Applicants Continue to Flock to Early Admission Programs Each December just before the holiday break, The Choice seeks to take the measure of the popularity of early admission programs at dozens of colleges and universities. We do so first and foremost to give some context to applicants who have sought admission through such routes -- and, in particular, to provide a bit of solace to those who may have shed a few tears over a deferral or rejection. In other words, to let you (and your parents) know that you are not alone. One obvious theme that emerges from our annual early admission chart - which includes data reported to us by nearly four dozen colleges and universities - is that many binding early decision and nonbinding early action programs continue to record double-digit increases in applicants when compared with the previous year. That is certainly the case for the binding early decision programs at Boston University (a 41 percent increase in applicants), Bates College (30 percent), Cornell (16.5 percent) and Vanderbilt (21 percent), as well as the nonbinding programs at Case Western Reserve (34 percent), the University of Chicago (19.5 percent) and the California Institute of Technology (17 percent). The reasons one institution's early applications are up while another's are down (see Dartmouth this year) are never entirely clear -- even to the institutions themselves. Moreover, as at a publicly traded company, a record increase one year, or over a series of years, is bound to yield to a loss at some point, especially as colleges' marketing and travel budgets ebb and flow. So we caution readers not to read too much into whatever trends they may divine, especially at individual institutions. We also note that the information we present above is limited -- not least by the fact that more than half the colleges and universities to whom we reached out did not respond to our queries. That said, for those who applied to these institutions this fall -- and to others who may yet do so by the Jan. 1 deadline at many colleges and universities -- we hope that these statistics, including the percentage of seats now filled in the freshman class at schools with binding programs, are, at the least, another piece of this very complex puzzle. We will continue to update this chart, within this post, as we receive more data, so please be sure to check back. Colleges and universities are welcome to submit figures for consideration to us via the e-mail address thechoicenyt@gmail.com. Meanwhile, if you have a comment about early admission this year, please let us know by using the box below.