EA is a great way to go if a school is absolutely your only choice. For folks of limited means it is often a gamble they cannot afford to make since one is unable to compare offers of assistance. The point is I’m sure there are many high stat applicants who were accepted EA and a few accepted RD, but it also seems like the school is chopping the tail off the RD applicant distribution based on some big data “likely to accept” probability. Some number of the top candidates in RD will be awarded spectacular scholarships no doubt, but it seems if you’re applying RD it would be best to sprinkle in some Bs on that report card so you “appear” that you are more likely to accept an offer of admission. Naviance scatter plots indicate that WPI has gone into “yield protection” mode and I think it is a terrible practice. Why else would the female entrepreneur with stellar credentials be accepted at MIT and Yale but wait listed at WPI?
At a minimum it would behoove WPI to simply state “we use a formula to assess the probability that you will accept our offer and it may disqualify your application regardless of your academic qualifications”.
By the way, WPI has some of the best professors on the planet. Congratulations snowfairy137, if you work hard, you’ll get a fantastic education and opportunities to do important research even as an undergrad.