Rejected Early Decision???

Applying to College
1

out of curiosity, how bad does an applicant have to be to get denied from their top choice school early decision? Meaning the admissions committee wants to remove all possibility of having to see their application come regular decision rounds. Is there super low sat cut off (>700), gpa? (>1.2)

All of my friends who applied early, and didn’t get in early, simply got deferred. So far i know of no one who has been denied on their ED app. Do colleges even deny early decision?

So let’s just start with the ivies for a common ground…

Any related stories on the following?:

Harvard
Yale
Brown
Penn
Dartmouth
Columbia
Cornell
Princeton

2

<p>I have a friend who was rejected from Yale. </p>

<p>I also heard of two people from my school being rejected from UPenn (but also two deferrals and three acceptances).</p>

<p>And I believe I know someone who was rejected from Columbia, but maybe she was just deferred…though she seems a little too bitter for that, so yeah, probably a rejection.</p>

<p>The Yale applicant and Columbia applicant I know were both strong candidates – don’t know about the Penn people.</p>

3

<p>Really? They were strong candidates?? I just can’t figure how this denial ed thing work - my friends and I have been discussing, but have come up with nothing…</p>

4

<p>There were a couple CCers with 1600s rejected EA from Yale this year.</p>

5

<p>harvard and MIT deny maybe 2-5% of their early applicatns, leaving almost all of them to be deferred into the regular rounds.</p>

<p>stanford and yale tend to deny 30-40%, and defer 40%</p>

<p>it really depends on the school, and the way they deal with their early program</p>

6

<p>I have a friend rejected ED (or EA, not sure) from Dartmouth…he is actually a really good student. I got deferred ED from Duke…</p>

7

<p>Lots of kids from my school were deferred ED…One got into Dartmouth, 3 got deferred. One got into Stanford, two got deferred. Once got into Princeton, 5 got deferred. One person got denied at Northwestern, and one got denied at Washington and Lee.</p>

<p>For the top schools, it almost seems random.</p>

<p>Anyway, I’m sure there is a “no way” point, though I’m not sure how clear it is…I suppose it depends on the school…I also know that the line may not be “super low”. The 2 kids I know that got denied ED did not have “super low” stats, in fact, they are both good students.</p>

8

<p>some schools defer almost everyone who they don’t accept ED, some reject quite a few. i’d check the school’s website</p>

9

<p>At my school 3 ppl applied to Stanford and 2 were rejected and the other was deferred. Also we had 1 deferred from both Brown and Yale.</p>

10

<p>I was flat out rejected from Dartmouth- I didn’t really expect to get in, but I was a little bit surprised to not get deferred, at least.</p>

<p>1450 (750 V, 700M)
780/770/700
3.6 UW, Top 8%
Fairly decent ECs, played piano for about 10 years.</p>

<p>So yes, it does happen.
And no, you don’t have to have a 700 SAT and a 1.2 GPA.</p>

11

<p>Yeah, depending on the school, you definitely don’t have ot be super-low. Columbia, for example, rejects approximately 50 percent of their ED pool, defers 25 and accepts 25.</p>

<p>I was Rejected from Columbia ED.
1510 ( 800v,710 m)
39uw,4.4 weighted
16/550 ( top 3 percent)</p>

12

<p>wow. Well, Columbia certainly sends more rejects than Princeton. From what I’ve heard, Princeton rarely rejects ED… even on the CC Princeton board, not a single applicant was outright denied admission. </p>

<p>Unless there’s a clear reason and they KNOW they would never accept you to their school, I would think most colleges would err on the side of caution and just defer students. On the other hand, at large schools (like Columbia) there may be great pressure during the early round to cut the work-load and not spend time re-reading ED applications in the RD round. </p>

<p>In general, it depends.</p>

13

<p>just to clarify the above post, Columbia is actually the smallest ivy league school. there are 4100 undergaraduates in columbia college.</p>

14

<p>

Actually many colleges are familiar with the strength of their pool and can identify ED applicants that are not as good as the students they intend to accept. To be blunt, even if worst comes to worst and they reject students ED they could have taken – there will be plenty of other applicants in the regular round just as good as the ED one they reject.</p>

<p>To me, the disappointing thing is that many schools aren’t as honest as Columbia and Stanford and let students keep their hopes up when the school knows the chances of admission are nil. They do this because they want to encourage future students to apply ED. </p>

<p>If they defer everybody then all the deferred students think they’re “still in the running” and that the school waits to see all its applicants before making a decision, giving them every chance to get in. If you read any of the insider books on college admissions you’ll see this isn’t true, even at the ED round many students are destined for rejection and the application is never revisited Take, for example, “Questions and Admissions: Reflections on 100,000 Admissions Decisions at Stanford” by Fetter who was the former dean of admissions. After the readers go over the app it is marked either admit, deny, or pool. The latter are the ones people have in mind where they think of the adcoms sitting around a table arguing over which 10 applicants to admit to a slot, but it is rarer than you think. </p>

<p>However perceptions matter, and schools deferring everyone are seen as somehow better and giving ED applicants a “full” chance (whatever that means) than schools that reject ED apps.</p>

15

<p>maybe denied students just don’t want to post it.</p>

16

<p>Maybe…or maybe not. Some of the kids I know that got rejected were PO’ed enough that it doesn’t bother them!</p>