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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]For those recently thru the applications cycle - in retrospect, what do you feel is the best use of a binding early application?  With regular decision acceptances seemingly very low, and so many schools looking to secure early candidates... is it smart to be practical and apply ED to a great school within stats where likelihood of ED acceptance is good, but whose RD acceptance rate is low (and give up hope of going to top choice reach),  or to that top choice reach?  Reach meaning also within stats but a reach for everyone bc of extremely low admission rate (ED rate better). OR student. Decision personal of course but interested in hearing thoughts from you. Thanks![/quote]

Don’t base your “smart” ED strategy on the comparison of the ED and RD rates. The perceived advantage of ED is often an illusion for unhooked applicants. [/quote]

This can’t be repeated often enough. Anyone looking at ED acceptance rates, thinking that these indicate an advantage in applying early are ignoring the fact that almost all athletes are counted with the other admits. Athletes can be 35-40% of a freshman class at a SLAC, wildly skewing the early admit data for what is a small freshman admit group to begin with. Throw in some othe hooked applicants getting the concierge treatment during the early admissions process and it’s easy to see how those numbers can soar.

The bottom line is that acceptance rates at the highly selective SLACs are very misleading overall. Hooked candidates can make up 50% of a freshman class or more. So, if they publish a 10% acceptance rate, cut it in half. It’s really 5% for regular applicants. If they publish 20%, assume 10%. And so on.[/quote]

Agreed. It is important to do your research. It's very school specific. The biggest regrets are to blow your ED on a school that doesn't use ED for kids like yours AND to forego strategic use of ED based on solid research and then be left with less attractive choices after RD decisions come out. I can't stress enough how important is to use ED strategically based on good data.[/quote]

This is an interesting point but raises the question: how can one determine which schools use ED for kids who are not being recruited for sports or a not hooked applicants being given the 'concierge treatment'?  An added confounding factor is legacy.  For example, I've read that around 25% of the class at Penn is legacy and a bit over 50% of each class is ED.  If you need to apply ED to receive the benefit of that status (which I believe to be the case but could be mistaken), then Penn's ED admit rate for non-athletes/non-hooked/non-legacy is much closer to its RD rate of  5% than it is to its published ED rate of 15%.

Perhaps I've answered my own question, at least in one case.  Confounding![/quote]

Yes, you have answered your own question.  That is why the ED rates at many elite schools are not really what they seem.  It's not just Penn. It's many of the elite schools---Athletes and legacy are often in the ED pool.  So while ED is slightly higher than RD, it's not the 15% vs 5% or the 25% vs 7% (Northwestern).   ED still gives an edge, just not as much as the published numbers make it seem
[/quote]

You can actually [b]figure out the edge that RD gives your kid, or get an informed estimate[/b]. For some schools and some kids, it’s slightly higher as you say. For other schools and other kids, it’s much higher. Information is power. [/quote]

But how can you figure this out? Where would you find whether most of the ED advantage seen in the ED vs RD % is due to athletes and legacy? I don't think the Common Data Set tells that sort of thing.[/quote]

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