ED Penn (CAS) / Dartmouth - Difficulty?

Classof2018app
Fri, 18 Apr 2014 01:29:30 +0000

Applying early gives you an advantage. It’s obvious that schools such as Harvard and Upenn accept a lot of their students with SCEA and ED so that they fill up more of their class, while lowering their regular decision admit rate to basically infinitesimal numbers (Harvard was 3.1 percent this year). However, like @absentions (btw congrats on Dartmouth, terrific school), I don’t think that it is going to basically guarantee admission, since the standards don’t seem to be that different for each pool. I would say that the early applicants benefit from something that most people don’t realize: that the admission officers are fresh. At the beginning, their mindset is much more positive, meaning that each applicant gets much more attention, thus making it more likely to get a “yes” in December.
At this point, I would say you need to visit both colleges and see which one is the correct fit for you. The numbers are basically the same (there is no clear statistical advantage for either option). Since ED is BINDING, you have to realize that the school you are choosing in the early round is the school that you would be enrolling in. Don’t look at it as a pure number game from this point on.