Early Decision is the New Standard

The number of students applying early to college has increased over the last few years at an even faster rate than the total number of applications submitted. Early applications rose 12% this year over last year for a large sample of colleges. Part of the reason for this increase is the broader recognition that the admit rate is generally 15% better for early applicants than for regular decision applicants. However, parents and students should not be misled that applying early automatically enhances the students' chances for admissions. There are 3 main reasons for better admit rates for early applicants:
(1) Athletics - Most coaches push to get athletes signed to commitments early in the Fall. In addition, legacy, development, and other special applicants such as Questbridge and those with exceptional musical talent are encouraged to apply early. These flagged applicants have much higher admit rates and they push the early admit rates higher than regular admit rates. Yale, for example, claims that after subtracting for recruits their admit rates for early and regular were statistically the same.
(2) Better students - Many colleges claim the early applicant pool is generally better than the regular applicant pool.
(3) Commitment - Some schools admit that they prefer students who demonstrate a strong interest in their programs by indicating them as their first choice and applying early.
In general, applying early to top 10 schools does not help while applying early to lesser known college could help given their stated preference for committed students.

A number of colleges have now announced their early admissions results for Fall 2011. The admit rates continue to show the same strong bias for early applicants. The percentage of freshmen class now filled through early decision is revealing, scary, and somewhat misleading. For certain colleges the percentage of the Class of 2015 already filled is frighteningly high – 49% for UPenn – meaning that they have already filled halve their incoming class. This also means that the yield for some selective colleges like UPenn from regular admissions is surprisingly poor since UPenn admitted about 2629 regular decision last year and only 46% of those chose to attend UPenn. I suspect this is a major reason why so many colleges employ ED to harvest students and improve their overall yield on various college ranking lists.

Going early may be become the new standard for college admissions as even some of the selective colleges like UVA reinstate early action as part of their admissions process. As early applications increase and students and colleges lock in their decisions early, this may slow the rise in total applications and restore some sanity to the escalating war to recruit college students.