How to get an “Unfair” Advantage into the Ivy League + MIT/Stanford

​Students and parents (and unfortunately many school counselors) are often unfamiliar with the Early Round (Early Action or Early Decision) option at many of America’s elite schools. We have crunched the data on the Early Round vs. Regular Decision admission rates, which should show you that whenever possible, you should apply to EA/ED.
 
While most Ivy League Schools offered Early Decision options, Princeton, Harvard, and Yale offer Restricted Early Action option to students. If student choose to apply to one of them, they cannot apply to any other private schools in the early stage, and public schools that offer ED options.

​If you look at the admission rates for Early Round, they are significantly higher at all 8 schools. (We have developed a ratio, which we term ER/RD, which measures how great of an advantage ER applicants have.) The ER/RD ratio ranges from 2.1 (Cornell) to 3.0 (Harvard). In simpler terms, it means you are 2.8x more likely to be admitted to Brown applying in ER than in RD.
 
Though Stanford has decided to not release their early round admission data, we can assume the situation is similar since all elite schools are still competing with each other for elite students.
 
Based on the above data, we can easily find out that, because of the timing of application, students with similar/ same background & academic performance will have diversely application outcome. Therefore, we highly recommend you to organize your timeline and work on your college application scheme at the earliest possible, including ahead preparation for related tests. This way, you can apply to your ideal colleges at the most advantageous timing and hence gain the admissions successfully.