statement.
Then, they state again in the second myth/fact section that there is a benefit to applying ED. And the context of that myth suggests they aren’t talking about athletes and legacies here either.
Regarding the athletes in DI schools with ED it’s not necessarily the same process as DIII schools with ED where there can be a quid re: slot for ED app. Guttentag personally pre-approves all football and M/W basketball candidates, his staff handles the rest. Athletic recruits are pre-approved without regard to ED/RD status or timing…again, NLIs are continuous from Nov to August and said athletes are considered separately from the rest of the pools.
“First off, this is old data. The ED acceptance rate for the class of 2023 was 18% (not 23.5%).”
OK, let’s use the most recent data. 18% ED, 5.7% RD. The current ratio is 3.15; the old data ratio was 2.7.
My read – the comparative advantage is the same. But Duke keeps getting more overall apps each year and more ED apps each year. So each year’s numbers go down, but the ratio will roughly stay the same.
@socaldad2002 – good luck to your kid. I hope she hits the ED target at Duke.
If you didn’t read above, my D and I specifically asked Dean Guttentag if recruited athletes are in the ED numbers and he said “about 100”. They need to account for these acceptances somewhere, right? Either its ED or RD. Period. You are wrong in your assumption that "athletes are considered separately from the rest of the pool.’ They are part of the pool of applied and acceptances percentages. They, like pretty much every college with ED, include recruited athletes in their ED numbers.
Secondly, you can read into what they write on their website but they never actually address the question, it’s purposely written vague. This is Duke, a word-class institution of higher learning and one of the best colleges in the U.S. if not the world and they are using 3 year old data and have very vague and ambiguous language about early decision questions? At best, it’s sloppily written, at worst its purposefully deceptive.
They have a vested interest to get as many students to apply in Early Decision as possible. One way to do this is to give the illusion that your chances on acceptance is much greater in ED than RD but they never state that the class is filled with at least half “hooked” applicants including athletes, legacy, QB, development cases, URM, faculty kids, and special talent (e.g. celebrity, actors, etc.).
That is all I am pointing out that when you peel back the onion, the acceptance rates for ED are not what you would believe it to be. 880 out of 4952 (17.7%) were accepted. 45% are URM (396). How many of those are legacy, athletes, QB, development cases, faculty brats, special cases, maybe you have 380 spots left over for 4,352 remaining ED applicants (8.7%)?
Just keeping it real, that the “unhooked” applicant is hoping to get deferred (about 900) to RD and have a second chance. 10% of those (90?) will be accepted RD.
“maybe you have 380 spots left over for 4,352 remaining ED applicants (8.7%)?”
Even if we assume all your numbers and assumptions are correct, there STILL is a big advantage to applying ED. Which is why you are advising your kid to apply ED.
You estimate your unhooked white kid will have an 8.7% chance in ED. That’s still better than the overall RD odds of 5.7%.
And that 5.7% RD pool still includes some amount of URMs, legacies, athletes, dev cases, etc. etc. etc. And the hooked will always have an advantage over the unhooked, regardless of ED or RD. So the unhooked white kid rate in RD would be even lower – maybe 4.5%? Maybe even worse than that?
So your odds in ED suck (8.7%) as an unhooked white kid. But they are still almost double the odds you’d have in ED (4.5%) as an unhooked white kid!!!
TL/DR: Applying ED is an advantage for sure. If you want to go to Duke, you are dumb not to apply ED. May not be as much of an advantage as you might think at first glance. But still a big advantage.
None of this happens just for applying early. No advantage if you aren’t a strong candidate. Or you fumble some part of your app. They don’t add points for ED.
So it’s up to you to get an idea what they look for and self assess. It’s not just stats and some ECs.
Two equally strong, but not crazy strong applications. Twice as likely to be admitted ED vs. RD is what the numbers say.
ED doesn’t allow weak candidates to get into a school like Duke or Vandy. ED is one way that one strong applicant gets in over another equally strong applicant. It is a tie-breaker.
Schools at this level have thousands of basically similar applicants. When playing a game that produces lots and lots of ties, having a tie-breaker in your favor is often outcome determinative.