<p>Oh, stop rounding numbers or percentages up or down, depending on whether it suits your purposes!</p>
<p>ONE example:</p>
<p>If you take the time to compute the numbers (making sure to net out the early numbers from the total numbers to get the regular pool numbers for comparison), you will find the the URM representation in the early pool/early pool matriculation numbers are at least 50% lower.</p>
<p>And pardon me if I cynically observe that ED wouldn’t work for Chicago - and indeed, SCEA wouldn’t either - because they wouldn’t get an early pool large enough for their purposes. Remember, when Harvard switched from open EA to SCEA its early pool dropped nearly in half - from 7,600 to 3,850. And when Yale and Stanford switched from binding ED to SCEA they achieved their main purpose which was to DOUBLE the size of their early pools!</p>
<p>Even with open EA, Chicago still only gets an early pool large enough to fill 38% of the class, despite a 40% EA admit rate. If it switched to binding ED, its early pool might drop to 1,200 or so, and they’d need an admit rate of 50% or more to net the same number of matriculants. (Moreover, the smaller the pool, the less diverse it is likely to be, exacerbating the problem.)</p>
<p>A similar situation can be found, say, at Duke or Northwestern; there just are not enough potential applicants for those schools, at the moment, to achieve a critical mass from which the school can fill a meaningful fraction of the seats via binding ED, while maintaining academic standards.</p>