Reg decision Ivy League and similar admit rates are in the 2-7% range. Unhooked 1-4%. Pretty much the only unhooked candidates who will get in have a talent or achievent that has been recognized at the state, or more likely, national or international level. Rd is a waste of effort and money for almost everyone, even candidate with perfect scores and grades.
If you are referring to the numbers from the original post, note that the specific quote was, “Of deferred applicants, around 15% of those might have been accepted in the RD round.” Given this phrasing and that I have never seen Cornell publish admit rate for deferred students, I suspect 15% was a guess. Some other Ivies that have published numbers list a lower admit rate for deferred applicants than the overall RD pool. Cornell might have a higher admit rate for deferred applicants, and it might not. It likely varies among the different Cornell schools. Regardless of whether it is 15% or not, I’d suggest moving on and not getting attached, particularly if nothing has changed to make the application notably stronger in RD.
Princeton no longer publishes deferred rate, however, old news stories list very low rejection rates. For example, the link at https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2013/12/714-students-or-18-5-percent-offered-early-admission-in-third-year-of-u-s-early-action-program mentions only 1% of Princeton applicants were rejected during SCEA at Princeton. Instead the overwhelming majority of SCEA applicants were deferred. Historically Princeton has used deferrals differently than many other colleges. I’m sure Princeton can recognize that >1% of applicants are not going to be accepted, so one can only guess at their reasons for rejecting so few.
Some other highly selective colleges defer far fewer than Princeton. For example, when Stanford last published deferred rates, they only deferred 7% during REA and rejected the vast majority. I’d expect those 7% deferred at Stanford are truly borderline applicants, while being deferred at Princeton is a far less meaningful indicator.
I’m not sure if this is true for universities but, for LACs, they each have a distinctive vibe. Understanding that vibe and matching yourself to the right LACs will increase success when it comes to admissions. I’ll use Bowdoin as an example. They put out a video with the admissions dean saying very specifically that they look for 50% academics/curiosity and 50% heart. It’s not always easy to find these types of specific determining factors from a college but it’s worth digging deep into their websites and Google to see what you can drum up. And, in Bowdoin’s case, you’d better show you’re a strong student and you care about people. On campus, it’s clear that they know the kind of student they want. S19 has said that everyone he’s met so far is both bright and kind. It’s almost weird how much the school finds kids who they deem right for the school.
As for admissions chances and analyzing different groups, I did this with S19 and was humbled pretty quickly. For schools like Amherst and Williams who publish how many kids they take ED, how many athletes, how many Questbridge, how many first gen, how many URM, how many women/men, I was able to come close to determining S19’s RD chances and it was a joke. I don’t know why he bothered. I don’t remember the numbers exactly but, when I took out all of the groups that he’s not a part of, he had virtually no chance being unhooked in RD. These two schools had the largest percentage of URMs and first gens on his list. That was the biggest difference between these two schools and other LACs that didn’t have as large of a percentage of those groups. This kind of analysis is not as applicable to larger schools.
I also believe that the relationship between a high school and a college makes a big difference. I know private schools basically decide who gets to go to which elite school and then they set the apps up that way and let the colleges know. It never seems to be a surprise when those kids get in ED or SCEA. Coming from a large public school can be a disadvantage with inexperienced or overworked GCs who don’t have any relationships with elite schools. When I talked to our GC about reaching out on S’s behalf, she said that AOs change all of the time and the GCs at our school don’t have time to build relationships. So, there you go. No support from the GC except her letter of rec.
What schools don’t disclose is how many of their scholarship athletes are admitted during early decision. So that ED acceptance rate of 25% or 30% is actually not quite that high when you take into account the number of scholarship athletes and connected legacies that are admitted during early decision. The chances of unhooked kids getting in is most likely much lower in ED than the published ED acceptance rate.
Good point. When you back out athletes from early pools for ivy colleges it moves acceptance rate down by about 3-5%. Could be more at places with smaller pools like dartmouth.
As a general rule, 100% of the recruited athletes are in the ED number. This is the one and only question my D asked Dean Guttentag (Duke) recently and he said “about 100 athletes” of 872 but we know the number is more like 150 freshman athletes and he mentioned that “maybe they will consider moving their accepted numbers to RD” which we took as a window dressing answer for our benefit and no way they will ever not include athletes in their ED numbers.
The colleges have a vested interest in having as many students apply ED as possible. By including athletes, QB, legacies, development cases, faculty “brats”, special talent, URMs, etc into the ED pool makes their 21% ED acceptance rate seem generous. When I separately ran the numbers the acceptance rate was below 10% for the unhooked applicant which is still better than RD (5%) but a lot less favorable than one would expect by looking at the numbers without the detail.
Some supps ask, if you are deferred for ED, would you like to be carried over to the RD round? Kids can say no. Do they?
And, this biz about academics and heart: just as a thinking point, how do we suppose applicants show they “care about people?” There’s the rub.
