Early Decision and Early Action

Applying to College
1

Each year, students and families come to this site to help understand early decision and early action and decide whether they should apply through these methods. The next few posts aim to summarize both options, and offer some pros and cons of each, with guidance.

It is to be noted that students must consult each college’s own website for specific details on available options and deadlines, which differ from college to college.

DEFINITIONS:

Regular Decision: Students apply to college by the regular deadline, which is usually in January. Students usually hear back from the college by late March or early April. The date by which students must notify colleges of their decision as to which college they will attend, and pay a deposit to secure their place, is May 1st. Nothing is binding on the student’s part until the deposit is sent.
(It is understood that students who get off a waitlist to another college at a later date may change their enrollment plans, at which time they must notify the first college, and usually they must forfeit the deposit to the first college.)
Abbreviation on this site: RD

Early Decision or Early Decision I: Students apply to a college early, usually by November 1st or 15th. The student, parent, and guidance counselor have to sign that the student definitely will attend the college if the student is admitted. In exchange, the student finds out the college’s decision early, usually by December 15th.
Students may not apply Early Decision to any other college until they have heard the first college’s decision. Unless otherwise specified, they may apply to other colleges Early Action or Rolling or Regular (but not SCEA- see below). Once accepted ED, the student must immediately withdraw all other applications, refuse all other already-made offers of admission, and pay a deposit to the ED college.
Abbreviation on this site: ED or ED1

Early Decision II: identical to Early Decision I except the application due date is usually in January and the notification date is usually in February.
Abbreviation on this site: ED2 or EDII

Early Action: Students apply to a college early, usually by November. In exchange, they hear back early, usually by December or January. Early Action differs from Early Decision in that, in early action, the college notifies the student early but the student is under no obligation to attend if admitted. The student need not decide until the universal decision date of May 1st.
Abbreviation on this site: EA

Single Choice or Restricted Early Action: identical to Early Action as described above, except that students are not allowed to apply to any other private colleges either ED or EA. Most colleges using SCEA make an exception that allows students to apply to public colleges early action or rolling admissions. The reason for the exception is that the SCEA colleges do not want students they reject to be shut out of their state universities and these universities’ honors programs if all the spots fill early.
Abbreviation on this site: SCEA or REA

Rolling Admissions: Some universities admit on a rolling basis. This means that they decide whether to admit a student or not as his/her application arrives. Some students may apply as early as the summer and may hear a decision as early as late summer.

WHAT THE DECISIONS MEAN for ED/ EA/ SCEA:

Accepted= You are in! Congratulations!

Denied or Rejected= Sorry, your application has been rejected. This is a final decision. You may not reapply to this college during this school year. Apply to other colleges if you have not already done so. Use this opportunity to improve your application before applying to other colleges.

Deferred= The college has not made a decision yet whether to accept or reject your application. They want to compare you to other students applying regular decision. Apply to other colleges and wait until March/April to find out along with everybody else. Send in any valuable updates that may enhance your application (such as a new leadership position or award, and, of course, your midyear grades), but do not pester them.

Waitlisted= You have NOT been accepted, but may choose to accept a spot on the waitlist in case more admitted students than expected choose to attend another college. Your preferred college may or may not turn to its waitlist in May or later to fill some remaining spots. Do not put too much hope in the waitlist, because this year many colleges waitlisted more students than they admitted! Sometimes, for example, over a thousand students are waitlisted at a college and only seven students get off the waitlist. Some years zero students get off the waitlist at certain colleges. The odds of getting off a waitlist are very, very, very slim. If you are waitlisted, you may try hard to be accepted, such as by writing a letter of continued interest and having your counselor call or email, saying you definitely will attend if admitted. Some people indeed are admitted after being waitlisted. But odds are slim, so start getting excited about going to one of the colleges to which you have been admitted, and pay your deposit to that other college!

