Early Action Advantages and Disadavantages

What are advantages and disadvantages of early action? Does early action increase your chance of being admitted? Should you apply for early action if you didn’t finish writing your college essay and are taking the SAT for better score like around a 1300?

The main advantage is that an applicant may get an answer sooner if he/she applies EA (the application may also get deferred to RD so an early answer is not assured). It is not the same type of boost to an application as a binding ED plan can be at some schools. If you feel you can improve your application in a meaningful way (better essay, better SATs, strong first semester grades etc.) between the EA and RD due dates, then I’d recommend that you wait until the RD round and submit the strongest application you can.

It’s nice to have an acceptance in hand early on in the process – it relieves some of the pressure to know that you’re going to be going somewhere in the fall.

EA often has a somewhat higher acceptance rate than RD, which is not surprising, given there are more “hooked” applicants (legacy, athletic recruits), as well as academically strong and well-prepared students.

My son applied early action to all the schools his stats were in the top 10-15% of the schools student profile. One school he was only eligible for scholarship consideration if he applied early action even though they said early action was more competitive. He was accepted to all but one early action school. That school deferred him to regular decision then waitlisted him.

@jcd716 , my son had a similar experience. I think, if you have strong stats, applying early sends a message to the school that you’ve been seriously considering them.

Besides getting an answer sooner, when my daughter applied most of the schools that had merit scholarships to give required early action deadlines. A couple required this for Honors Program consideration too.

You want to put your best foot forward in your application. If you think your application needs more work then don’t apply early action. There are advantages to early action – so if you can pull it together great. But you should not submit if you feel like it’s not ready.

Good luck!