Am I being realistic?

sgopal2
Sat, 25 Jul 2020 19:44:03 +0000

@ArtsyKidDad

Not sure I would blindly trust what admissions officers say during info sessions. After all, their job is to put their institution in the best possible light and encourage as many apps as possible. Colleges with EA/ED programs definitely give a boost to those who apply early. While many hooked applicants apply during the early rounds, it also benefits non-hooked kids. The extent of this benefit varies from school to school.

How do I know this? I’m a Duke alum interview and I heard this directly from Dean Christoph Guttentag at a lecture that he gave in 2016. ED rates were higher for both legacy and non-legacy admits: 35% and 23% respectively. RD admit rates were 16% and 10% respectively.

You want more hard data? Look at the recent Harvard lawsuit. Google the Arcidiacono report. In particular look for Table B.7.2. Prof Arcidiacono displays the order logit values in this table. To convert to odds take the natural log of the logit for each model. The odds of admission for various factors are listed. One of them is an early application. The odds of admission for an early application was between 3.6 - 5.0 x higher as compared to a RD application. The way logistic regression works is that all of the factors listed on this table are considered independently of each other. So having multiple factors (legacy + URM + early) increases the odds even more.