early action vs regular

Applying to College Common and Coalition Application
1

<p>can u tell me the pro and cons of early action and regular? also if rejected early can u apply regular again? and is early action more competative than regular? thank you for taking ur time to read plz respond i need help deciding which application is good for me.</p>

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<p>Pros:

  • You get an admission decision in December, which, if an acceptance, will significantly reduce your stress level regarding college acceptance.
  • Most schools have higher admit rates for Early Action than Regular Decision (although for the very top schools, it is debatable whether this is a result of colleges lowering their standards for early applicants).
  • You are not obligated to attend the school if you get in Early Action (this is not true for Early Decision).
  • You can apply to as many schools Early Action as you want (with the exceptions of Stanford and Yale. This is also false if the program is called “Early Decision”).</p>

<p>Cons:

  • If you get rejected, you might get more stressed out.
  • Not much else.</p>

<p>If you get rejected early, you cannot apply again Regular Decision. However, you might get deferred, which means you’ll be automatically placed in the Regular Decision pool and find out a final decision in April. EA is not generally more competitive than RD: it is usually less competitive.</p>

3

<p>“You are not obligated to attend the school if you get in Early Action (this is not true for Early Decision)”</p>

<p>If you apply ED requesting financial aid, but the FA offered is not enough to support attendance, you can release yourself from the obligation.</p>

4

<p>also schools vary about what they do with an EA applicant who they’d like to see one more semester of grades from before admitting. Many have a policy of deferring the person to the RD pool and asking for fall grades. </p>

<p>Others have a strict policy where they make a decision by the EA decision date based just on the info that’s in the EA application. if you have a GPA that’s in the lower end of the range and you think you are going to do well fall semester, applying EA to one of those schools might not be as smart as waiting for RD.</p>