<p>This year, MIT’s early admission rate was about 11%, and its regular rate was about 10%. Chicago’s early admission rate was about 27%, and its regular rate was about 24%. Last year, Georgetown’s early admission rate was about 18%, and its regular rate was about 20%. So . . . at these popular colleges, the answer is no, there’s not really a higher admit rate. I don’t know about others, though.</p>
<p>Note that, because of deferrals, early admission applicants get admitted at somewhat higher rates than the early admission rate itself indicates. So the tiny advantage (or tiny disadvantage) that the above figures indicate probably ought to be bumped up a notch for complete accuracy. But it’s still not a big, meaningful advantage.</p>
<p>At Yale and Stanford, it’s a slightly different story – SCEA admit rates around 13%, and regular admit rates around 5-6%. But then you have to start discounting for athletic recruits and the like.</p>
<p>For ED applicants: (I know that this is an entirely seperate thing)
Is the admit rate usually higher because the majority of ED applicants are overqualified?
For any of you who got into your first choice ED or EA, was the school a reach/high reach?</p>
<p>neethus1–Georgetown’s early action is not restrictive. The Web site states that you may not apply early decision to other colleges, but you may apply EA or RD in addition to G-town.</p>
<p>Deferrals: Everything I know, from anecdotal information and from the few colleges that actually disclose the data (e.g., Amherst), indicates that applicants who get deferred from the early round get accepted in the regular round at about the same rate as regular applicants. So, yes, “for the most part” deferral leads to rejection, but only in the sense that at all of these colleges most applicants are rejected; a meaningful number of deferrees are accepted.</p>
<p>Georgetown restrictions: Yes, EA fans. There are really three types of EA: SCEA, where you can’t apply anywhere else early, the Georgetown/Boston College type, where you can apply to other EA schools but not to an ED school, and Chicago/MIT type, where you are allowed to apply ED somewhere at the same time. You have to read each college’s rules carefully. </p>
<p>Some popular nuances: Rolling admission applications aren’t considered “early”, no matter how early you submit them. So you could apply to Michigan and Penn State in September and still apply SCEA to Stanford if you wanted. Also, Stanford and Yale (and maybe Georgetown) actually do allow you to apply EA at certain colleges that don’t give you a decision until January (so that you would have the chance to withdraw your application if you get admitted SCEA) and that require the early application as a condition for eligibility for scholarships. (I don’t know exactly which schools they are. I know they are not generally meaningful competitors of Stanford and Yale.) And everyone lets you apply ED II somewhere if you want after you have gotten your EA decision.</p>
<p>ED chances: At least three things boost ED acceptance rates, but not for every student. (1) At lots of ED colleges, especially LACs and D-III universities, ED is when many athletic recruits are accepted. (2) Some colleges give more weight to legacy status in an ED application (e.g., Penn says this explicitly, and others may do it without saying so). (3) Everyone says that the ED pools are stronger on average than the RD pools – no “what the hell” applications – so that applying the same admission standards to both pools would produce a higher admission rate for ED. That said, there is clearly a fourth factor, too: A student’s demonstrated commitment to enroll if accepted makes it much easier for a college to take a risk on him. So some slice of ED applicants probably are accepted who might not be accepted if they applied RD. That’s not a big slice, however.</p>
<p>Even for SCEA like Stanford, doing EA is not a bad idea because they use the Common App. My son didn’t get in, but he that applicaton under his belt early on, then revised it for the other schools that use the Common App and was accepted at several outstanding schools. </p>
<p>So the EA deadline forced him to get the Common App done early. Shortly thereafter, he did Michigan’s rolling decision. UMich’s acceptance helped ease the pain of the Stanford rejection–both received in mid-Dec.</p>
<p>Our D applied EA to her second choice school and was admitted. This relaxed all of us, knowing she already had a fine choice in case she wasn’t admitted to her first pick (but she later was), and she had to write only one more app.</p>
<p>im actually considering applying EA to MIT/CalTech/UChicago also, but would chances be diminished because your interests are spread among three schools? if the schools dont know what other schools you’re applying to, then it’s ok but i feel like they would be more inclined to accept someone who only applied EA to them (MIT for me).</p>
<p>^^^Applying EA to all three will not diminish your chances as schools will not know or care if you applied EA to other schools. These schools always have many more qualified candidates than they have room for and they also have high matriculation yields. If they cared about you only applying to them, they’d change to SCEA.</p>
<p>There is no catch, there’s nothing to lose. There are only benefits: it gets you started on essays earlier and makes your RD submissions better (which kids really really need), and if you do get in your dream school EA, you have 3 more months of stress-free relaxation as compared to your peers.</p>