<p>Viggy, unless a school is rolling admissions, your chances will NOT increase if you send in your apps early or decrease if you send it in before the deadline. There is only one exception. Lets say the deadline is 12 tonight for Emory. If you submit your apps at 11:56 they will get the impression that you are using them as a “last resort” or a “throw-in” application… in which case you are likely to get rejected or, if you have amazing stats, waitlisted. I have heard of excellent students being waitlisted from schools because they sent in their application like one minute before the deadline. The adcoms think you are just applying for the hell of it and not because you are genuinely interested. Just submit your apps 1 week before the deadline and you’ll be fine. </p>
<p>You guys are misunderstanding ED… Does ED give a statistical advantage of gaining admission? Almost always yes. BUT, you should ONLY apply ED if a school is your clear first choice. If you are accepted ED to lets say Rice… you MUST withdraw all your other apps and commit to Rice. So make sure your ED school is your top choice. Also Viggy, Yale has SCEA (Single Choice Early Action) meaning that if you apply early there, you CANNOT apply early action OR early decision to any other place. However, if you are admitted, it is not binding (you don’t necessarily have to go). Last time I checked the Yale SCEA acceptance rate was around 11% whereas the Regular Decision acceptance rate was around 6-7%… so it does help. </p>
<p>However (and this is me giving you what I consider very good knowledge that very few people seem to know), there are certain schools that are top 20 or 30 or so where you can apply Early Action(not binding… so you don’t necessarily have to attend) and it will drastically increase your chances… One example is Notre Dame(ranked 20th)… I took advantage of this and applied EA and got in. Their regular decision acceptance eate is around 25% but their Early Action acceptance rate is around 50%… so, in this school’s case, sending in your apps before the EA deadline doubles your chances of getting in… and the other benefit is that you don’t necessarily have to attend because its only EA (once again, not binding). There are other examples of such schools such as U. Chicago (again, I took advantage of the EA and got in… I don’t think I could’ve gotten in Regular Decision) U Chicago’s EA acceptance rate this year was around 30% and Regular Decison acceptance rate was around 18% I think. There’s also another top 25 LAC that has BOTH ED and EA. Its Regular Decision acceptance rate is like 25%, EA is like 45% and ED is also like 45 %… so this is a situation where you can apply EA instead of ED and still have the same chance of getting in (plus, you’re not bound to attend). This may be all random information that maybe unhelpful to you… but my point is a general one… research your schools… you’ll pick up on helpful hints that will inevitably increase your chances of getting in. On a similar note, one valuable info is the CDS (Common Data Set) that almost all schools publish and it includes a lot of info about the school, including what they value in an application. For example, Emory’s CDS said Demonstrated Interest (how much I show interest in the school) is “extremely important” while most state schools say that Demonstrated Interest is “Not Considered”. Therefore, I visited Emory but I did NOT visit the schools which said that they don’t care about demonstrated interest. It is better to visit all schools but, due to a shortage in time, I had to do this in order to maximize results.</p>
<p>The trick to applying to the US and maximizing your chances of getting in is to know these little details and, on top of that, what the school is looking for. Stats are important,but sometimes, these small little details are the deciding factor. There is a term for this: I think its called “Institutional Priority” which means that, regardless of how perfect your stats are, if you are not the type of cantidate a school is looking for, you’ll get rejected. For some schools, this priority may be Math geniuses(so if you excel in English, then you are not a priority). For other schools, its atheletes. For certain schools, its even international students. For example, I emailed Notre Dame and they told me that they were trying to increase their international student population. I was international (you are too), applied EA (you can if you want) and had pretty good grades and scores (I presume you will). In a way, I was the “perfect cantidate” even though my stats were not perfect. Just so you know, other schools that are trying to increase their international student population are Vanderbilt and a bunch of top LACs like Grinnell (I talked to a counselor who said “We only get 20 Canadian applicants a year… we want more to apply”). Anyways, I think I’m going a bit off-topic but I found all this info helpful and maybe you will too.</p>
<p>All in all, apply ED if one college is your first choice but its better not to look at ED as a way of “increasing chances”… However, I also know of two or three top schools where applying ED also doubles your chances of getting in… but whats the point of getting in there if you really don’t want to go. Remember, ED is binding and you must attend so if you apply ED for the sake of increasing your chances but you really don’t want to go there, then it’ll be an unfortunate situation. However, I can tell you Viggy that Emory and Rice have Early Decision. Stanford, similar to Yale, has Single-Choice Early Action I believe.</p>