This is confusing as it may imply you have a higher change applying EA or regular. My guess would be that the ED applicants on average tend to be lower merit students who are hoping to get into their far reach school, but I don’t know if I’m correct. Any input would be great, thanks!
Where did you read that the ED acceptance rate was 27%? The only statistic published is that the overall acceptance rate was 27% this year.
I saw stats that had NEU ED acceptance at 31% and RD at 28%. Those numbers may be a couple years old though. Anecdotal evidence is that NEU accepts only stellar ED applicants and defers lots more to RD. So probably no real ED bump for most students at NEU.
Your guess seems very plausible It’s hard to say unless we had the stats of the average admitted student ED vs RD/EA.
This year they introduced EDII and moved the EA decision date. This past year they were overenrolled - so who knows what this will all mean. Maybe even more deferrals, lower RD acceptance rates, higher EA acceptance rates…
I spent the past year researching the ED/EA/RD admit rates for the colleges which my senior son expressed interest in attending. It was never clear if ED is a real advantage for the unhooked. But some of his favorites had ED rates of 50% so it seemed a decent idea to go with ED there. But in the end he loved Northeastern. The admission numbers are not abundant for NEU nor are they easy to understand. But it looks like the common data set for the 2016-17 class shows a 26.6% ED rate which is basically the same as the RD rate. I could find nothing on the EA rate. So what did he do? He applied ED to NEU yesterday. He loves it and it seems like a great school to me. For all my figuring and research it came down to simply applying ED to the school he liked best. Will it help? Who knows? Good luck to you all. (Note-Full pay, probably no merit money)
Best of luck, @Limeshoe! I don’t know about the admit numbers, but my daughter applied EA, was deferred, and then admitted RD. She is in her second year and LOVES Northeastern. 
It can happen for ED acceptance rates to be lower than RD acceptance rates. Schools don’t want to admit a too high number of students during the ED round because then they would have only a limited number of seats to offer to potentially much higher achievers applying RD (i.e. the top-rated student who applied ED at Yale and RD elsewhere). So if a school has plenty of ED applicants and limited seats, the acceptance rate of the ED round would be lower.
@palm715 how competitive do you think she was compared to other applicants? I heard that NU defers many good applicants in EA and accept them at RD like your daughter.
That is true of every college that offers EA/ED.
@polarx135, she was middle of the road competitive, 4.0 UW with challenging classes, but 32 on ACT and few ECs other than working. The good news is, once you are in, the sky’s the limit with the opportunities. I know they have an honors program, but even without the designation, all doors open at NU if you knock hard enough.