. In fact, in almost all schools, ED applicants get boost. There was even a book about the admission games and the author showed, after pretty extensive data analysis, that ED application almost equals extra 100 points in SAT or equivalent in GPA.
We have gone through the admission process 2x, 1 is in the AFROTC, the other is not in ROTC at all, so please take that into consideration within this reply. I am unsure if you are saying just ROTC applicants for ED or all ED applicants.
Both of our children did ED. Our eldest's ED was also a slight reach academically from a gpa standpoint, but his SAT/ACT were both way over the 75% marker, closer to the top 5%. We felt that having the AFROTC scholarship would also help him in getting a spot. It didn't. He was deferred to RD.
This was Notre Dame, in the end he decided to go to another college because of their Scholars program.
Our DD applied ED for VTech, her gpa was on the top (graduated Magna Cum Laude) with an AICE citatation. Her SAT was in the top 75%. She also was deferred, a long with every other student at her hs. She is now happily at VT.
Admissions these days are not just about the academic records, a lot has o do with diversity and the intended major too. Additionally, from an admissions point, it is more comfortable to take someone like my DD than someone like our DS. The reason this occurs is because they question why the disparagy between a higher SAT and a lower gpa....i.e. top 80% nationally on the SAT, but in the hs they are ranked at the top 30% of the school, leaving them to question they have the brains, but do they have the strive? Are they academically lazy? They know that as a freshman there will be plenty of diversions at the school, more than they had in hs. Their goal is to have the student graduate.
The student with the lower SAT, but the higher gpa, qualms their fears because the student shows that they have that ability to understand the material, but maybe they are not a good test taker.
Schools also do place a lot now on EC's. They do this because they want to see that the student has experience in time management. The job/position description does not mean as much as the amount of time that is spent. A student who works 20 hrs a week, and is on NHS, plus volunteers while carrying a 3.6 uwgpa with 5 AP's is the student that shows they can multi task without sacrificing their grades.
I am not saying the author's stats are incorrect, I would be curious to see when this was published. A lot has changed between 2005 and now in the college admissions process. Mainly, the economy which also impacts the % of admitted students, since many parents are saying, I know this is your dream school, but we can't afford it.
Additionally, I hope when he showed these stats, he broke it down between private and public. Once breaking down public, I hope he broke the stats down again between IS and OOS. For example, UMD has a reg. that only 25% of students may be OOS. However, UMDCP is a big draw for NY/NJ/CT students. Getting into UMDCP from one of those areas is much harder than if you were from Idaho. The reason why is UMDCP also wants diversity from a national standpoint, they don't want every OOS student to be from NJ/NY/CT.
In VA. Tech accepts 30% OOS, but their architecture program is ranked in the top 10 in the nation. I believe they only accept 100 students from OOS for this particular program, and that includes international. So, if you are applying ED for architecture, those stats won't help you at all. Not only your geographic location can matter, but the major, legacy and URM could be the real boost that you need to get in ED.
ROTC could be one of their boosts. Some colleges actually speak to the ROTC dept regarding admissions. Some don't. It would behoove you to find out if they talk. This might assist you in the ED process. AT our DS's college the det does not talk to admissions. At UNCCH they do talk. Again, you can't accept on face value that they all talk, you need to investigate further in regards to that particular college. Our DS didn't even apply to UNCCH, but he got a letter from the after the application deadline stating they would admit him, due to further investigation we learned that the AFROTC board releases the list to all AFROTC dets and that is how UNCCH found out about him. The det saw he was an IS student with a match to UNCCH, so they had UNCCH offer him admission without ever applying to UNCCH. UMDCP and ND would never do this. He also started his NYU app, but never completed it, they even sent a reminder notice to complete it, April came around and he got a BFE from them. We just figured AFROTC talks there also.
The big picture is to understand, you should not place a blanket statement that ED gives you a boost, because it is not necessarily true. There are schools that only give ED to those they know will be an automatic admit come RD with some merit to go along with it. To say almost all schools do this is giving hope when it maybe totally false.
I would suggest if you have yet to find
www.collegeconfidential.com to go there and post a chance thread under the actual college. Most of the posters on those threads are actual students are parents who attend the
school. If it is a college like VTech, ERAU, TX A&M, Notre Dame, VMI, etc where they have a large ROTC or Corp program you can also ask about it with ROTC, however, if it is a school like UPenn, I would leave it out since the dets are very smaller compared to the class size and you might not get any responses since other posters may believe that admissions is connected to the ROTC issue. It is more important to see what your real chances are for admission and then place ROTC into the mix as a follow up.
JMHO now throw it in the circular filing cabinet.
Good luck