Applying Earlier at the T14: Does it Matter, and How Much?

Yesterday I posted regarding the binding Early Decision applications to the Top 14 law schools, to see if there seems to be any truth to the notion that applying ED to a school can give an applicant a boost in his or her chances of acceptance.  Today, we'll look at the effect (if any) that applying earlier in the cycle has on those chances.

First, a little explanation.  In organizing the data, I broke applications down by the month in which they were submitted.  The results you will find in the tables below correspond to the increase in one's chances of acceptance correspond to each earlier month the application is submitted, which is different from each month earlier.  In other words, there is an X% increase in your chances of acceptance if you apply in September rather than October, or October rather than November, etc.  This creates a little bit of a problem, because technically, a September 30th application is coded as a September app, and an October 1st application is coded as an October app.  It would probably be foolish to think that any of the % increases you see in the charts would apply to an application sent out one day earlier, as the case would be in the aforementioned example.  Still, the charts are instructive for giving a general idea of how schools treat earlier applications.  I will break the data down into four charts: the entire applicant pool, the non-splitters, the splitters, and the reverse-splitters.  The percentages in each chart correspond to the increased likelihood of admission for an applicant submitting in one earlier month.

Entire applicant pool:

As you can see, every school except Yale demonstrates at least some boost for applicants submitting earlier.  So, when Yale tells you it really doesn't matter if you apply in September or February, it appears that they mean it.  Even the lowest school on the list, NYU, provides almost a 20% increase in an applicants chances of admissions for submitting in September as opposed to October, October as opposed to November, etc.

Non-Splitters:

Not a whole lot different from the first chart, with the exception that for some reason I have decided to call UVA "Virginia" in this chart.  I was simply too lazy to go back and fix it.

Splitters:

Here things get a little interesting.  Almost all the boosts increase (at least where they still exist), and the Penn, Duke, and Harvard boosts increase substantially.  Other schools, however, completely drop off the list, indicating no statistically significant advantage to splitters applying earlier at these schools.

Reverse-Splitters:

And, as usual, reverse-splitters kind of get shafted.  With the exception of Penn, which gives an enormous boost to splitters applying earlier than their later-applying counterparts, there isn't a single reverse-splitter earlier application boost to be found.  NYU came very close to statistical significance on this one, but didn't quite make it, and rules is rules.

So, there you have it.  If you ever needed some hard evidence to tell you to get it in gear and get that application out, there it is.  This comes with some obvious caveats, though!  For one thing, don't send in a subpar application, thinking that it's more important to get it in early.  Because I can't measure things like letters of recommendation, resumes, or essays, I definitely don't recommend sending in rushed or poorly thought out examples of any of these simply in order to turn the application in earlier.  So, let me rephrase what I said before: get it in gear and get that super-polished application out.

Also, one of the most common questions I hear comes from applicants who are trying to decide whether to apply as early as possible, or re-take the LSAT.  Although there a boost to applying earlier for most students at most schools (and sometimes substantially so), any "lost" early application boost is more than compensated for by an LSAT point or two, so as long as you think you can increase by a few points, retaking is often the right answer to this question.

To ED or not to ED to the Top 14?

Application season is almost upon us, and many anxiety-ridden applicants will be considering whether or not to apply via binding Early Decision application to their dream schools.  There is conventional wisdom out there that says that applying via binding Early Decision signals to a school that you are very committed to attending that school, and therefore boosts your chances of acceptance, which makes this option very attractive for those applicants who are dead set on attending a certain school, or would very much like to attend a school but are unsure that their numbers are high enough to get in.  Another piece of conventional wisdom says that, by being accepted as an ED applicant, a school essentially has you cornered and therefore has little reason to offer you financial incentives (i.e. scholarship funds) to entice you to attend.  Because the data I have on scholarship awards is very sketchy in its current state, I can't really address this second point, but it is certainly worth noting and makes all kinds of common sense.

The first point, though, I think can be examined by using the same regression analysis I have used thus far.  I will focus only on my second model, in which I only consider applicants who were either accepted or rejected by schools (in other words, waitlisted candidates whose fates are unknown are left out of the analysis).  I will deal only with the Top 14 schools in this post, because most of them offer a binding ED application option, and because outside the T14, there isn't a whole lot of binding ED to be found.

With all that said, let's take a look at the numbers.  In the first chart, I'm positing the results considering the ENTIRE pool of applicants who were either accepted or rejected at these schools. As always, these are the results after controlling for LSAT score, undergraduate GPA, URM status, timing of the application, nontraditional status, and gender.  Our variable of interest here is simply the increases in the likelihood of acceptance for an applicant who applies ED as opposed to RD.

Notes here:

- The first number is the number of observations the regression is based on, and the second is how many times more likely ED candidates are than identical RD candidates to be accepted (in other words, Michigan ED candidates are 1.166 times more likely to be admitted than identical RD candidates, and Duke ED candidates are 4.222 times more likely to be admitted than identical RD candidates).

- Georgetown actually seems to disadvantage ED applicants, as they are 31% less likely to be admitted than identical RD applicants.  I have no idea why this might be.  We see this same results at George Washington, but because all ED accepted applicants to GW are given substantial scholarships, the result there makes perfect sense.  For Georgetown, not so much.  I'm definitely interested in what hypotheses you all might have about this.

- I have an asterisk beside Northwestern because of Northwestern's recently instituted policy of giving full rides to accepted ED applicants.  These regression are based on data going all the way back to the 2003/2004 cycle.  One would expect Northwestern's number to be similar to GW's (which isn't listed here), but actually in the first year that Northwestern implemented the program, their ED boost was enormous. 

- N/A is for schools that don't offer binding ED, and NSS means "not statistically significant" and indicates that a school had no boost associated with ED applications in my analysis.

- The University of Virginia has the biggest ED boost, which is no surprise, and confirms the conventional wisdom that is "ED UVA!"

Next, we'll look at the ED boost associated with non-splitter applicants (applicants who I don't classify as splitters nor reverse-splitters):

Notes here:

- This time around, it seems like Michigan disadvantages non-splitter EDing applicants.  Thoughts?

- Northwestern drops off the list.

Next up, the splitters:

Notes:

- The boosts are generally much bigger for splitters, where they actually exist.  

- Duke drops off the list here.

- Oh my god, Georgetown.

Finally, the reverse-splitters:

Only one story here, but it's a big one: UVA gives a massive boost to reverse-splitters who ED.  The sample size is reasonably small at 58, but given the relatively small number of variables we are controlling for, the results are valid.  

So, there you have it - the boosts associated with ED at the Top 14 across applicant categories.  In a (near) future post, I will rank schools by the boosts they give for earlier applications, which seems to be, in general, a bigger deal.