@lookingforward I wish I could post S19’s essay but he would never let me. His essay showed his friendships and why they are important to him. Painted the picture. Many people read his CA essay and thought “what’s the point of this essay?” He wanted to show how connecting to people is important to him. He didn’t write about any accomplishments or ECs. It was straight up a story about eating lunch with his friends at our local diner. While everything else important was in another part of his app, the essay showed who he is as a person.
1 Like
That’s not the question that was discussed a few posts up. I’m sure most students who are truly borderline applicants and have a realistic shot of being accepted during RD would prefer their app to be carried over to RD if deferred. However, I’d also expect most students who have effectively 0% chance of admission during RD would be prefer to be rejected outright during SCEA, rather than being deferred. Many applicants on the forums have made comments to this effect. If Princeton only rejects ~1% of applicants during SCEA, it’s a safe bet that there are a lot of deferred Princeton applicants who fall in to the latter group.
Lots of truth in these posts but a chance things may not be totally accurate. Athletes and ED- I believe at non D1 Ivy schools, football and basketball commit later than ED, so a portion of those kids and for football it’s large aren’t in that ED number.
As for private schools connections. Gone are the days when the counselor from Andover called up Harvard admissions and brokered a few good boys in. That influence just doesn’t happen any more. What private school counselors may be able to do is to make some phone calls, present applicants in the best possible light and get an early read on chances. But they aren’t deciding which applicants get into which top schools.
Harvard is one of the few schools for which specific numbers are available due to the lawsuit sample. Some numbers from the final year of the lawsuit sample are below. Note than I am not counting the SES “disadvantaged” flag as a hook, even though disadvantaged applicants are favored. “Disadvantaged” applicants make up 17% of admits. Only domestic applicants are included.
SCEA Applicant Pool
467 / 755 = 62% of Hooked ALDC applicants admitted
524 / 4,238 = 12% of Non-ALDC applicants admitted
Overall SCEA Admit Rate = 20%
RD Applicant Pool
100 / 623 = 16% of Hooked ALDC applicants admitted
690 / 24,134 = 2.9% of Non-ALDC applicants admitted
4.4% of Non-ALDC, URM admitted
2.7% of Non-ALDC, Non-URM admitted
Overall RD Admit Rate = 3.2%
Overall SCEA+RD Admit Rate = 6.0%
The regression analysis found that applying SCEA was associated with a significant admissions advantage for both hooked and unhooked applicants, but that advantaged was much weaker than the advantage associated with traditional hooks, like athlete or legacy.
Many other selective private colleges will be very different, particularly the NESCAC LACs mentioned above, where 30-40% of the class are varsity athletes; but being DIII, the athletic admissions advantage is often far weaker than at DI colleges (or mostly DI Ivies).
@wisteria100 I know a family whose kids are at a NYC private day school. Their kids were pretty much told which Ivy they are "being recommended for"and which Ivies they were steered away from because other kids in the class were applying to those. I don’t know exactly how that works. Maybe there’s no phone call. Maybe the colleges just know that the kids who apply from this high school are the ones the GCs think are the best fit? No idea. I know nothing of the sort happens at our school.
I have another friend whose kids are at a private high school in Chicago. Her D really liked a particular college but the GCs told the student that they just don’t “have a relationship” with that college so it was unlikely she would get in. Again, I don’t know any more than that but some GC/college relationship is going on and can affect acceptances.
On the whole, applicants from name boarding schools are at a disadvantage. Same for wealthy suburban high schools. Flip side of the drive for diversity. Unhooked applicant from andover or exeter would have much better chance for ivy from say, rural public high school.
For whatever it’s worth, here are the acceptance rates from our public school:
Cornell - 15%
Dartmouth - 10%
Brown - 8%
Penn - 8%
Harvard - 7%
Yale - 6%
Princeton - 4%
Columbia - 2%
Presumably, the admission people thought that such an applicant was barely on the wrong side of the borderline each time, so they “kicked the can down the road” each time.
Based on the above…
Getting deferred at Princeton would be a negative indicator, since the applicant is not admitted, but can be borderline or clear reject (with nearly all deferred applicants being in the latter category). Getting deferred at Stanford would be a somewhat more positive indicator, meaning that the applicant is borderline and not a clear reject like the vast majority of applicants.
The elite prep school kid has numerous advantages over the average rural public school kid, such as more and higher quality courses and a dedicated knowledgeable well-connected college counseling staff (versus being in a school that may not offer any physics, any calculus, any foreign language above level 2, etc, and overworked counselors trying to save kids from opioids and unintended pregnancy and not knowledgeable about colleges beyond the nearby state schools).
2 Likes
@minimickey I don’t live in a town where kids go to boarding school but I have a really hard time believing that it’s not an advantage for admission to top schools. S at Bowdoin feels like “everyone” is from a private school if not a boarding school even though I know that’s not true.
1 Like
The many advantages that prep and wealthy suburban high schools confer are why colleges demand higher stats from their students.