2

THE PROS AND CONS:

EARLY ACTION:
Pros:
-Find out early with no obligation to attend.
-Some colleges and universities, like SUNY Binghamton, have honors programs that they begin filling with early action students. Students who apply early may therefore have an advantage, in that more slots are available earlier than later.
Some colleges also have merit scholarship opportunities that begin to be filled with EA students.
-If you are accepted EA, you save time and money. You do not need to pay other application fees or write additional supplemental essays for any other college that you would not pick above your EA college.
-It is especially smart to apply early action (or rolling) to a safety school, especially if you are applying Early Decision to a reach school. Then, it will remove some of the anxiety if you are deferred or rejected, because at least you know you will be able to go to a four year college.

Cons:
-Really none. Everyone should apply unrestricted early action to any of his/her universities that offer it.
-The only exception would be if you are counting on your fall term senior grades and activities to improve your application, in which case waiting to apply until winter may be wise.

SCEA:
Pros:
-Find out early with no obligation to attend.
-Applying single choice early action confers some advantage, although not nearly as much for a typical applicant as ED confers.

Cons:
–Do not waste this option on a school where you are down in the lower 25% of test scores and/or GPA, unless you are a recruited athlete or have some other major advantage. Otherwise, you will have eliminated the opportunity to apply ED or EA to a college that might actually have accepted you. Each year, some students shoot for the moon SCEA… and end up attending their safety school because they strike out in the more competitive RD round at their low reach and match schools.
-The SCEA universities tend to be among the nation’s most selective. Most people will be rejected, or more often, deferred. Meanwhile, by applying SCEA, students are unable to take advantage of Early Action at other private colleges. For example, a student applying SCEA to Harvard will not be able to apply early action to other excellent but safer options, like Clark or Dickinson or Bard. They lose their ability to “express interest” in other colleges through an early action application, and they may lose out as well on merit scholarship or honors college opportunities that require an early application.
–If you are counting on your fall term senior grades and activities to improve your application, waiting to apply until winter may be wise.

EARLY DECISION:
Pros:
-One of the best strategic moves you can make. The odds are much better. For example, Williams admitted 35% of Early Decision applicants and only 12% of applicants overall.
-Some colleges, especially small liberal arts colleges, admit up to half their class early decision!
That way they can shape the class they want because they know the ED students definitely will attend.
Your odds are improved ED as YOU may be the one filling the slot for a quarterback, a legacy, a student from North Dakota, a tuba player, a certain minority, etc., etc. Wait until RD and the admissions officers may realize they do not necessarily need someone with your specific attributes because they already have some students with those attributes. And if half the class already has been admitted early decision, your odds of being admitted regular decision are decreased, especially if you are a “typical” applicant for the college.
-If you are applying to a “meets full demonstrated need” college, with no merit scholarships, applying RD or ED will yield the same financial aid package for you.
-Some people will try to convince you that only recruited athletes and legacies get admitted ED. That is false. It is true that these students are admitted disproportionately in the ED round, but there are also ordinary (“unhooked”) applicants who are admitted early decision every year.
-If you are accepted ED, you save time and money. You do not need to pay other application fees or write additional supplemental essays for other colleges.
-If you are accepted ED1, you can relax. While all your friends are stressing out writing supplemental essays in December, you will be having fun: your relatives will be toasting your success during the holidays, and you will be getting to know your new classmates through a GroupMe for admitted students. The best feeling ever!!!

