I can clearly see that applying for Early Decision increases the chances of admission. However, other than getting to know if you get in earlier, what are the benefits of Early Action? Does it really increase your chances or is it better to take more time to perfect your application?
At many schools the best merit aid is given out during EA. It is great to have as many applications done before winter break as possible. It is also nice to apply to a few safety schools EA and have some early acceptances. I think that students who are still trying to improve test scores, or show an increasing GPA trend may benefit from skipping the EA round but for most students it is nice to finish some of your applications early.
For DS, having a couple of acceptances, with merit aid, from schools he was happy to attend took a lot of stress out of the wait. I would recommend it for that.
The benefit of EA is that it can significantly reduce the number of colleges that you have to apply to because you get admitted before the RD applications are due. Both of my D’s applied to only 5 colleges, D1 used EA to narrow her list from 10 to 5 and only applied to two schools RD because she thought that they might be first choices even though the two schools she was admitted two EA were her top two choices going in. D2 successfully used ED though she had two Rolling apps and two trivial EA applications with no extra essay.
Both got into the schools they wanted, and both had rejections that allowed them full “bragging” rights in the fun self-deprecating Spring “Wall of Shame” festivities.
In our case, the EA decision dates were after the RD deadline so we missed that benefit, but if you can time it right, as @ClassicRockerDad notes, you can save yourself a lot of application trouble!