Early Applicants Admitted at Higher Rates at Top Colleges
News related to:Oriel Admissions · 2 min read
Oriel Admissions, a college admissions consulting firm, has released data showing that early applicants are being admitted at significantly higher rates at top colleges compared to regular decision applicants. According to the firm's analysis of 21 selective colleges, early applicants are being admitted at 3.5 times the regular decision rate.
For the Class of 2030, early round results from December 2025 to February 2026 show that Duke admitted 13.8% of Early Decision applicants, with 116 of those admits coming through the QuestBridge match. The university's Regular Decision rate has run near 3.7%, and the early admits make up roughly half of the incoming class.
Brown admitted 890 of 5,406 Early Decision applicants, or 16.5%, against a Regular Decision rate near 4.0%. Yale admitted 779 of 7,140 Single Choice Early Action applicants, or 10.9%, with a Regular Decision rate near 3.6%. Vanderbilt admitted 11.9% of applicants across Early Decision I and II, against a Regular Decision rate of 3.3%. About half of the class enters through the early rounds.
Emory, which runs an Early Decision II round, admitted 29.0% of its 3,593 Early Decision I applicants, with a Regular Decision rate of 8.6% from its Common Data Set. MIT, with non-binding Early Action, admitted 5.5% of its 11,883 early applicants, against a Regular Decision rate near 3.5%.
Among the eight Ivy League colleges, the multiplier ranges from 2.8x at Cornell to 5.7x at Dartmouth, which admitted 21.6% of its Early Decision applicants. MIT's multiplier is below 2x, indicating less of an edge for early applicants.
Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and the University of Chicago did not provide early round data, while Duke's December announcement omitted the application count and rate, which were later supplied by the university.
Oriel Admissions notes that the raw multiplier overstates the causal edge, as early pools tend to include recruited athletes, legacy applicants, and students ready to commit in November. Vanderbilt admissions leadership has stated that admitted early and regular students look identical on test scores, class rank, and the number of advanced courses, with the difference being the size of the pool.
The full table of early decision acceptance rates and disclosure across 50 universities can be found on Oriel Admissions' website.