Should I even apply to Harvard?

prezbucky
Wed, 03 Jan 2018 06:56:37 +0000

@FreePariah, we don’t really know if it’s more competitive because we don’t have a breakdown of stats (test scores and GPA…). What we do know is that the SCEA admit rate is about five to six times as high as the RD rate, and athletes alone cannot account for that, given the number of early apps Harvard receives. Maybe there is a larger percentage of hooked applicants overall applying early – that could push the admit rate up vs. RD, if fewer (as a percentage of applicants) are applying RD. But that’s still a huge difference to overcome to be able to say that applying early does not give one an advantage.

To my knowledge, there are only two highly selective schools that do not appear to confer any advantage to early applicants – based on early vs. RD admit rates – and you named one of them, MIT. The other is Georgetown. Both schools have nearly identical EA/REA and RD rates.