Anonymous
Post 01/29/2026 06:58     Subject: RD Acceptances at Ivies
Anonymous wrote:At our public school, we find the opposite. In recent history, everyone is deferred SCEA, and they only get into Princeton RD. I assume they are all unhooked, so the SCEA round just looks impossible though I know legacies who were deferred SCEA then RD either accepted/denied.


Why would you assume this?
Anonymous
Post 01/29/2026 06:45     Subject: RD Acceptances at Ivies
At our public school, we find the opposite. In recent history, everyone is deferred SCEA, and they only get into Princeton RD. I assume they are all unhooked, so the SCEA round just looks impossible though I know legacies who were deferred SCEA then RD either accepted/denied.
Anonymous
Post 01/29/2026 04:04     Subject: RD Acceptances at Ivies
It was the same at our private school last year. Pretty much any unhooked RD Ivy acceptances were ED/SCEA deferred kids. This is a top DC private.
Anonymous
Post 01/29/2026 03:23     Subject: RD Acceptances at Ivies
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:More likely due to better applicants.


+1 Most Ivies (except for Cornell which is bigger) are enrolling 2500 kids a year or less. There are like 30,000 high schools in the USA, and there are overseas applicants too. Why do you think that it would be normal that a HS has students accepted each year at Ivies, unless your school is a magnet school or a kid with a lot of rich/connected/legacy applicants?

I should have mentioned students do get in but only at ED or REA. In fact kids from RD are even more qualified than those apply at REA or ED. But they do not get in.


Respectfully, what I've learned through a couple cycles is (outside of clear hooks, which I admit does often enrich the early applicant pool), it's really hard to assert that one applicant is "more qualified" than another. There's a lot within their applications that you'd never know about and that a lot of kids are too humble/shy to share - and everyone applying to these schools has a 3.8+ and 1500+ anymore.
Anonymous
Post 01/29/2026 01:56     Subject: RD Acceptances at Ivies
Anonymous wrote:To use Harvard as an example, they accept about 2000 students per year out of roughly 48,000 applications. Until recently, they would take roughly 1000 during the SCEA round and 1000 during the RD round. However, in recent years, they have stopped sharing the breakdown between SCEA and RD acceptances. It's fair to assume that the odds of acceptance for an unhooked applicant to Harvard in Regular Decision are astronomically low.

I suspect the numbers are similar for Princeton and Yale. And Dartmouth is very tiny. Unhooked students basically have no chance at these schools in RD.

Cornell seems like the only ivy that is somewhat accessible for smart unhooked students in RD, followed by Columbia. But in reality, smart and accomplished unhooked students are generally not going to ivy schools these days.


And Harvard has its own set of feeder schools that send a lot more students than the average HS. THese are elite privates full of rich/legacy/connected parents and selective magnet schools. The average HS student has no shot.
https://www.thecrimson.com/widget/2024/11/15/top-feeders-data/
Anonymous
Post 01/29/2026 01:53     Subject: RD Acceptances at Ivies
To use Harvard as an example, they accept about 2000 students per year out of roughly 48,000 applications. Until recently, they would take roughly 1000 during the SCEA round and 1000 during the RD round. However, in recent years, they have stopped sharing the breakdown between SCEA and RD acceptances. It's fair to assume that the odds of acceptance for an unhooked applicant to Harvard in Regular Decision are astronomically low.

I suspect the numbers are similar for Princeton and Yale. And Dartmouth is very tiny. Unhooked students basically have no chance at these schools in RD.

Cornell seems like the only ivy that is somewhat accessible for smart unhooked students in RD, followed by Columbia. But in reality, smart and accomplished unhooked students are generally not going to ivy schools these days.
Anonymous
Post 01/29/2026 01:34     Subject: RD Acceptances at Ivies
That’s school dependent.
Anonymous
Post 01/29/2026 01:31     Subject: RD Acceptances at Ivies
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:More likely due to better applicants.


+1 Most Ivies (except for Cornell which is bigger) are enrolling 2500 kids a year or less. There are like 30,000 high schools in the USA, and there are overseas applicants too. Why do you think that it would be normal that a HS has students accepted each year at Ivies, unless your school is a magnet school or a kid with a lot of rich/connected/legacy applicants?

I should have mentioned students do get in but only at ED or REA. In fact kids from RD are even more qualified than those apply at REA or ED. But they do not get in.


Every Ivy can fill multiple class sizes with "qualified kids." In that case, the ED/SCEA applicant will have a higher admit rate, yes due to yield protection/demonstrated interest, but also because more recruited athletes and legacy kids will apply early.
Anonymous
Post 01/29/2026 01:16     Subject: RD Acceptances at Ivies
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Our kid’s private experiences this. All acceptances were at REA,SCEA, ED, and EA. No one got in RD. Ivy day was a sad one


I am OP : this is exactly what I saw in the scatterplot. The only acceptances were from REA, ED, EA, and those were hooked applicants or athletic recruits. Just awful.


Fcps doesn’t pay for the sortable version of naviance so we normies (aka the poors) don’t get that kind of information. We just get the basic data and can’t filter the stats according to REA, ED, EA, EDII, and RD. We just have to guess and hope for the best.
Anonymous
Post 01/29/2026 01:11     Subject: RD Acceptances at Ivies
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:More likely due to better applicants.


+1 Most Ivies (except for Cornell which is bigger) are enrolling 2500 kids a year or less. There are like 30,000 high schools in the USA, and there are overseas applicants too. Why do you think that it would be normal that a HS has students accepted each year at Ivies, unless your school is a magnet school or a kid with a lot of rich/connected/legacy applicants?

I should have mentioned students do get in but only at ED or REA. In fact kids from RD are even more qualified than those apply at REA or ED. But they do not get in.
Anonymous
Post 01/29/2026 01:09     Subject: RD Acceptances at Ivies
Anonymous wrote:Our kid’s private experiences this. All acceptances were at REA,SCEA, ED, and EA. No one got in RD. Ivy day was a sad one


I am OP : this is exactly what I saw in the scatterplot. The only acceptances were from REA, ED, EA, and those were hooked applicants or athletic recruits. Just awful.
Anonymous
Post 01/29/2026 00:55     Subject: RD Acceptances at Ivies
Anonymous wrote:More likely due to better applicants.


+1 Most Ivies (except for Cornell which is bigger) are enrolling 2500 kids a year or less. There are like 30,000 high schools in the USA, and there are overseas applicants too. Why do you think that it would be normal that a HS has students accepted each year at Ivies, unless your school is a magnet school or a kid with a lot of rich/connected/legacy applicants?
Anonymous
Post 01/29/2026 00:53     Subject: RD Acceptances at Ivies
Our kid’s private experiences this. All acceptances were at REA,SCEA, ED, and EA. No one got in RD. Ivy day was a sad one
Anonymous
Post 01/29/2026 00:52     Subject: RD Acceptances at Ivies
More likely due to better applicants.
Anonymous
Post 01/29/2026 00:41     Subject: RD Acceptances at Ivies
After looking at our high schools acceptance scatterplots, I noticed almost no one gets in at RD. At best, applicants get waitlisted to schools like Dartmouth, Brown, Columbia, UPenn. Most are just rejected to Harvard/ Yale. Does anyone else’s school experience this? Is this all due to yield protection?