A good number of colleges with EA and ED plans (remember the difference? I talk about it here) have released their admission decisions. As with last year, the early pools at many highly-selective colleges are increasingly competitive, sometimes with acceptance rates just as competitive as the regular decision pool.
For example, Georgetown University in Washington DC admitted 13% of their Early Action applicants (see article here); their acceptance rate overall has hovered around 16% for the past several years. Stanford University accepted just over 10% of their 7,297 EA applicants (see article here), leaving just about 1,000 spaces in their class for the additional 30,000 applications they anticipate during their regular decision round (do the numbers – about 3.5% of the RD applicants will be admitted). Stanford’s EA is non-binding but their yield is very high; Georgetown yields about half of their accepted EA students.
Finally, the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania released their binding Early Decision responses yesterday; 24% of the nearly 5,500 applicants received good news (see article here). Penn’s overall acceptance rate is around 12%. Penn’s Dean of Admissions, the widely-respected Eric Furda, offered students some advice regardless of the decision they received (click here for his blog post).