Can anyone share experience what application for admission is better, Early Action versus Regular Admission and why? Thank you for your answer.
I like Early action schools. I advise most everyone to have some of them as well as rolling admissions schools on the list. For those with financial constraints, having a couple of affordable schools in hand before starting the arduous process of chasing merit and hoping for adequate financial aid packages is golden.
It also can serve as early barometer reading. My oldest applied to St Bonaventure, SUNY Binghamton, Boston College and Georgetown EA some years ago. That he got into one with merit money, one at reasonable state U prices, one accept at full price tag and one waitlist, he could cull his list with a better idea as to where he stood with the RD schools on his list.
It’s also great to pair a likely school with a high reach. SCEA of one of HYPMS with a UMich and EA2 Hofstra and state U can really give you that lottery ticket with some good Ins to relieve the sting of not getting accepted.
Can also do ED with some EAs and Rollings for same purpose
For selective private schools, EA/ED almost always provides a boost in acceptance chances, sometimes a really large one (at schools like Middlebury). ED provides more of a boost than EA, but gives you fewer choices. The strategy @cptofthehouse laid out is a good one, just try to be sure you will be happy at all the schools you apply to.
Only use ED if you are certain you can afford the cost. By using ED you take away any options you have of comparing FA offers.
EA and rolling admissions are wonderful for the prepared student. My kid had an acceptance in hand while most of his peers were scrambling to figure out where to apply. It made October/November a lot less stressful.
@rockysoil said:
A bump yes, but not nearly as large as on first blush. Take your Middlebury example…Middlebury accepted 372 of 926 (40%) students in EDI/II. EDI breakdown is 297/654, EDII 75/272. In that 372 accepted number there are 30 Posse scholars, and around 75 recruited athletes (and all the Posses and most of the athletes are in the EDI number of 297). There are also an undetermined number of URMs, legacies, developmental admits and prof kids in the ED rounds that have higher acceptance odds than an unhooked candidate. Subtracting 75 athletes, Posses and an estimated 20% for all other hooked candidates gives an EDI/II acceptance rate of around 214/926 or 23%. Higher than the RD acceptance rate of 13%, but much tighter than looking at the 40% ED overall acceptance rate.
These various buckets exist at every school with ED, so one has to do the research to see what they are dealing with. Conventional wisdom is that a candidate has to be a relatively strong, certainly above the 50% levels in GPA/Test scores, to make ED worthwhile (along with NPC results showing school is likely to be affordable)
Some schools are more conservative in their decisions EA, and some have restrictions around applying early at other schools so be sure to check the rules around that. Also, if you need first semester senior year grades to pull your GPA up, regular decision would likely be the better way to go.
I don’t think OP is asking about ED vs. EA. He/she is asking about EA vs. RD. In my opinion, as long as you have enough time to put together a quality application before the EA deadline, there is no reason not to apply EA if it is offered at the school. The sooner you have an answer, the better. Also, I can’t image a kid who gets accepted RD would have been rejected had they applied EA - at worst that kid would have been deferred EA to the RD round.
It helps to have a college acceptance early to minimize the pressure. Especially when friends start getting accepted early. Negative part is they think that they are done with high school after acceptance (totally a disaster) our EA and rolling were Penn state, Michigan, and Michigan state and especially recommended for business and engineering majors
If you are counting on a GPA Or course rigor boost, or another shot at the SATs, ACTs, early may not be for you. You can wait till you get the scores and decide whether you want to turn them in if you have extra time.
I have found that most of the time , EA and especially ED apps get a boost. The schools Naviance and more detailed records I’ve seen support that. Even with the more connected crowd at ED. I believe a study of Harvard’s EA results showed that despite their insistence that it did not. The two schools that I believe for certain that early means nothing are MIT and CIT.
At the small private independent where two of my kids went, Middlebury was a very popular venue. But it was also where a lot of the HYP crowd ended up after not getting accepted to their first choice Schools where they used their early crowd. The one year in particular that I was paying close attention to the admissions season, the 2 kids who got in ED were wise to do so early as they would have been head to head with the kids who chose a more selective school eRly, and then applied RD to Middlebury. Same pattern with Bowdoin, Pomona and some other such LACs. In that environment, for those in love with such schools, ED is the way to go. Looking at the stats for my youngest’s college, he was wise to apply ED. Big difference.
