<p>Looking over these boards and from what I’ve gathered from other parents, it seems that competitive schools defer far more ED or EA candidates than reject. When these deferred applicants are moved into the RD round, it seems that they are double counted for the admissions rate. In other words, a college with 6000 EA applications accepts 2000, defers 3000 and rejects 1000. They receive another 6000 RD applications, but that number is increased by the 3000 deferred which results in a very low RD acceptance rate. Is that correct? Please verify if you know whether or not they are double counted.</p>
<p>That’s a very interesting idea; I hadn’t thought of that. But I’d be willing to bet that that’s exactly what they do. Why not? The colleges have made it clear that this is a competitive business and it helps them to drive down acceptance rates. So why not mess around with the numbers if you can find any kind of rationale to do so. And if you’re aggressive enough you could probably drop your acceptance rate down 10% or so.</p>
<p>Maybe some college will come up with a daily rolling admission. On September 2 you could get an email telling you you’re deferred to September 3…</p>
<p>Schools have an early decision/early action acceptance rate, and an overall acceptance rate. The overall acceptance rate is total acceptances/total applications (so the ED/EA ones are blended in). </p>
<p>To determine the RD acceptance rate, you have to do some math calculations using the EA/ED applications, number of deferrals and acceptances; and overall applications.</p>
<p>I suspect deferrals are double counted in the RD round but might not be double counted in the overall acceptance rate.</p>
<p>Yes, Burb Parent, you have it right. Colleges will generally publish their ED/EA admission rate and their overall rate, but the RD rate can be much lower, especially at ED colleges.</p>
<p>A couple of polar examples, one based on Penn last year, the other on MIT (with illustrative, not precise numbers):</p>
<p>…Penn-ish…MIT-ish:</p>
<p>ED apps – …3,600…5,500 (EA)
ED accepted --… 1,200 …550
ED acceptance rate – 33%…10%
ED deferred – …1,700…3,000
RD apps – …18,300…10,000
Total RD pool – …20,000…13,000
RD accepted – …2,400…1,200
RD acceptance rate – 12%…9.2%
Overall acceptance rate – 16.5% …11.3%</p>
<p>Note that very few colleges make public exactly how many early applications get deferred.</p>
<p>Note also that the double-counting of deferrals depresses the separately calculated rates. MIT really illustrates that – in each round, 10% or less of the pool is accepted, but the actual acceptance rate is 11%.</p>
<p>Depends on the school. The school where D applied ED last year either accepts or rejects for ED. No deferral. If you are not accepted, you are not allowed to reapply Regular Decision.</p>
<p>Most schools make available the ED acceptance rate and the overall acceptance rate, without directly publishing the RD acceptance rate. As your Penn-ish example illustrates, if the ED acceptance rate is much higher than the overall acceptance rate, the consequence is that the RD acceptance rate is significantly lower than the overall acceptance rate.</p>
<p>I think most people applying RD look at the overall acceptance rate, without considering that the more relevant statistic would really be the RD acceptance rate.</p>
<p>I only know of one college that had the policy Fall Girl describes (Northwestern), and it abandoned it last year (although it maybe didn’t publicize that until this fall). But it’s true that Northwestern may still be deferring far fewer applicants than other colleges do.</p>
<p>It’s important to remember that at most ED colleges ED is also used for recruited athletes, and that can significantly inflate the ED acceptance rate. For instance, Amherst accepts about 140 students ED from a pool of about 400 applicants, for an apparent ED acceptance rate of about 30%, and then another 1,000 or so applicants from 7,500 or so RD applications plus deferrals for an RD acceptance rate of 13% and an overall rate of about 14.5%. But really the ED pool is two pools. One has maybe 100 recruited athletes (I’m just making that number up; it’s not precise) applying for 90 recruited-athlete spots. The other has 320 students who are not recruited athletes applying for the other 50 available slots. If you are a recruited athlete, your acceptance rate is 90%. If you are a non-recruit, the ED acceptance rate is 15.5%, which is a heck of a lot closer to the RD acceptance rate than is otherwise apparent.</p>
<p>George Washington U either accepts or rejects the ED applicants. No deferrals.</p>
<p>And Georgetown either accepts or defers EA applicants no rejections. </p>
<p>As I recall you can calculate exact numbers from the info MIT supplies, but most schools don’t give you enough info.</p>
<p>The school I was referring to is NYU.</p>
<p>Fall Girl, it seems we both had Ds at the same school. It makes sense for NYU, at least, to accept or reject ED applicants. After all, there is an obvious and acknowledged bias to candidates with lower stats that pledge to the school in the ED round. They accept borderline candidates that they may know they would reject in RD. So anyone who doesn’t make this cut off, has no chance in RD. I really think it is the reasonable thing to do and it helps kids focus on other apps and gauge their possibilities at those schools.</p>