Cons:
-It is binding, so you cannot change your mind. Be sure you will be happy to attend!
-If you want a merit scholarship from that college, and it is not automatically awarded to those who make certain cutoffs, do not apply ED. You will be attending anyway, so they will have no incentive to sweeten the pot with merit aid to convince you to attend
-Do not apply ED unless you have run the net price calculator for a college and the estimated family contribution is reasonable. Usually it will be a good rough guide to what you will receive. Some colleges will even do financial pre-reads for you.
(But if your family’s financial situation is complicated and the EFC therefore may be somewhat inaccurate for a college that uses the CSS profile, you will not be forced to attend if you cannot afford it. The college will release you from the ED agreement if you truly cannot afford the package they offer, you appeal the offer to see if they will give you a better one, and you are still not able to pay. Some colleges may even work out special arrangements with you.)
-Sometimes if you get a better need-based financial aid offer from a college that your preferred college considers a peer, they may adjust your aid package! But you will have no comparison to show them if you apply ED.
-Do not waste this option on a school where you are down in the lower 25% of test scores and/or GPA, unless you are a recruited athlete or have some other major advantage. Otherwise, you will have lost the opportunity to apply ED to a college that might actually have accepted you.
-It can be stressful to be denied or rejected in December and then have to wait until March to know if you will get into another college. Therefore, pairing an ED application to a highly selective college with an EA application to a safety school can be a wise move. You won’t be as devastated or stressed by bad news if you receive some good news at the same time!

Special Con of ED2:
-Applying ED2 means that you still have to apply RD to a bunch of other colleges, because of the timing of the deadlines, so you will go through all the work of writing supplemental college-specific essays and attending alumni interviews… and you will never know if any of those other colleges would have admitted you, because you will be withdrawing your other applications in February. All that work for nothing!
-Usually, fewer applicants are admitted ED2 than ED1.

3

My motivation:
My two posts above are informational and based on facts. This last post is based on my opinions and experiences.

As a thank you to the College Confidential community, as my family moves on as our only child has been admitted to college, I am posting these posts.

I entered the process more conflicted about early options, but now I am a firm advocate of early decision based on the results received by the students in the top 10% or so of our local public high school.

The results for students applying Early Decision to such colleges were much better than the results of students applying regular decision and, for unhooked applicants, better than the results of kids applying early action… when it came to the top-20 national universities or national liberal arts colleges.

Of course, not everyone wants to attend a highly ranked/ highly selective college. I am in no way implying that these colleges are better or denigrating other choices. But some people are interested in attending a top-ranked college, and this third post is designed to help these applicants.

There are just under 300 students in the graduating class. The community is in a suburb of New York and consists mostly of middle class to upper middle class families. Students were admitted early decision to Brown, Columbia, Williams, Amherst, Wesleyan, Middlebury, U of Chicago, Duke, Vanderbilt, and UC Berkeley. Some of these accepted applicants were “hooked” (recruited athlete, legacy, or under-represented minority) but some had no hooks whatsoever.

Also, by statistics, while all these early decision applicants were great students, not even one of them was a National Merit Semifinalist, and some of them had test scores near the average or in the bottom 25% of their colleges’ ranges, as per the common data sets… including some of the unhooked applicants!

When it came to regular decision, many of the top 10% or so of the class were admitted to schools ranked between 21 and 50 on the US News lists, or to our best public universities in New York. But when it came to schools ranked by US News in the top 20 on the national university or national liberal arts college lists… regular decision was painful! Only three students were accepted to top-20 colleges regular decision (Cornell, Cornell, Vassar). Two of these had hooks (URM).

Some of the top students will be attending their low matches or safeties, having been rejected RD not just by the top 20 schools but by their matches as well, perhaps because in the RD round, admissions both are more competitive and include a factor of yield protection. I am confident that these students will have a wonderful education and make the most of their opportunities and excel in life, because of who they are. But their disappointment is real, and in some cases, quite painful to them.

Early decision is one of the best strategic moves available to applicants (subject to the limitations and considerations noted in my posts above). It makes a difference.

