<p>Not mentioned is the real reason schools resort to early programs - their ability to goose the yield rate by reducing the size of overlap pools with their competitors. </p>
<p>This year, Stanford’s SCEA yield approached 90%, while its RD yield was about 55% - resulting in an overall 69% yield rate.</p>
<p>Similarly, at Yale, the SCEA yield approached 90%, while the RD yield was about 54.5%. By filling a larger fraction of the class from the early pool, however, Yale was able to achieve an overall yield rate of about 70% - a bit higher than Stanford’s. </p>
<p>(Yale also, reportedly, admitted 13% of the SCEA deferreds - a far higher rate than that for “ordinary” RD applicants - which probably had a beneficial effect on the RD yield rate.)</p>
<p>Finally, the author of the article fails to point out that Stanford - which offers more so-called “athletic scholarships” than any other school in America - doesn’t need to shoehorn its athletic recruits into the early pool, as the Ivies do: it already has them tied up via “letters of intent” which, in most cases, have been sent months earlier. </p>
<p>Particularly when an adjustment is made for the fact that the 5% of the class getting athletic scholarships need not be in its early pool, it is clear that the admit rate for applicants with comparable SAT scores remains at least twice as high for SCEA admits as it does for RD admits. This stuff about the edge being due to early applicants being “stronger” is so much bull - as “The Early Decision Game” graphically demonstrated.</p>