Hi, I understand how early decision works where you can only apply to one and its binding, and I understand how certain schools (Yale Harvard Princeton Stanford) are single choice, where that has to be the only one applied early. Does that mean I can apply to every other ivy league and top school early action? Why would someone even bother applying regular if early has a higher acceptance rate?
Thanks
It’s not that simple. Each college has its own rules. Here are the rules for Stanford:
Restrictive Early Action Policy
Applicants agree not to apply to any other private college/university under an Early Action, Restrictive Early Action, Early Decision or Early Notification program.
Applicants may apply to other colleges and universities under their Regular Decision option.
Exceptions:
The student may apply to any college/university with early deadlines for scholarships or special academic programs as long as the decision is non-binding.
The student may apply to any public college/university with a non-binding early application option.
The student may apply to any college/university with a non-binding rolling admission process.
The student may apply to any foreign college/university on any application schedule.
Here are the current rules for Yale:
Yale’s Early Action plan is unlike many other programs in that if you apply for Single-Choice Early Action at Yale, you may not simultaneously apply for Early Action or Early Decision to any other school with a few exceptions (*see “Applying to Other Colleges and Universities” below). If you apply early to Yale, you are indicating that the only Early Action/Early Decision application you intend to file is Yale’s, unless another early application is covered by one of the exceptions listed below.
You may apply to any college’s non-binding rolling admission program.
You may apply to any public institution at any time provided that admission is non-binding.
You may apply to another college’s Early Decision II program, but only if the notification of admission occurs after January 1. If you are admitted through another college’s Early Decision II binding program, you must withdraw your application from Yale.
You may apply to another college’s Early Action II program.
You may apply to any institution outside of the United States at any time.
You need to research the rules at each school.
Thanks suzy100, but aside from stanford and yale (and other ones listed above) can i apply to however many colleges early action, as I want? Like could I apply to the 5 other ivy leagues early action?
Only Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are early action ivies. The rest are early decision. HYP all have restrictions on their Early Action policies. So the answer is no.
The Ivy early action definitions mean you can not apply to anywhere else early, but can apply to anywhere regular.
Schools like Georgetown have a different type of resgriction, where you can apply there and anywhere else early action, but nowhere ED (I personally like this option).
Some schools have non-restrictive EA (nowhere you are talking about)
Other schools employ ED1 and ED2
All of these options impact where and how you can apply.
Harvard, Princeton and Yale offer SCEA. The other ivies do not offer any type of EA, only ED
Read all the specifics for early options for your schools. Some allow early applications to public Us, others to public Us only in your state, others only rolling admission.
The above information is correct. Take the time to read the policies on each school’s website and it is usually pretty clear.
No. Because the Ivies are all either REA/SCEA or ED, you can only apply to one of them early. There are some “top schools” that offer regular EA, however (MIT and UChicago come to mind, but there are many others that will also accept an EA application). As others have said, it’s best to check with the admissions rules on each college’s website.
Also think what they are trying to get at… For Ivies…they want you to be able to apply early action (or whatever it is called) to their school to show you are interested and would probably attend…however, they realize the chance of getting in is low, so you can apply to other public or RD schools so you have a back up plan. But they don’t want you to apply EA to other Ivies as then what is the point of EA?