<p>if you apply early to a school and express that they are your top choice, then does that help your admission possibilities?</p>
<p>yes, most definitely (ed at least)</p>
<p>My Name Is Abdul Qayyum And I Am From Pakistan
I Have Done My Intermidate And Now I Want To Do My
Bachlor In Sweden So Send Admission And Further Details
Thanks</p>
<p>mr.man, what do you mean by “early”? Are you talking about Early Decision (binding), Early Action (non-binding), Rolling Admission (admission decisions made as applications are completed), or just submitting your Regular Decision application a month before its deadline? Each of these different types of admissions have different implications, different requirements and different “effects” on one’s application.</p>
<p>If you apply for Early Decision, then by definition you have indicated that this school is your first choice, since you have agreed to attend if accepted.</p>
<p>If you apply for Early Action, you have made no such indication, since you do not have to attend if admitted, so you can wait until all acceptances come in during April and decide by May 1. You are free to choose another college to attend. </p>
<p>If you apply for Rolling Admissions, then yes, it is better to apply as early as possible and get your decision as early as possible. Admissions get much harder as the class fills up; applying in, say, January could harm an applicant who might have been accepted in October. </p>
<p>For Regular Decision, the main advantages of applying “early” are that 1) you get rid of the pressure of applications early in the year (search these forums for the threads posted in January: “OMG, I missed the application deadline”, “When they say January 1 do they mean 12:01 AM or 11:59 PM?”, “The server crashed and I can’t apply!”), and 2) it gives you a greater opportunity to resend any items that were missing or lost. Applying “early” does not increase your chance of acceptance.</p>
<p>For the latter 3 types of applications, you have made no binding representation that you will attend if admitted. You are free to choose to attend any school to which you are admitted. You can, however, indicate on your application that the school is your first choice. How much that matters will vary from school to school.</p>
<p>Mr. Man: Chedva wrote “How much that matters will vary from school to school.” This is very true. Some schools with EA (Stanford, Yale) don’t put much if any weight in your “expressed interest” given the strength of their applicant pool. They anticipate the no. of accepts who eventually matriculate so it’s not a big deal for them. Schools further from this stratospherically selective group will value 1st choice designation more favorably in terms of accepting you.</p>
<p>Mr. Qayyam: You should repost your request in the College Search forum with the title: “Looking for information on Swedish Colleges” and not as a reply to someone else’s thread. No one who can help you will ever see it.</p>
<p>It’s FAQ time again, and I am going to have to splice together some different threads rather than have the same question come up four or five times a day for weeks on end. </p>
<p>APPLICATIONS TO OTHER COLLEGES </p>
<p>You could quote chapter and verse from the Statement of Principles of Good Practice of the National Association for College Admission Counseling:</p>
<p>
</p></li>
</ol>
<p><a href=“http://www.nacacnet.org/NR/rdonlyres/9A4F9961-8991-455D-89B4-AE3B9AF2EFE8/0/SPGP.pdf[/url]”>http://www.nacacnet.org/NR/rdonlyres/9A4F9961-8991-455D-89B4-AE3B9AF2EFE8/0/SPGP.pdf</a> </p>
<p>and once you have done that, you could say, based on whatever is the truth, “Not wanting this to be construed as a statement of my order of preference, I am applying to”</p>
<p>a) “other colleges that appear to offer some of the same features as your college”</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>b) “a varied list of colleges to ensure that I carefully consider what is the best fit between me and each college”</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>c) “small liberal arts colleges with a focus on undergraduate teaching” (or whatever summary characteristic applies to all colleges on your list)</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>d) “a list of colleges developed according to policies of my high school counseling office”</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>e) “[actual list] but this list should not be taken to be in preference order”</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>f) “a list of colleges that I would rather not mention here, so that we take extra care to follow NACAC principles of good practice.”</p>
<p>Your own creativity can probably come up with some more choices. I do NOT see this question on many of the college application forms I have downloaded from the Web this year.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nacacnet.org/NR/rdonlyres/9A4F9961-8991-455D-89B4-AE3B9AF2EFE8/0/SPGP.pdf[/url]”>http://www.nacacnet.org/NR/rdonlyres/9A4F9961-8991-455D-89B4-AE3B9AF2EFE8/0/SPGP.pdf</a> </p>
<p>One student mentioned that a college that he was applying to online allowed only fifty characters in its online form for listing other colleges that he was applying to. That would allow for lots of fun possibilities, such as</p>
<p>Q: To what other colleges are you applying? </p>
<p>A: [in online form:] I am applying to other colleges that share some of the great characteristics of your college, for example </p>
<p>To sum up, if you are applying early decision somewhere, OF COURSE that college is your first choice, and you plainly signal to that college that it is your first choice by applying for a binding early decision program. But if you are applying for nonbinding early action, for rolling admission, or for regular action admission, no college should care much where else you are applying, and you are certainly not obligated to tell the college where else you are applying, especially not in a rank-ordered list.</p>