I’m confused about applying early. It may be a stupid question but why do it?
If you have to commit to that one school, what happens if something comes up last minute i.e. life crisis and decide you’d rather pursue a totally different career path and you’d rather go to a school that’s better for that?
Does applying early help your chances of getting into a school at all? Because if it does, then maybe I’d consider it.
If you get turned down early, do you still have a chance to be evaluated along with the rest of people not applying early?
<p>Only ED is binding. EA is non-binding and it lets you relax a bit/get the application process over with quicker. You should only ever apply ED if you are 100% sure that you want to go there, and you don't need financial aid.</p>
<p>There's some debate as to whether or not applying EA or ED gives applicants an advantage. Some argue that the higher admittance rate (at some schools) is due to the fact that the students applying early are stronger.</p>
<p>As to whether or not you get evaluated along with the RD people, it depends on the school. Some schools will defer EA/ED applicants and re-evaluate them during the RD cycle. Others will reject them, and they can not apply again (for that year).</p>
<p>thanks. i guess i'll have to look into the defer for the schools i'm interested in. BTW is there an additional fee for applying early?</p>
<p>I'm curious, why would the early applicant pool be stronger? Is there a source that says or explains this? It seems to me that, logically, the early applicant pool would be much weaker, because the people applying early are usually those who want to take advantage of the "better chance" that ED offers because they don't believe they stand as good a chance RD.</p>
<p>I think (one of) the argument is that many of the students applying early already have the good grades/ECs and they don't need to wait for the semester 1 grades to boost up their GPA. I'm not entirely sure though.</p>
<p>asbstar, I'm pretty sure it's the same application fee as the RD cycle.</p>
<p>Not to put down the EA but I think it's pretty risky and since I'm a procrastinator, I'm going to need all the time I can get to get more volunteer hours. I think it's much better to just wait for the RD because even though chances might be worse, atleast you'll know that you did everything you could up until the very last day. I would want all the time I could get to improve my app.</p>
<p>CDN_dancer: thank you, that makes a lot of sense. I still plan to apply ED to my first choice, Vanderbilt. :) I am visiting Duke in a few weeks, though; we'll have to see if that bumps it out, but to be honest, I doubt that it will. I am quite smitten with Vandy.</p>