Many of the school I have seen as well as numerous admission councilor have advised me to apply early decision/action to my top school choice. My question now is how much of an impact does ED/EA have on an application? I know the applicant pool can become significantly smaller, but are there any other advantages?
Thanks!
Early decision you should do if you are positive the school is your top choice, because if you are accepted you have to go there. It improves your chances significantly. Duke’s acceptance rate was 9% this past year for regular admission, and 24% for early decision applicants for example.
Early action is not as much of a boost as ED, because there is the possibility you won’t enroll even if you’re accepted. It does help a good amount though. The only reason not to do early action somewhere that has is if you’re doing restrictive early action somewhere (only lets you do EA at public schools or those with merit deadlines in addition to the school you’re doing REA at. This is what Stanford, Harvard and a few more schools do that I know of), or if you’re not ready to submit your application by the EA deadline.
EA? Besides having a smaller applicant pool to compete against, not that much. Poor stats won’t be made up for in EA because they’ll just reject or defer you.
ED you run the risk of financial aid being a problem although in that case you are permitted to decline admissions. Because ED is binding, colleges might be more willing to accept lower statted applicants because they are bird-in-hand students guaranteed to matriculate next year.
First you need to get your terms straight. There is a huge difference between ED and EA.
ED or early decision is a commitment to attend a college if accepted and affordable. You agree to withdraw all other applications if you are accepted ED. Before you apply ED you need to be absolutely certain the school is your top choice. And you should run the net price calculator in advance to determine if the school appears to be affordable. As part of an ED application, a contract must be signed by the students, a parent, and the guidance counselor. The decision to apply to a college ED should not be taken lightly. Many schools do give an advantage to ED applicants because of this firm commitment to attend.
EA or early action is basically applying early and getting an answer early with no commitment to attend. In my experience there is not much (if any) of an edge given to EA applicants. An outstanding applicant will often be accepted early but many get deferred to the RD round.
Some of the top schools have restrictions on its ED and EA applicants so it is important to read through each school policy very carefully in advance of applying through one of these programs.
There is no doubt that ED helps the high stat unhooked applicant that is regularly denied in the RD round. IOW you still have to have at least middle 50% stats to have a good shot ED, contrary to the belief you can have below average stats and sneak in ED. EA is of no help to high stat unhooked applicants; they must have something else to wow the AO into admitting EA.
I completely understand the difference, I was asking for how each individual action effects an application. 2 of my schools only offer EA as their highest level of commitment.