The run up to the Christmas and New Year holidays is always interesting as it is when we start to get an indication as to how the college application round is shaping up. This year has been exceptionally interesting as the impacts of COVID 19 has resulted in an early admissions round like no other.
Here at Ivy Central, we are delighted that over one third of our students applying this year have already won places at the great colleges listed below. We are eagerly looking forward to seeing what wins Ivy Central students gain in the ED2 and Regular Decision rounds.
Stanford University
Yale University
Cornell University
University of Virginia
Rice University
Babson College
University of Wisconsin – Madison
University of Texas – Dallas
Texas A&M
Santa Clara University
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
Sarah Lawrence College
Case Western University
Eckerd
University of Bath
Durham University
University of Leeds
Looking beyond our own students it has been an unprecedented early round, the elite colleges have seen a record number of applications with increases as high as 57% above previous years. This increase in applications has not resulted in an increase in acceptances from the early round, Harvard, the college with a 57% increase in applications, accepted a fewer number of applicants than in the early round last year (895 in 2019/20, 747 in 2020/21). Other colleges reporting record numbers of applications include:
· Brown University – 22%
· University of Pennsylvania – 23%
· Dartmouth College – 29%
· Columbia University – 49%
· Yale University – 38%
These increases seem to have particularly affected the numbers applying to the most selective of colleges, overall, the College Board has reported a drop in the total number of admissions received by the 2nd November. The reason why top colleges have received so many applications is almost certainly down to the impact of COVID 19 which resulted in colleges moving to test optional applications where students don’t have to report an SAT or ACT score as a requirement of their application.
Below is a table showing the ED and EA results for the class of 2025 from many of the colleges our students apply to.
College Deadline. Applied. Admitted Rate
Boston College ED1 1,950 800 41%
Brown University ED 5,540 885 16%
Dartmouth College ED 2,664 566 21%
Duke University ED 5,036 840 17%
Emory University ED1 1,975 614 31%
Georgetown REA 8,700 957 11%
Georgia Tech EA1 6,132 2,330 38%
Harvard University SCEA 10,086 747 7%
Johns Hopkins ED1 4,727 520 11%
MIT EA 15,036 719 5%
Rice University ED 2,635 421 16%
University of Pennsylvania ED 7,962 1,194 15%
Yale University SCEA 7,939 837 11%
With such a large growth in the numbers of applications being received by the top colleges it is no surprise that we have seen a considerable increase in the numbers of students being deferred into the Regular Decision round. In my next article, I will explain what a deferral is and what you should do if you have been deferred from your top choice college.
