The advantage of ED for the applicant to any competitive university is that it takes out of the applicant pool a large number of other uber-competitive students. So, all of your super-competitive VA and out of state students who think they have a shot at getting into the Harvard, Yale, Princeton-type schools won’t want to bound by any ED acceptance to UVA. Therefore, the remaining competitive students who want UVA as their first choice will apply ED and they will be in a somewhat less competitive pool. And, their odds of acceptance should increase even more if UVA takes a large percentage of the class ED-which they probably will because their yield will be greater=better US News ranking.