Early Action vs. Regular Admission

Mwfan1921
Thu, 16 May 2019 14:55:54 +0000

@rockysoil said:

For selective private schools, EA/ED almost always provides a boost in acceptance chances, sometimes a really large one (at schools like Middlebury)

A bump yes, but not nearly as large as on first blush. Take your Middlebury example…Middlebury accepted 372 of 926 (40%) students in EDI/II. EDI breakdown is 297/654, EDII 75/272. In that 372 accepted number there are 30 Posse scholars, and around 75 recruited athletes (and all the Posses and most of the athletes are in the EDI number of 297). There are also an undetermined number of URMs, legacies, developmental admits and prof kids in the ED rounds that have higher acceptance odds than an unhooked candidate. Subtracting 75 athletes, Posses and an estimated 20% for all other hooked candidates gives an EDI/II acceptance rate of around 214/926 or 23%. Higher than the RD acceptance rate of 13%, but much tighter than looking at the 40% ED overall acceptance rate.

These various buckets exist at every school with ED, so one has to do the research to see what they are dealing with. Conventional wisdom is that a candidate has to be a relatively strong, certainly above the 50% levels in GPA/Test scores, to make ED worthwhile (along with NPC results showing school is likely to be affordable)