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3 years ago
Admissions Advice

UPenn Early Decision vs. Princeton Early Action
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Hi everyone! I am currently a high school junior whose dream schools are UPenn Wharton and Princeton. My current CV chances are 24% for Penn and 23% for Princeton, but am unsure if applying to Wharton will lower my chances.

So for my school on Naviance, I noticed an interesting trend. For UPenn, the acceptance rate for applicants w/ SAT scores above 1450 was 10% for Early Decision and 16% for Regular Decision. Meanwhile, for my school, the Princeton acceptance rate (of applicants with 1450+ SAT) was 50% for Early Action compared to 4% for regular decision. However, I have read somewhere that applying EA to a HYP school does not increase chances that much in comparison to ED. Which early program would be best for me to increase my chances?

Classof2027
earlyaction
earlydecision
Naviance
Princeton
UPenn
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Accepted Answer
3 years ago[edited]

Historically gaining admittance into Wharton or the Huntsman program is about 50% harder than getting in the Arts & Sciences school so I'd discount your CV chances to 12-15% if that's where you are applying. (I think it's was about 3.5-4% compared to 6% last cycle)

I agree only partially that applying EA vs ED doesn't increase your chances that much. I would say that unless you are an ALDC or have a hook (black, LatinX, first gen, low income, nonCIS) applying both EA and ED will be challenging and not give you much of an edge, especially since the applicant pool is more competitive. At EA schools, the applicant pool is MOST competitive because everyone wants to shoot their shot at Stanford, Harvard, Yale and Princeton.

I wouldn't put much weight in to Naviance unless you attend a private boarding school where 20% of the graduating class matriculates into Ivys and another 20% matriculates into Elites. The sample size for the scatter plots for normal high schools is very limited, thus not predictive but more of a reporting tool. At my old HS, zero got in to Princeton over the past 6 years, and maybe 1 student got into UPenn each year so it was useless to rely on Naviance to guess my chances.

Good luck.

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1
3 years ago

Hi, thank you for asking your question! I agree with @CameronBameron here. I wouldn't rely on Naviance too much because those numbers can be skewed by the number of qualified applicants applying to the elite schools (e.g. more qualified students applied to Princeton and therefore the admit rates are higher). That being said, I would also consider which school is the better fit for you, and how well your application lines up with that. Check out this UPenn recorded livestream and this Princeton recorded livestream to see which school is the best fit for you and is more likely to accept you into their incoming class because you are a "good-fit" candidate.

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