4

Some missing points:

  • Regarding EA with restrictions, note that each college with some type of restricted EA may define the restrictions differently. For example, there are some schools like Georgetown whose only restriction for EA is not to apply anywhere ED, while not having restrictions against other EA applications like some others whose programs are commonly called SCEA or REA. So read each school's EA information and rules carefully.
  • For some rolling admission schools, it may be advantageous to apply early, because popular majors may fill up early, or scholarship money may run out early. Plus, an admission to an affordable school means that you have an early safety.
  • There are some colleges which only have RD, but the deadline to apply is relatively early. Examples are the California public universities with an 11/30 deadline.
  • One advantage of ED for some applicants: it shows the highest possible "level of applicant's interest". If the applicant appears "overqualified" for his/her first choice school that considers "level of applicant's interest" and tends to waitlist "overqualified" applicants on the assumption that they are unlikely to attend, then applying ED can show the school that the applicant really wants to attend that school.
  • While ED can be a substantial advantage at some schools, the difference in admission rates alone is not definitive without knowing the characteristics of the ED versus RD applicant pools (e.g. the ED pool may include most of the recruited athletes or be a generally stronger applicant pool otherwise).
  • Another disadvantage of ED is that if the applicant wants to *compare* financial aid and scholarship offers of all schools, it is not a good idea to pre-commit to one school ahead of time. The applicant needs to have a specific cost threshold that the ED school must meet with its financial aid offer if it delivers an admission offer, because there generally will not be the opportunity to compare with other schools' offers before one has to decide whether it is financially possible to attend.
5

UCs do not offer ED (or EA) application. However, the RD application period for UCs is 11/1 to 11/30, which is around the time frame of many other schools’ ED or EA deadlines.

Some applicants may be notified of their admission earlier than others by being notified as candidates for Regents’ scholarships, but that is not dependent on any choice the applicant made with respect to application schedule.

6

“-If you are accepted ED, you save time and money. You do not need to pay other application fees or write additional supplemental essays for other colleges.”

The above is not really true. ED acceptance notifications are typically provided Dec. 15 while EA applications are typically due by Nov. 1. So applying ED will not eliminate the time or cost of EA applications to places like UVA, Michigan, Richmond, UNC Chapel Hill, Miami, Villanova, etc. or applications necessary to meet merit scholarship deadlines at places like Davidson, Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, etc.

7

@ucbalumnus -Thanks for catching the error of Berkeley in the wrong category. I added that one last minute on my edit, after double-checking the US News list and realizing I had missed it, without researching the university’s policies. Careless error, good catch.

@cupugu - I guess it depends on your mix of colleges. Early decision can indeed save a ton of time and money for many applicants! For example, one of the ED-accepted students applied to one early decision and two early action colleges. He would have applied to 17 more colleges RD had he not been accepted early decision, and many of those had one or more supplemental essays. That would have been hours of work and a lot of $60 application fees.

8

Yes, GreyKing, there is no doubt that it will save time and money on RD applications. My point was that it will not save time or money on EA applications or on applications to schools where there are merit scholarship deadlines preceding the typical Jan 1 RD application deadline. So the categorical statement you made originally – “You do not need to pay other application fees or write additional supplemental essays for other colleges” – should be qualified to exclude EA and many merit scholarship schools.

9

This is a really great thread! Thanks for the help in all of us understanding these concepts. I think this should be a sticky.

Have a good day!

10

Glad it helped!

11

-If you are accepted ED, you save time and money. You do not need to pay other application fees or write additional supplemental essays for other colleges.

==================================================================================
The problem with this statement is that it presumes applicants only apply early to one school and that is not correct. Students should still be applying EA (Early Action) and RD (especially where some universities have rolling admissions) even while waiting to hear from their ED1 choice. As such, you are still writing applications until receiving an acceptance from the ED1 school. Also, if the expected financial package doesn’t work out with the ED1 choice, applicants can back out of the ED1 agreement.

12

^Now two people have commented on that, so I guess the clarification was needed. Thanks. I thought “any more applications after acceptance” was implied, not necessarily “any” applications altogether, particularly as just a few sentences down from the quoted sentence, I encouraged people to apply early action to a safety if applying early decision to their first choice.

Early decision one and early action (but only if results arrive by about 12/15) each can help reduce the total number of applications needed, reducing both time and money the student needs to spend on the application process. That is the point.

