The University of Pennsylvania admitted 1,269 early decision applicants to the Class of 2023.  

Early decision applications totaled 6,453, resulting in an admission rate of 20 percent.

Click here for the news release.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced today that it admitted a total of 687 early action applicants to the Class of 2024.  

A total of 9,291 applications were submitted this year, resulting in an overall admission rate of 7 percent.  

Click here for the blog post.

Cornell accepted 1,576 applicants to the Class of 2024 under early decision.  

Early decision applicants totaled 6,615, resulting in an admisison rate of 23.8 percent.

Legacy students made up 22.1 percent of early admits and athletes made up 12.1 percent.   

Click here for the article.

Johns Hopkins admitted 682 applicants to the Class of 2024 under early decision.  

With early decision applications up 16 percent from last year's total of 2,068, the early decision acceptance rate for the Class of 2024 is approximately 28 percent.

Click here for the news release.

Duke admitted 887 applicants to the Class of 2024 under early decision.  

The total number of early decision applicants declined 11 percent to 4,300 this year, resulting in an early admission rate of 21 percent.

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Emory University admitted 730 Early Decision I applicants to the Class of 2024. 580 were admitted solely to Emory College, 295 solely to Oxford College and 145 to both.

A total of 1,812 applications were received for admittance to Emory College, Oxford College at Emory or both.  

Click here for the news release.

Harvard announced today that it admitted 895 applicants to the Class of 2024 under restrictive early action.  

A total of 6,424 early applications were received, resulting in an early admission rate of 13.9 percent. 

Click here for the news release.

Princeton University admitted 791 single choice early action applicants to the Class of 2024.  

Total applications and resulting admission rate were not reported.

Click here for the news release.

Brown accepted 800 applicants to the Class of 2024 under early decision.  

Early decision applications totaled 4,452 this year, up 8 percent and resulting in an early admission rate of 17.5 percent.

Click here for the news release.

The University of Virginia announced today that it admitted 749 early decision applicants to the Class of 2024.  

A total of 2,157 early decision applications were received, resulting in an overall early admission rate of 35 percent.  The acceptances are expected to represent 20 percent of the targeted class size of 3,748 studenets.  

Click here for the news article.

The University of Georgia offered 7,025 early action applicants to the Class of 2024.

16,511 applications were received, resulting in an admit rate of 43 percent.  

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If you're in the hunt for merit scholarships, be sure to stay on top of explicit deadlines a school on your list might have.

In some cases, like Boston University and the University of Richmond, it's a hard deadline that you have to meet in order for you to be considered at all.  In others, like Indiana University and many other public institutions, it's a "priority" deadline that maximizes your chances of merit aid before the money runs out.  Either way, merit aid continues to be an excellent way for good students to defray the cost of an education.  

We've compiled a sampling of schools in our coverage universe with explicit deadlines, along with some stats to help you gauge the size and breadth of the institution's merit offerings.  We've also included links to each school's scholarship page for easy access to the details.

Most of these schools automatically consider you for merit scholarships without the need for an additional application.  

College Kickstart subscribers: full listings of 2019-20 explicit merit scholarship deadlines and schools with generous merit aid are already incorporated into the product.

Click on Continue Reading below for the list.

In Part II of this series developed an early admission strategy based on your competitiveness as an applicant, your college list, and your strength of commitment to the top schools on your list.  If you're a competitive applicant with strong qualifications, we recommend that you:

• Take full advantage of Early Action for all the schools on your list

• Apply Restrictive Early Action to your top school or when the restrictions don't inhibit your ability to take advantage of early admission programs at higher ranked schools 

• Apply Early Decision I when you are strongly committed to attending your top choice school and have no concerns about affordability

• Apply Early Decision II if you have been denied admission to your top choice school, you're strongly committed to attending this ED II school as your next best option, and have no concerns about affordability

With this early admission strategy in place, let's put it to work in Part III against a couple of hypothetical applicants.   

In Part I of this series we covered the fundamentals of college early admission programs.  We learned that:

• Colleges offer early admission programs to manage yield, lock up prized applicants and improve prestige in the process

• There can be as much as a 2-4x difference in admit rates between early and regular decision applicants

• Because there is often a high proportion of an enrolled class coming through early admission, your chances of getting in via regular decision are actually worse than you might think

In short, you should always consider early admission programs as part of your college plan.  But under what conditions does it make sense and how do you apply it against your list of schools?  This is the topic for Part II.  

Simply put, early admission should always be considered as part of your college plan.

Why?  Because early action and early decision programs can be tremendously useful in helping a competitive candidate enhance admission odds.  By submitting your application early, you'll hear back earlier and in most instances improve your chances for admission.  Better yet, if you're accepted early, you'll be able to avoid the cost and effort of applying to schools of lower interest on your list.

In this three part series, we'll explore the fundamentals, when/how to take advantage of them, and where early admission is offered.  Read on for Part I.