Читать книгу Accepted!. Secrets to Gaining Admission to the World's Top Universities онлайн

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This means that if they come across a truly exceptional Harvard-quality student who they are confident is going to get into one of the most competitive universities ranked higher than them, they may actually consider putting them on a waitlist rather than accepting them because they think it is highly unlikely the student would actually end up coming. It seems bizarre: Brown would decline a Harvard-quality student. Yet, the most sophisticated universities know this as fact.

This dynamic has led to the creation of the early decision application process. Prospective applicants can choose to apply early decision to a university (and with the Ivies you can only choose one), which means applying on roughly November 1 of your application year. If you apply early decision and you are accepted, you've committed to go to that university. This is a hard guarantee. No more applications in the regular round. That's it. If they accept you, you are done.

Unsurprisingly, early decision application processes have become widespread across top universities because they enable the university to guarantee a pool of applicants who will definitely attend their school. Admitting a student from the early decision pool gives a university a close-to 100% yield rate over this pool of applicants.