<p>marlin33: You identify a group of students-“the ones who had impressive stats, but wanted to be done with the whole college search because they had made up their mind.” These are the ones that I am mostly talking about. In the top private schools, there are more of these kids than you might think. So, in an entering class where you have 1000 ED admits, it’s hard to say how many of these fall into this category. But regardless of the number (10%?, 25%?, 50%?) you are telling these kids to go look around some more. These students may be very inclined to attend UVA, but all of a sudden a version of fraternity rush breaks out. Competitor schools (eg, Emory, Vanderbilt, Georgetown, Michigan, UNC, Wake Forest, maybe even Tulane) get thrown into the mix and the student goes to look at some of these schools. UVA is a fabulous place, but these schools ain’t bad either and they will all, to varying degrees, try to seduce these kids and may even get out their checkbooks and use $ to attract these students to make the cost of attendance competitive. And if we’re talking about students from private schools where financial constraints are fewer, all of a sudden it’s a horserace. As a result, UVA will lose students that it should have had (not to mention their families as potential, ongoing financial supporters of the University). EA won’t completely solve this problem, but I believe it would reduce the leakage.</p>
<p>Princedog: With the elimination of early admissions, the predictability is reduced for all applicants. I remember attending one of those legacy seminars that UVA has run in the summer where they provide potential students with some insights into the admissions process. In one of the sessions, they give out several examples of students’ admissions info and we in the audience have to make the judgment on who gets in and who doesn’t with the knowledge that only about 35% get in. You’d be amazed at the quality of some of the applicants (mostly OOS) who did not get in. If you’re the student who has a competitive application but no way of knowing early if you’ll get in, this possibility of rejection could easily lead you to head elsewhere and use your ED/EA “chip” on another school. </p>
<p>Mojojojo: “We” refers to those of us in the UVA community who have an interest in the University and who support the University. That includes students, families, alumni, and all Virginia residents (I am currently or have been all of these). UVA is a special place and I suspect means an awful lot more to us than UCB does to the people of California. As for your comment about UCB’s ranking superiority, your history is a bit faulty. While we respect UCB greatly, it is only in the last three years that UCB has consistently ranked slightly ahead of UVA in the USNWR rankings. In the eight of the ten years prior to that, UVA was either tied with or ranked ahead of UCB in those rankings.</p>