Hi,
I’m just wondering what school I should aim Early Action for, apply Early Decision for, and apply Regular Decision for.
The schools I’m applying to are:
-Stanford (#1 choice)
-UChicago (#2 choice)
-John Hopkins University
-UC Berkeley
-UPenn
-University of Michigan
-Northwestern
-University of Texas, Austin
(safety schools)
-Michigan State
-Purdue University
-Case Western
Since Stanford is my Number One, I was thinking of applying Early Action for it. Also, is there a statistical significance in any of these schools when applying for Early Decision? I was told there was some for UChicago, but I’m not sure about the rest.
Thank you!
Uchicago offers ED2, so you can go EA for Stanford and then ED2 for Uchicago.
You have to watch the rules for ED/EA, whether you can apply to other schools, when you’d have to withdraw your applications from the other schools. Be careful.
Look up last year’s CDS for each school to figure out what the ED/EA and RD acceptance rates were.
ED and SCEA acceptance rates tend to be 2, 3, 4, 5 (…) times higher than RD rates, and the entire difference cannot typically be attributed to large amounts of athletes and legacies getting in through ED/SCEA.
Of the schools on your list that use ED/SCEA, Stanford shows the lowest increase in early admission chances – but it is still an increase.
I think the following rules should be followed when considering ED or SCEA (especially ED…):
- It should be your favorite school. An exception to this is if you have several favorites -- no clear one -- and you want to use your early app on the one with the best statistical chance for admission. (a possible problem with that is, what if a clear favorite emerges, and you already applied ED to a different school?)
- Make sure it's affordable. This goes for all apps, not just early apps. You can get out of an ED acceptance if the aid offer is insufficient, but you can save yourself the wasted time and potential heartbreak by using the NPC to (reasonably...) confirm affordability.