<p>Does Early action or early decision give you an "extra edge" for being excepted comapred to regular admission?</p>
<p>you should try google search this first before making a new thread.</p>
<p>to answer your question, for some schools it is quite obvious that early action/decision does improve your chances of acceptance but for some other schools it might not help you at all.</p>
<p>So would you recommend to apply EA to wherever possible?</p>
<p>It does not improve your chance, but your peace of mind. You know early on that you are accepted somewhere.</p>
<p>it surely does- colleges appreciate ur high level of interest in them.</p>
<p>ED is generally more helpful than EA as far as acceptance rates go. That's because ED means you're committing to attend if accepted. EA is not binding in any way so there's no leverage for you there. Some have said that at the very most selective schools that EA rates are actually even lower than RD rates.</p>
<p>There's a big difference between EA and SCEA.</p>
<p>SCEA, Single Choice Early Action, gives you an "edge," the same way that ED does. Regular EA, however, does not. Sometimes, EA is actually more selective than RD, for instance at the University of Chicago. People don't apply EA for an edge, they apply because they know they're basically in and just want to be sure sooner. People apply SCEA or ED for the "edge."</p>
<p>Can you apply ED to one school and non-restircted EA to another?</p>
<p>It's an error to use comparisons of base acceptance rates in each round as the only basis for saying whether EA is more selective or RD is. </p>
<p>The long answer to the OP's question can be found in </p>
<p>which recommends strategies to applicants based on the most current research on the subject (which the authors of the book conducted). In general, it is an advantage to the applicant to apply early, or at worst neutral. No college has shown the work to prove that its early round is ever tougher than its regular round for similar applicants.</p>
<p>AmbitiousMind, yes, generally you can apply to one school ED and others in EA or to schools with "rolling admissions". There are a few exceptions where a school doesn't want its ED applicants applying elsewhere EA, or schools with a restricted from of EA (such as Single Choice EA like tokenadult points out), so it's important to check each of the schools you're applying to early to make sure there's not problem. If there are restrictions on their early application options, that information will be posted on the webpage where they describe the early application process. If it's not mentioned, you can assume that you can apply ED to one school, and EA to others.</p>
<p>I did know a student last year who applied SCEA to Stanford, and non-binding early action to some other schools. It was an honest mistake on her part, I think. She said she just got confused by it all, and judging from her totally dismayed reaction when she learned about the restrictions on Stanford's SCEA, I do believe that. She was quite upset with herself. Anyway, she got accepted to all the schools, including Stanford in the early period. She applied to Harvard and Princeton in RD, but was waitlisted at both. She didn't accept the waitlist spots and committed to Stanford in the spring. I guess her error didn't catch up with her, so it wasn't a problem. However, it's best to follow the rules, of course!</p>
<p>^^Thank you for the detailed response, 'rentof2! I'm just looking for any way to escape this admissions madness ASAP! It's tougher and more time consuming than I thought! (Luckily, many of my state-schools have EA...darn William and Mary for having ED!)</p>