<p>Hi,</p>
<p>Basically, I have no idea where I want to go - my parents don't want to spend money on college trips untill I get accepted into schools. After that, they'll let me go look.</p>
<p>Is it stupid to only apply regular decision to these top schools like Cornell, Georgetown, CMU, and Northwestern? (I have a huge list - almost 15 colleges to apply to)</p>
<p>I've heard that most of these schools have a majority of their student spots filled by regular admission, and they don't take many, if any at all, from the regular pile. (In other words, they took all Early kids)</p>
<p>Can anyone verify/refute that? Any personal experiences?
Thanks so much!</p>
<p>I’m a senior in high school, and a few months ago I was thinking the same thing. Am I good enough to wait for regular decision, or is my only hope of getting into an Ivy applying ED? In the end, I wasn’t willing to settle for a school I wasn’t passionate about just so I would end up at a top 10 school. I wanted to go for Princeton, and I ended up getting in. Like you, my parents wouldn’t let me visit any schools until I got in, either. But I still wanted to try for the best.</p>
<p>That said, Princeton doesn’t have ED. So here’s my advice - if your top choice schools have ED, then go for it. But if not, and you’ve been working hard throughout high school and are confident in your abilities to get in regular decision, then wait. I highly doubt schools fill all their spots in early decision, that wouldn’t be too fair to the RD applicants. Don’t settle for a school you’re not passionate about. Personally, I wanted to have options. I didn’t want to be tied down to one school so early on. Unless you know 100% you want Cornell or Georgetown etc (which is hard to do w/o visiting, trust me I know), then just apply RD. good luck!</p>
<p>The whole “only Early Decision kids get accepted” is a misconception. It isn’t that Early Decision gives you some huge boost; it’s that the strongest applicants tend to go Early Decision because they’re so in love with this one school and have been working since they were gametes to get in, or they just happen to be extremely academically qualified in the first place and have decided on this school for whatever reason. Being Early Decision doesn’t make you a better applicant, but better applicants often become Early Decision.</p>
<p>Certainly, if you are unqualified, you won’t get in no matter when you apply. And if the college really wants you, they’ll take you if you apply Early Decision, Early Action, Regular Decision, Single CHoice Early Action, or whatever the Hell they want to do with you.</p>
<p>And no, they don’t take all or most of their applicants from Early Decision. </p>
<p>You should never apply Early Decision unless you are convinced that this ONE SCHOOL is the school for you. See, if you get accepted Early Decision, you can’t leave any outstanding applications anywhere else. </p>
<p>Hope that lifts your spirits!</p>
<p>I don’t think ED is necessarily just for those who are in love with one single school, but you should be attracted to it and see yourself succeeding there. If none of your schools fit those criteria, I’d recommend you apply RD (with a healthy range of selectivity in your school list, or course). Otherwise, ED could be a great option, both in terms of increased admissions chances and in decreasing your stress (assuming you get in).</p>
<p>It’s worth mentioning that no school (that I’m aware of) accepts 100%, or near that, of its incoming class early. Nonetheless, early candidates have higher acceptance rates and, at some schools, fill 30-40% of the incoming class.</p>
<p>It’s not “stupid” at all to wait until RD, especially if you really don’t know where you want to go. If you had one school that you loved above all others, then it would make sense to apply ED. If that school also gave a significant advantage to ED, it would make sense, especially if you want to play the legacy card. You can take a look at the Common Data Set reports for schools you’re interested in to see what percentage of their incoming class was ED if you want to torture yourself some more 
but why bother? Without a clear preference at this point, ED should be ruled out. Alternatively, look at the CDS to see that yes, the majority of admits to these schools are RD.</p>
<p>The one exception is Georgetown, which has (nonbinding) Early Action admission. There’s no reason for you not to apply early there, unless you are considering any SCEA schools.</p>
<p>I’d also be very concerned about applying ED without having visited the campus at least once. Something that looks great on your computer screen might not feel quite so great when you’re there in person. </p>
<p>Two cents of advice for you and your parents: if it’s at all financially possible, visit your safety school(s), even before you apply. A safety school that you hate is not a safety. :)</p>
<p>If visiting is a financial problem, you may not want to apply ED. If one is accepted ED, one must go, no matter the financial aid package with which one is presented. Better to wait for RD in that case.</p>
<p>ED is, as acknowledged above, a more competitive pool, but it does also receive a slight boost. However, it’s barely significant. Getting the money one needs or having the option to choose between colleges when one is not sure are much more important.
Majority of admits everywhere are RD. The Common Data Sets that SlitheyTove mentioned, where you can check for yourself that most admitted students come from the RD round, can be found by googling Common Data Set with the name of the the college.</p>
<p>And, as a Georgetown applicant this year, I can tell you, again, that it does not have an ED program, only EA, which is nonbinding.</p>
<p>It seems like if you have “no idea of where you want to go” than the concept of ED doesn’t apply, regardless of how it impacts your chances. Also having a huge list of possible colleges (15+) makes it difficult for some parents to agree to have you take time off to visit. I would certainly feel the way.</p>
<p>Think it through and narrow your list down. You must have interests that would allow you to do that. And if you can narrow the list down, and you end up with one or two colleges on top, then revisit the question of a campus visit with your parents.</p>
<p>There is strong evidence that for many selective colleges, genuine interest and early application (through ED) gives you a distinct advantage over RD.</p>
<p>It depends on the shool. ED does help at many schools and more and more schools are taking bigger numbers of ED kids in this economy to shore up yield. If the financial aid is not a factor, ED can be a very good strategy to up your chances at many schools including some on your list.</p>
<p>My parents have the same attitude towards visiting colleges. For this (and also because of the money factor) I’m not planning on applying ED anywhere. ED doesn’t give you that much of an edge, and it’s going to end up hurting you if you are contractually bound to attend a school you realize you don’t like that much after all.</p>
<p>“If one is accepted ED, one must go, no matter the financial aid package with which one is presented.”</p>
<p>Totally false, at least for Common Application schools:
<a href=“https://www.commonapp.org/CommonApp/docs/downloadforms/ED_Agreement.pdf[/url]”>https://www.commonapp.org/CommonApp/docs/downloadforms/ED_Agreement.pdf</a></p>
<p>^^ However, you have to make the decision about whether the FA package makes it possible to attend without being able to compare the ED FA package to other schools.</p>
<p>In other words, you can’t sit on an ED admission until April, which is when likely to find out how much the RD schools will give you in FA.</p>
<p>^ Good point; that’s why ED should be used only at the one dream school you want to attend above all others, when you’re not interested in comparing FA packages.</p>