AU accepted nearly all of its early decision applicants this year. The University received 918 early decision applications for Fall 2017 and accepted 82.6 percent of these applicants, Jeremy Lowe, Associate Director of Admissions in the Office of Enrollment said.
The number of early decision applications increased by one application this year as compared to the previous year, while the early decision acceptance rate decreased from last year by 2.4 percent, Lowe said.
In the past, early decision acceptance rates have ranged roughly from 85 to 89 percent. This is a much higher acceptance rate than the university’s overall acceptance rate, which dropped to 25.7 percent last year.
Lowe said in an email that about one-third of the next first year class is expected to come from the early decision pool. The average GPA of the admitted early decision group is 3.58 and the average SAT score is 1280. Both of these numbers are comparable to last year, and are about the same as the benchmarks for the regular decision applicants.
Students applying early decision to AU can either apply Early Decision I, which had an application deadline of November 10, or Early Decision II, which had an application deadline of January 10. The regular decision deadline is also January 10. Students who apply early decision and are accepted are then committed to attend AU.
Audrey Mackenzie, a senior at the High School of Economics and Finance in New York City, received her acceptance letter on Feb. 16 after applying Early Decision II.
“I applied early decision to Cornell, but then I visited American and did an overnight and fell in love with it,” Mackenzie said. “I realized I wanted to go to American over Cornell so I applied Early Decision II since I had missed the Early Decision I deadline.”
Mackenzie will be studying Public Relations and Strategic Communication in the School of Communication when she arrives at AU in Fall 2017. Mackenzie said the main factor that made her love AU was the people she met when she did her overnight visit.
“Right off the bat, I found another group of prospective students that I clicked with, and the hosts were amazing too,” Mackenzie said. “When I visited Cornell, I just didn’t make those same connections with the people there.”
