<p>We all know why an applicant applies early, to receive earlier notification and a higher chance of being admitted.</p>
<p>But how does a college benefit from implementing ED?
I know that they want to protect their yield - so why would they still reject many of their ED applicants?
What are the reasons for this? Why do they accept many RD students?</p>
<p>They know for sure that one student that they offer admission will arrive, happily and almost always pay the price of admission, whatever it is.</p>
<p>For Rolling decision/regular decision, the odds of a student enrolling can be anywhere between 1 in 4 or 1 in 5. </p>
<p>It costs to market to prospective students.</p>
<p>because other schools do ED. </p>
<p>Department stores don’t want to do sales every 2 weeks, but once one does, they all have to.</p>
<p>I think what you are asking is that if ED saves colleges money and helps to improve their yield - why not take even more students from the ED pool? Some colleges do - some of the smaller LACs in PA that I am familiar with - Gettysburg, Muhlenberg, etc., take roughly half of their incoming freshman class from the ED pool. But colleges know that many of the best candidates will not be applying ED - they will be in the RD pool either for financial reasons or because they want to apply to an assortment of colleges and see where they are admitted. So, colleges want to save spots for RD candidates as well. I’m sure it is a tricky balancing act.</p>
<p>Colleges do want to see the possible class ahead of them - and they won’t be able to see that only with ED students.</p>
<p>They may be the kids most desirous of coming to the school, but it may not be the same feeling for the adcoms.</p>
<p>Just an aside, at some colleges the percentage of students admitted from the ED applicants is the same (or nearly so) as the percentage admitted RD.</p>
<p>ED students also tend to be full pay; thus, a college can better plan its finaid budget.</p>
<p>Schools want to lock in top students, money from full list payers, and it helps with yield management at RD time.</p>
<p>Agree, colleges want to lock in the students that want to attend and are highly qualified. That a goodly chunk are probably able to afford the college is a bonus,</p>
<p>I think I can safely say that at Swarthmore, and I assume at other similar schools, many of the very best applicants are in the Early Decision pool. I’ve followed it pretty closely here on College Confidential for several cycles and there’s no question that the ED applicants would be students I would want if I were in admissions.</p>
<p>By best applicants, I don’t mean statistically. One of the ironies at the most selective colleges, especially one known for particularly rigourous academics, is that virtually all of the applicant pool has the “stats”. Academic transcript and test scores are important, to be sure, but they just don’t help much in differentiating applicants in these pools. Very few B students apply to Swarthmore.</p>
<p>So how do they pick? Well, they pick the applications that stand out and make an impression in some way. And since it’s hard to stand out with “stats” in that pool, it’s usually intangibles like interesting ECs and/or an application that screams out, “I’m a Swattie. I know the school and here’s how I would not only fit, but add something to the community”. I’ve read the Admissions Dean, on at least five occasions, reference the importance of the Why Swarthmore? essay.</p>
<p>The ED applicants have usually taken a real interest in the school and come to understand the nature of the community and some of the things that make it unique, as opposed to other top LACs that are unique in some other way. The ED applicants tend to use their knowledge of the school to communicate enthusiasm in every corner of the application and to present experiences and interests that are specific fit for the things that Swarthmore values. Who wouldn’t accept students from this pool at higher rates than the overall pool? They are exactly the applicants a school wants.</p>
<p>A huge reason for ED is to be able to commit to athletes.</p>
<p>It also helps spread out the admissions office’s workload by getting all those ED files read and acted upon before the RD apps come in.</p>
<p>And I agree with interesteddad’s explanation of how a college can tell that a given ED applicant is a great catch. Unless the student is doing the long-shot ED app to a highly reachy school, they’re not just casting a wide net to see what comes up.</p>
<p>“It also helps spread out the admissions office’s workload by getting all those ED files read and acted upon before the RD apps come in.”</p>
<p>Well, maybe a little. At D1’s small LAC 6% of 3,161 apps were ED; at D2’s huge U 8% of 37,245 were ED (as reported by the Common Data Set).</p>
<p>Right, but what % of the accepted class (or enrolled class) was ED? </p>
<p>If I ran a college, I’d totally favor ED applicants. I don’t see why a college wouldn’t want to fill as much of their class as possible with ED’ers, as long as the stats are sufficiently strong. Heck, if I ran a college, I’d want as many full-payers as I could stand.</p>
<p>One of the factors in the us world and news report ranking of colleges is the percentage of applicants accepted (they also look at the percentage of accepted who matriculate).</p>
<p>Early Decision, particularly binding early decision, allow colleges to lower the percentage of applicants accepted which improves the schools ranking in the polls. Improve ranking leads to better candidates, larger number of applicants, improved statistics of those accepted, and decreasing percentage of those accepted (by increasing denominator)</p>
<p>So in most cases it is to the schools advantage to have early decision.</p>
<p>^^ At D1’s small LAC 25% of matriculations were ED; at D2’s huge U it was 22%.</p>
<p>After many years of experience, adcoms know the profiles of their RD applicants, so they know which of their ED applicants to admit to maximize student quality and income, in the right balance.</p>