Early Decision and Smith College

xiggi
Mon, 10 Oct 2005 23:41:16 +0000

simply a misleading old woman’s tale that is rabidly repeated by ED applicants. It is, however, very easily contradicted by verifiable evidence. FWIW, you’d have to go extremely deep in the rankings to find schools admitting students at 61%, let alone a 81% that rivals rolling admission’s statistics. Further, at schools where the ED admission rates are virtually identical to the RD rates, ED is still considered a huge advantage because of more liberals standards. Why would it be any different at Wellesey?



The early program decision works together with other factors that reinforce class lines. The people whose parents can pay for elite private high schools, shell out additional thousands for ‘independent college counselors,’ visit campuses and meet with the ‘right people,’ and, yes, who know that applying early can give them a boost - they are clearly at an advantage" (Toor, 2001, p. B16).

Many college admissions counselors admit that students who apply early have a better chance of being accepted than students who apply through regular decision (See Loftus, 2002, p. 70). The favorable acceptance statistics across the board for early-decision admissions have influenced many high school students to feel that they have to apply early in order to maximize their chances of getting into a good college.

A 2000 study of five years of admissions records from 14 selective colleges by Christopher Avery and colleagues at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government shows that this may be true (as cited in Fallows, 2001). Avery’s study found that the competitive value of an early-decision application was equivalent to 100 SAT points more than a regular decision application (as cited in Fallows, 2001). Admission rates for early-decision applicants are higher than for regular-decision applicants. For example, in 2002, Johns Hopkins University admitted 59% of its early-decision applicants compared to 33% of its regular-decision applicants; the University of Pennsylvania admitted 38% of the early pool compared to 16% of the regular pool (Loftus, 2002, p. 70).