<p>Early Decision: you apply to a school early, usually by Nov 1 or 15, and get a decision mid-Dec. It is binding (although one can usually back out if parents cannot afford it after learning of financial aid package). You can apply to only one college ED. Some colleges have ED II, which has a later, often Dec or early Jan, application deadline, most of which are designed to give those rejected ED another chance to apply ED to a different college. When you apply, you must also submit form with parents’ financial info because you will be informed of a probable financial package right near time you are admitted. ED colleges allow you to apply early action elsewhere. Colleges with ED deny that it actually raises your chances for admission but that is belied by the admission rates for ED which are usually substantially higher than the college’s regular admission rates. Nevertheless, if your stats are not at least as high as the college’s usual middle 50% admission ranges (rank/test score) you should not assume it creates any advantage.</p>
<p>Early Action: you apply early, usually by Nov 1 or 15, and get a decision in mid-Dec but decision is not binding and you can apply elsewhere and wait until May 1 to choose. Most EA colleges allow you to apply ED or EA elsewhere. Some prohibit your applying ED elsewhere but not EA. Then there are a small number, including Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and Stanford, that have Single Choice Early Action which prohibit you from applying ED or EA elsewhere (with some exceptions such as you can apply EA to a public university. Whether EA gives you any advantage varies. Most have higher EA than RA admission rates but some do not. As with ED, you should not assume you gain any advantage if your stats are below the college’s middle 50% range.</p>
<p>Priority Date Application: You will sometimes hear this term and it is basically what some public universities call their early action programs and works the same as early action and allows you to apply ED or EA elsewhere. This usually creates some but not any significant advantage for applicants.</p>
<p>Regular admission: the usual admission program of a college that is neither ED or EA. Decision notification, when the college has a single date for notification, is sometime between early Feb and first week of April depending on college. </p>
<p>Rolling admissions: this is a form of regular admissions. It means the college issues decisions as the applications are received, often within a few weeks after an applicant’s file is complete (application, test scores, transcript are in). Some colleges start issuing decisions in early fall within a few weeks of starting to receive applications. However, others with rolling admissions may not start rolling out decisions until later, e.g., Mich gets applications beginning in Sep but does not issue any decisions until Dec and then it rolls out decisions on a continuous basis although some applicants may actually have to wait until much later to be notified because it will sit on a lot of decisions until it sees the entire pool of applicants after the final application deadline.</p>
<p>You should review any particular college’s program to determine what it does before applying. Deadlines are critical and for some colleges that deadline includes getting not just the application in but also transcripts and test scores and any needed recommendation letters by the deadline date. Also, some colleges have early deadline dates for applications, such as Dec 1, if you want to be considered for any scholarships.</p>