<p>My last word on this topic, since you seem determined to ignore reality:</p>
<p>Roughly, Harvard enrolls 1650 of 2050 admits, while Yale enrolls 1,300 of 1,950 admits. So Yale's cross-admit "losses" are much greater ... off a smaller base, to boot.</p>
<p>Harvard has always taken the lion's share of cross-admits, no matter what early admissions policies the respective schools followed at any particular time. </p>
<p>In fact, Yale switched to binding ED in 1996-7 for the EXPRESS REASON of limiting its cross-admit losses to Harvard and raising its yield rate!</p>
<p>
[quote]
That's why I went there for med school - not because it is the best med school (its really not), but because it is thought of as the best.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Harvard is Harvard, true, but if you compare law schools rather than med, Yale seems to be #1.</p>
<p>It's well acknowledged that while Harvard is the greatest university, it's undergrad education isn't up to what the average person thinks. H is great for grad students, not so great for undergrads.</p>
<p>While H does seem to win the cross admits with Yale, the margin is much smaller than they would have us believe (source NBER study), and built up largely in less sophisticated demographics.</p>
<p>ED hurt Yale's cross admit stat because many of the students who were set on going to Yale never applied to Harvard, while the opposite was not true with Harvard being EA. I don't know if it helped the yield either since the yield didn't change (I think it still went up a percent) after they switched back to EA. Maybe that was an effect of Yale being the hot ivy of the moment.</p>
<p>Yale's yield did drop a hair. That the yield was so high for "restricted EA" is no great tribute to the schools offering it, but rather, clear evidence that as a "reform", restricted EA was fraudulent. As before, Yale applicants were effectively prevented from concurrently applying to Harvard at the early stage - something President Levin was determined to achieve.</p>
<p>To say that "restricted EA" people are free to apply elsewhere RD is a cynical and hollow claim, since the RD admit rates at HYS are so low. If you don't apply early - as most well-advised applicants do - you are drastically reducing your chances of getting in.</p>
<p>Your claim that ED hurt Yale's cross-admit rate is not only historically incorrect, but actually the reverse of what happened - which is one of the reasons Yale was desperate to extricate itself from a failed experiment. Since it adopted binding ED in 1996-7, Yale's USNews standing dropped from #1 to a chronic #3, and its overall yield rate dropped to #4 behind HPS. Binding ED just didn't work too well for Yale.</p>
<p>
[quote]
ED hurt Yale's cross admit stat because many of the students who were set on going to Yale never applied to Harvard, while the opposite was not true with Harvard being EA.
[/quote]
Bye, he's right about this. Also, what the heck is "binding EA?" Is that another name for ED?</p>
<p>Honestly, guys, this is silly--only the most insecure take the Harvard/Yale rivalry so seriously. They're both great schools; you don't have to bash one to elevate the other.</p>
<p>*"Competition has been shown to be useful up to a certain point and no further."</p>
<p>(sigh) You are incorrect on all counts, Mensa. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>Many binding ED applicants to Yale also submitted RD applications to Harvard. If admitted to Yale, of course, they were legally compelled by Yale to withdraw their Harvard applications. (Coitus interruptus, as it were.) Might these people have preferred Harvard if Yale hadn't had a gun to their head? We'll never know, will we?</p></li>
<li><p>Statistically, very few Harvard EA admits ever bothered, in the past, to apply RD to Yale. This is still true. In a process known as "trophy hunting", those with a Harvard EA admissions letter in hand seldom see an RD admission letter to some other school as a "trophy" to be sought after.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Look at the accepted EA boards for Harvard on CC. Most are also applying elsewhere. Is there an actual stat for that second point of yours? </p>
<p>And wasn't Yale's yield rate going up for the years before they switched to EA? Is there an actual published report of ED hurting their cross admit with harvard? And how do you connect ED with falling to 3rd in USNEWS? I don't see the connection, especially since USNEWS dropped the yield factor a few years ago and it didn't change Yale's rank. </p>
<p>Levin is actually a major proponent of dropping the entire early admission program altogether - something which I wish Yale and every other school would do, kids are under too much pressure these days.</p>
<p>Intensive suveys of EA admits at Harvard have revealed that relatively few ever submit gobs of applications at the RD stage. There are good reasons for this:</p>
<p>Schools where this happens usually have received a lot of</p>
<p>(1) "free/throw-away" EA apps - such as Georgetown or Chicago - or </p>
<p>(2) what might be called "tactical" apps - (ie, apply early to a school where you have a good chance of getting in, then go after your "dream school" and top backups at the RD stage.)</p>
<p>There was a fanatic old lad,
Who barked, "Harvard's good! Yale is bad!!"
So blazing Crimson was he,
That friends feared apoplexy
For this franticly Yale-baiting grad.</p>
<p>Heavenswhat was I thinking? Byerly is ever dispassionate and non-judgmental, and his copious references always prove his points. Indeed he is Byerly the Omniscient. The Harvard board says so.</p>
<p>Hopefully... I'd hate to think that Princeton writers (and editors) don't know about spell-checkers. It could be just carelessness or lack of editing.</p>