<li><p>What is the deadline for EA?</p></li>
<li><p>Is the EA or RD pool more competative?</p></li>
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<li><p>The deadline for EA is November first. Last year this deadline was extended a few days because of so many applications and problems with last minute submissions. This is not to say, however, that this will be the case again.</p></li>
<li><p>At Carolina EA applicants can get deferred to regular admission if they are not granted admission early. They can also get denied early as well. What I am trying to say is that one should probably apply early and if you dont get it you can at least get deferred to regular admission and have a second chance. If you wait until regular decision time, this is not a possibility. It is hard to say which applicant pool is better. Concievably, the regular pool would be harder because the deferred early applicants are included as well as everyone else. Early decision pools tend to have more legacy students. </p></li>
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<p>An article in the atlantic a few years ago said the reported the following (the article is very interesting and lengthy-- two excerpts are here but the link is available as well:( <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200109/fallows%5B/url%5D">http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200109/fallows</a> )</p>
<p>For instance, when selecting its class of 2004, which entered college last fall, Yale admitted more than a third (37 percent) of the students who applied early and less than a sixth (16 percent) of those who applied regular. The most extreme difference among major colleges was at Columbia, where 40 percent of the earlies and 14 percent of the regulars were accepted. Amherst accepted 35 percent of the earlies and 19 percent of the regulars. Hamilton College, in upstate New York, took 70 percent of the earlies and 43 percent of the regulars. At the University of Pennsylvania 47 percent of early applicants and 26 percent of regular applicants were admitted. </p>
<p>These comparisons obviously count for something. The chance of being lost in the shuffle was presumably less among Princeton's 1,825 ED applicants last year, of whom 31 percent (559) were accepted, than among its 11,900 regulars, of whom about 11 percent got in. But these simple comparisons make the early advantage look larger than it really is. At very selective schools like Princeton students in the ED pool have better grades and higher test scores than regular applicants, so it could be called fair and logical that a higher proportion of them get in. Harvard admits more than a quarter of its nonbinding early-action applicants and only a ninth of its regular pool. </p>
<p>........................</p>
<p>The real question about the ED skew is whether the prospects for any given student differ depending on when he or she applies. Last fall Christopher Avery, of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and several colleagues produced smoking-gun evidence that they do. The authors analyzed five years' worth of admissions records from fourteen selective colleges, involving a total of 500,000 applications, and interviewed 400 college students, sixty high school seniors, and thirty-five counselors. They found that at the ED schools an early application was worth as much in the competition for admission as scoring 100 extra points on the SAT. For instance, a student with a combined SAT score of 1400 to 1490 (out of 1600) who applied early was as likely to be accepted as a regular-admission student scoring 1500 to 1600. An early student scoring 1200 to 1290 was more likely to be accepted than a regular student scoring 1300 to 1390.</p>
<p>UNC isn't an ED school. ED means its a binding acceptance, while UNC is EA, which isn't binding.</p>
<p>Go early if you are serious about applying. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Not binding.</p>