I am a current senior beginning the college application process, and I just received a letter in the mail about Questbridge and am now considering applying. I desperately want to go to Northwestern, and before I found out about QB, I was planning on applying ED. It is my understanding that if I am accepted as a finalist but not selected as a match that I can still apply ED. Would I still get the same benefits of ED (30% acceptance rate) or are there disadvantages that I am overlooking? Would you recommend I go for it, or should I try to become a QB finalist just to add another hook to my app and then apply ED to NU without QB? I ask because I read about some other people deciding to take this route, and I can’t understand why.
Hi @wheresmylobster I am one of those people who take the route you mention: apply to be a finalist and then opt out of the college match. That’s because I’m an international student and it is known that we are the lot that is hardest to get in because of our status. I don’t want to apply through National College Match for 2 reasons: first, the decision is binding and my dream school is not in there and I want to ED it. Second, the chances are super hard. Like out of 4700 they only accept 440 kids. So that’s a 9% acceptance rate. I can ED to an Ivy League and get a better chance. If you apply through National College Match and got matched, your benefits include full tuition, rooms, boards…etc. While if you apply ED through your school, you might not get full scholarship. It’s really depend on the school anyway. I sugest you participate to be a Finalist, then do an ED/EA on your favorite school, then RD through Questbridge you fail the ED. RD questbridge had a better chance. I think the acceptance rate is around 40% 
It really depends on you. If you want to go ED for 8 schools, then go for it. Me personally, I prefer ED 
You can’t apply ED if you do the College Match. Match is already like ED. The exception is that I understand NU has invited some students it didn’t want to match to the ED round and that means you are going to get accepted bar anything really bad turning up. Not all match schools give better benefits that ED and RD students, check each school. However if your favorite school is a QB partner then I would definately do the college match. Even if you don’t get matched you might get an ED invite and even if you don’t get that, they may be looking out for you for RD. Also you do not have to ED to 8 schools. You can pick the amount you want. And of the QB schools are nonbinding.
I would advise applying through QB if you become a finalist and only selecting non-binding schools in the match process (Yale, Stanford, etc.) and Northwestern. My son did this last year and was accepted to Northwestern regular decision. He did not get moved to ED at Northwestern, but did get moved to the EA pool at Notre Dame and was ultimately wait-listed there. Getting your application moved to EA or ED does not automatically mean that you’ll get in.