In their book, the authors survey college guidebooks, guidance counselors and anecdotes picked up within social networks, and find that such sources are often contradictory and generally unhelpful.

The Early Admissions Game attempts to fill an informational void, detailing the true state of early admissions policy and then dispensing advice to potential applicants.

Avery and Zeckhauser explain their numerical evidence using principles of game theory. They go on to make recommendations as to how students can understand and succeed in the game.

“We did want to raise the level of sophistication and particularly to make it clear to all the participants that colleges are adopting this policy of favoring early applicants,” Avery says.

Thus, the book includes an advice chapter which consists of ten guidelines for early applicants to assess their chances. The books also includes a “technical appendix” which uses the data gathered for the book to create an “admissions calculator.”

“We wanted the book to be rigorous, yet we wanted it to be accessible to a broad audience,” Zeckhauser says.

That audience includes college admissions professionals. In the final chapter, the authors assess the likelihood of various changes in the early admissions system.

“I think there is a good chance for moderate change,” says Zeckhauser, who predicts, for example, that more colleges will mimic Yale and Stanford’s recent switch to E.A.

Another moderate change discussed in the book involves U.S. News and World Report’s influential college rankings, which favor colleges with early admissions programs by giving significant weight to yield and selectivity.

An early admissions program contributes to an increased volume of applicants to the college, thus increasing the college’s selectivity (the percentage of applicants who are accepted). Early decision ensures that candidates accepted to a college go on to matriculate, thus increasing the college’s yield (the percentage of accepted applicants who then attend).

Thus, some observers have suggested that U.S. News could mitigate the early admissions frenzy by reducing the importance of these two measures or by omitting them entirely.

More radically, others, such as Richard R. Beeman, dean of the college of arts and sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, have urged U.S. News to drop the ranking system altogether.

But Avery says this is unlikely.

“It is so popular and so influential that, at least in the short term, you’d think that everyone has to make their decisions with the rankings system in mind,” he says, adding that U.S. News has little financial incentive to make any kind of change, given the popularity of its college issue.

“There is little chance for wholesale change,” Zeckhauser says.