Almost half of Columbia’s freshmen were ED applicants
Is early decision the move?
Of the 1,398 freshmen who enrolled in Columbia last fall, 45 percent were admitted as early decision applicants.
An early decision application is a binding commitment that the applicant will attend upon acceptance, and the process tends to admit students at a much higher rate than the rest of the applicant pool, according to the Washington Post. For Columbia’s class of 2019, the acceptance rate for those applying ED was 18.7 percent, while the rate of the total pool of applicants was 6.7 percent.
Some argue the process favors the wealthy, who can commit without needing to compare financial aid packages. In 2006, UVA ended the process completely to encourage more low-income applicants. Still, it’s common for top universities to fill anywhere from one-third to half of their incoming freshmen class from the pool of ED applicants.
Within the Ivy League, the University of Pennsylvania fills 54 percent of its class through the process. Dartmouth fills 43 percent, and Cornell and Brown fill 38 percent each. Harvard, Yale and Princeton do not have an early decision option.