The University of Wisconsin – Madison is a rising star in the elite college space. It’s a public land-grant research university that recently ranked #36 in the nation by US News & World Report. Along with this considerable prestige comes a moderate degree of selectivity: the overall acceptance rate for the Class of 2029 was 40.81%. Sure, this doesn’t exactly rival an Ivy League school, but relative to its reputation, Wisconsin is far less selective than it could probably get away with.

Early Action at the University of Wisconsin

Wisconsin offers a non-binding Early Action option for applicants who are sure the UW – Madison campus is where they are meant to spend the next four years. But these applicants need not sign themselves away to this fate, as the EA program is totally non-binding. But here’s the catch: the University of Wisconsin has not shared any acceptance rate data about its EA program publicly. Fortunately, we at Ivy Coach are prepared to make some pretty educated guesses about this missing data.

It’s highly likely that Early Action applicants to Wisconsin are admitted at a significantly higher rate than their Regular Decision counterparts. While we lack the data to confirm this, it wouldn’t be surprising if the EA acceptance rate last year was above 50%. The reason for this advantage? Early Action applicants have demonstrated their interest in the most compelling way possible. Demonstrated interest is indeed a crucial factor admissions officers weigh, whether they’ll acknowledge it or not. Who better to show their interest in Wisconsin than those who prioritize it over all other schools and apply there before anywhere else?

However, in the absence of reliable data about the Wisconsin Early Action acceptance rate, we’re limited in what we can say about EA applicants to the proud home of the Badgers. But there’s more to this story, which we’ll unpack below. 

A Look Back on the Wisconsin Early Action Class of 2029 and a Call for Acceptance Rate Transparency

For schools that maintain an Early Decision program (distinguished from Early Action in that these programs require students to enroll if admitted), the ED acceptance rate is typically available in the school’s Common Data Sets, which are federally-mandated publicly available documents that are the public’s #1 source for admissions data. Alas, for Early Action, no such data is reported to the CDS by Wisconsin. Wisconsin has also neglected to publish any press releases about the Early Action acceptance rate for any recent admission cycles.

What we do know about Wisconsin’s student body (not just its Early admits) is that the Class of 2029 yield rate was 28.16%. In other words, 28.16% of those students admitted last year actually enrolled and wound up on campus this year. Hence, this is another reason why EA applicants are given an advantage: they increase the yield rate because they are likely to enroll if admitted. While we at Ivy Coach don’t have the data to support this claim, we predict that EA applicants make up a significant proportion of the student body at Wisconsin because of their eagerness to enroll.

Ivy Coach’s Assistance Moving Forward for Deferred or Rejected Wisconsin Applicants

If you’re a student who applied in the Early Action round to Wisconsin and were deferred or rejected for admission, there’s still plenty you can do to make some lemonade out of these lemons you’ve been dealt.

Contact Ivy Coach to schedule a complimentary consultation and explore the next steps. For deferred candidates, we offer a PostMortem application review and assistance in crafting a powerful Letter of Continued Interest. For rejected candidates, we provide a PostMortem application review. And while we indeed offer assistance with Regular Decision applications, we can’t pivot to Regular Decision until both we and you understand the mistakes you made during the Early Action round. We’ll review your application for these mistakes, then our team of former elite college admissions officers will look forward to your remaining schools, equipping you with a new competitive strategy that incorporates a singular hook!