<p>As far as applying early, I've wondered if the decision to do that may have damaged my son's chances at several schools. A couple of his interviewers knew that he had applied early action to Yale (I suppose there has to be a national registry of ED and EA they can check? He most certainly didn't tell them.) and outright asked how high their school ranked in his list of preferred colleges. Obviously, that put him on the spot and made it a little difficult to convince them how eager he was to go to their particular college. He got waitlisted at those schools.</p>