13

It is binding unless the financial aid offered is insufficient to support attendance (your decision, not the school’s), in which case you say “Thanks but no thanks” and apply elsewhere.

14

This is a great point that many people don’t consider. It makes little sense for colleges to give merit aid to ED applicants.

Thanks for the great post.

15

@TheGreyKing
Cons (of ED):
-If you want a merit scholarship from that college, and it is not automatically awarded to those who make certain cutoffs, do not apply ED. You will be attending anyway, so they will have no incentive to sweeten the pot with merit aid to convince you to attend.
@bzss7x

This is a great point that many people don’t consider. It makes little sense for colleges to give merit aid to ED applicants.

This is another generalization that is not true. Colleges have different philosophies on ED and merit. There are colleges who do give non-automatic merit to ED applicants. I know this because my son received non-automatic merit from American University - we are full pay so we knew he would not receive financial aid. He was above their 75 percentile, but not in the very tippy-top and yet still he was awarded merit (and not the smallest amount they award either). You have to research each school’s specific policy and look at the trends on the CC specific college forum. The only out for ED is for financial reasons and the family decides what is financially feasible, so it doesn’t make sense to withhold merit from students who are committing to your school. You can even appeal the financial aid package if you are accepted ED and the package was not as expected or feasible for your family. Are you leaving merit on the table in ED - maybe, maybe not? It all depends on the college.

16

My biggest worry with early decision is the the timing of acceptance and the timing of the financial packet. The school my D19 wants to attend let’s you know their decision @12/18 but then their financial package comes out @ 3 weeks later (because of the holiday break). By then you’ve withdrawn other apps and paid a hefty deposit - so shouldn’t the decision and the package notification be closer together, timewise? I feel very confident in what our financial package will be for my D19 (because my S16 attends that same school and the school has been consistent - and very fair - for 3 years with his package). But something about withdrawing those other apps before we can actually see that financial packet for my D19 makes me uncomfortable. Yet it’s her top choice school (and it’s select) and it would be great to be done in December …

So should I be confident that the school will give my daughter a similar package? My S16’s package is not merit based and it is super close to the net price calculated. Thoughts?

17

The ED commitment to confirm matriculation and withdraw other applications shortly should only become effective after the financial package is given. If they expect the commitment before the financial package is given, then it is not a good idea to apply ED there.

18

Interesting, I didn’t know there were any schools that required an answer before they gave you the FA package.

The most important thing from this is that for an unhooked applicant with excellent stats/EC’s, but nothing really unique about their application, then ED is there best option (again from results I have seen), Expect to be deferred from SCEA if you don’t have that “uniqueness” to your application, which leaves you little chance of acceptance in the RD round. You can see from the Harvard lawsuit how many “actual” slots are left once all those hooked applicants are given a slot, and its miniscule. Again this is for someone who wants to commit to going to a top 20 school, the negatives of ED are noted above.

19

“But something about withdrawing those other apps before we can actually see that financial packet for my D19 makes me uncomfortable.”

Don’t do anything that makes you uncomfortable, trust your gut on this. Don’t pull apps until you get the FA package, I’m surprised they’re asking for the deposit so early after the decision. Remember that ED does not benefit students and parents, it’s there to benefit the colleges. You should hold off on the deposit as well if you can, once you give the deposit and the college thinks you’re locked in, there’s no incentive for them to be generous.

20

This is why neither of my kids were allowed to apply anywhere ED.

“Affordable” varied from FA package to FA package, in my kids’ cases, by a LOT (divorce, business, etc made NPCs tricky).

Had my 2nd child applied ED to her top choice, the cost would likely have been affordable in the barest sense - with full loans and significant financial sacrifice for us. Doable, perhaps, but very very hard. And it would have been hard to say no to it, too. As it turned out, she applied RD and got into a better school with much more generous FA. It might have gone another way, but she had good EA acceptances and FA packages and she’d not have had those if she’d applied ED either.

I really feel ED is best suited for those who aren’t concerned at all about cost.