We aggressively used early action and Rolling admissions in our family and it worked well. I advise it for most scenarios.
@Mwfan1921 Not trying to turn this into another CC debate on the benefits of ED/EA, but I think EA/ED/RD is a big source of misleading advice on this site, so here goes…
I think your Middlebury ED analysis is excellent, at least as far as any of us from the outside can tell. But the RD round also has a significant number of URM’s, first gens, sparse country applicants, some legacies, some athletes, etc. So the real RD number for unhooked kids is probably closer to 9 or 10% when compared apples-to-apples to the 23%. That is a really significant difference in admit rates, and if anything it understates the difference:
We only have good data on one school, because of the ongoing lawsuit. At Harvard, which only offers EA, has an 83% yield and publicly stated for years that there was no advantage to applying early, the data showed a 4x bump in admit rates (2% RD, 8%EA) for unhooked kids even after accounting for scores, grades, hooked status, and even EC/essay/recommendations (the regressions accounted for the numerical reader ratings the Ad Coms gave to each application after first reading). The correlation was so strong, there is little doubt that Harvard has been favoring early applicants for years. And if Harvard is doing it…
For most of these schools, I would guess that being above the 50% in scores is not good enough to waste the ED/EA bullet. At least above the 75% percentile, maybe the 90%, or being really unique in some way that is attractive to the school is probably the bar here.
I do think there is a bump, not just as big as many think, and that lack of knowledge skews towards those applicants/parents who are completely unaware of the existence and/or size of hooked groups.
And yes, I am in the camp that fully agrees with the Harvard lawsuit data showing an SCEA bump—that data reflects the end result of the entire, holistic admissions process.
The scenario I depicted is very much anecdotal, and isolated. However, the Harvard analysis is a strong one IMO.
I look at Rolling Admission and EA like this:
You gotta fill a room. Your job depends upon doing so. Room has always been filled before which is a big plus for you but also something you have to live up to. It’s a big empty room and you are eager and ready to go to it. Most all of the folks who come to the door look pretty danged good. You want a diverse crowd in there, and at first they are all diverse. You haven’t gotten to your umpteenth running fanatic, heard all the challenge in life stories, and you have some athletic and orchestra seats as well as other special requests you need filled. With all the empty space, you can afford to be generous because after all you are an ADMISSIONS officer. You WANT to admit kids.
But then all of a sudden the room is filling up and you have a line around the block. You still have some requests to fulfill but you are also seeing a lot of the same by now. And you are getting tired. That victory after failure story is beginning to sound oldcabd tiresome. You have to start getting stingy about who you give a seat.
AOs are human. (Yup, though they may have ice in their veins). Of course, it’s easier to welcome those who show up when the room is empty and the line is sparser than when it gets crazy and there is a mob out there. Bear in mind that most applicants to these selective schools are often qualified. You often have to find reason to reject.
So, yeah, I do believe earlier gives you a better chance.
@cptofthehouse LOL that is a great analogy. No tin hat scenarios, just regular people in a tough job being biased in the regular human way. And in many cases not realizing they are doing it.
Reminds me a study of sentencing in courtrooms in Israel. The scientists wanted to see if they could identify variables that impacted how likely the judges were to give parole. After studying dozens of possible influences (gender, race, age, etc.) they found the variable with by far the highest correlation - the length of time since the judge had last taken a break and eaten. First thing in the morning the chances of parole were about 65%. Just before lunch or at the end of the day, nearly zero.
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2011/apr/11/judges-lenient-break
I think MIT imposes a strict % of accepts during EA season to make sure that there is no advantage to applying early. Most schools do not, as they want to be holistic about the process. I don’t think Harvard intended to give early applicants any edge. It’s just the way it turned out.
I think in court, the judge has to get tired of the SOS (same old stories ?) as the day goes on and I certainly can see where you are at a disadvantage later in the day. You start each day with some hope things are going to go just fine and give it all a fair ear but after a while, things get old. You don’t want to be the 1000th essay on the same hackneyed story.
Write your Essay over the summer and come back to school ready to apply EA when possible.
EA (and ED) also demonstrates to the AO’s that you’re organized, motivated, well-prepared, as well as interested in their school.
EA can showcase these qualities (potentially resulting in a very slight advantage over RD) which may be helpful at the more selective schools, when if deferred, an EA candidate may end up competing for a space with an RD candidate.