Is applying ED/EA extremely competitive for selective schools?

vonlost
Mon, 25 Nov 2013 22:29:12 +0000

From an academic study:

Applying early is associated with a substantial increase in acceptance probability conditional on application characteristics. The estimated effect is similar across specifications and larger for early decision than early action. An early action application is associated with a 17 to 20 percentage point increase in admission probability, and an early decision application with a 31 to 37 percentage point increase. These numbers are calculated for an applicant with the average characteristics across applications to these 30 colleges. In every specification, the early action coefficient and the early decision coefficient are highly significant; the minimum t-statistic across all specifications is 5.11 for early action and 9.90 for early decision.