<p>Older son applied EA to two schools and got deferred - a wakeup call that he really needed to get the letter of recommendation from the place where he worked who were the ones who could really speak to his comp sci talents. His only CS course in high school was taking the AP as a freshman. He also got into RPI early and while they didn’t tell us what merit award he was getting they did say there would be one. Younger son got into a reach (Chicago) early - which was a huge relief. I agree with others that getting your main essays done by early October is worth it all by itself. I dislike SCEA, but would say that if that school is clearly the first choice they should use it - otherwise probably not if there are other attractive EA schools on the list.</p>
<p>My D applied EA everywhere excepting one college that offered rolling admission. This way, she had the majority of the admissions paperwork done in mid-fall and acceptances right before and after the new year. From there we were able to make final trips to her top schools during the spring before financial aid letters arrived.</p>
<p>Is there a comprehensive list of EA schools? My son has opened up the Universal Application, but I’m not seeing many EA schools there. RPI only has ED I and ED II-no EA. I’m just not seeing enough EA schools that fit my son. I know MIT, Caltech, U Chicago all are EA. The only school on the list that’s EA right now is SMU. As I said, most of them seem to be ED/RD schools and a few reachy SCEA type schools.</p>
<p>I mean, for a number of the schools, my son will have early deadlines because of the arts supplement, so that in itself will cause him to get numerous apps in by or before Nov 1, but he won’t get decisions until much later. </p>
<p>He has asked 6 people for recs and all have said yes, but two are music related (cello teacher and current director of the show he’s working for). The tricky part is making a decision about recs and supplemental recs.</p>
<p>Tulane is the school that offers both EA and SCEA, where SCEA expresses a higher level of interest than EA.</p>
<p><a href=“Application Instructions | Undergraduate Admission”>Application Instructions | Undergraduate Admission;
<a href=“http://tuadmissionjeff.blogspot.com/2011/10/whats-deal-with-single-choice-early.html”>http://tuadmissionjeff.blogspot.com/2011/10/whats-deal-with-single-choice-early.html</a></p>
<p>My son did just tell me he’d consider a school in the South (I thought he’d said no before), but I’m not seeing any majors that quite hit what he’s thinking, except for music. Their digital media production and CS majors don’t quite cover it, and their engineering choices aren’t in areas of interest. I’ll dig a little deeper, though, and run a Net Price Calculator. I may have done that and figured we couldn’t afford it. I’m guessing merit aid at Tulane would be for tippy top students.</p>
<p>Tulane CS is rather limited, so if he is still looking in that direction, it may not be a good choice.</p>
<p>And they don’t have art to combine with computing, nor design of any sort. I’ll do a little hunting around for other EA schools. At this point, just not sure which would be better, SMU EA or one of the SCEA type schools. Meh, I’m sure it will become clearer come Sept./Oct.</p>
<p>Found a good list of EA schools on the website collegeadmissionbook.com </p>
<p>My son graduated high school in 3 years and applied RD. I doubt anyone would have accepted him ED simply because he had too many external credits from college and online classes still in transit at early decision time. Until those transfers were officially recorded at his high school, it was not yet obvious to admissions committees that he would in fact be graduating a year early.</p>
<p>Oh funny story, my older son did not apply to Harvard SCEA. When his interviewer asked him why not, he said, “Because it’s not my first choice.” They accepted him anyway. </p>
<p>RPI did not have EA when my son applied. He got invited to apply for their “Priority Application” which I am guessing was based on his NM status. I don’t know if they still have that secret EA application, but it was nice for him - it involved fewer essays and they let you know if you were in within 3 weeks of the first quarter grades senior year, so he knew by Thanksgiving he was going to college.</p>
<p>A student accepted early must decide to attend before receiving a financial aid package (colleges do allow students to break the early decision contract if the school fails to come up with enough aid to meet a student’s demonstrated need, but realize that the student’s need is calculated by the school and the FAFSA, not by what students think they can afford).
Because of the restrictions placed on applicants applying through early decision, a student should not apply early unless he or she is 100% sure that the college is the best choice.
Also, be careful about the financial aid issue. A student who gets accepted through early decision has no way to compare financial aid offers. The money issue, in fact, is the main reason why a few schools like Harvard and University of Virginia dropped their early decision programs; they felt it gave wealthy students an unfair advantage.</p>
<p>My ds didn’t choose by EA, SCEA, REA, or ED. How he chose to apply was determined by what his first choice school offered, which happened to be REA. He still applied to three state flagships (rolling admissions) because those were exempt from the “restricted” rules. Those allowed him to have three nice safeties where he knew he would receive significant merit money. I wouldn’t choose by the method - I would choose by the school where your child <em>really</em> wants to attend. If it’s EA, great, then dc can apply to several others EA as well. If it is SCEA or REA then, no, your dc cannot apply EA to other schools. If it’s an ED school, then you have to make sure you are comfortable with a binding decision and know ahead of time that you can pay for it. </p>
<p>My kids both applied RD so as to have aid packages to consider.</p>
<p>D2 was admitted ED and we did get the preliminary fin aid award from her college then or within a few days. As she was our second, we knew where aid “should” fall, we knew this school’s aid generosity. Since D1 had applied RD to this college and a set of similar schools and all her aid awards were within something like $100 of each other, we knew this aid offer for D2 was good and she confirmed immediately. That was a lucky perspective.</p>
<p>The ED both settled things for her and, since her hs class was very small, did avoid any comparison with other peers. In retrospect, what we all questioned was whether another college would actually have been a better fit. We all wonder if her decision in March would have been the same. She has graduated, is educated and empowered. But it was a serious struggle for her. Imo, you have to be careful it is as full a “fit” as possible, going forward.</p>
<p>I applied (non-binding) EA to three schools: Georgetown, UChicago, and MIT. I was applying to Cambridge for which the app was due Oct 15th, so I was in the application mood. I applied to Cambridge and four other schools in the UK by Oct 15th, these three American ones a few weeks later. At the end of the year, I applied to four more American schools RD (Swarthmore, Yale, Harvard, and Dartmouth). </p>
<p>I had my college list together early, so I wanted to spread the apps out. Since I had to start early for Cambridge, I kept at it, so that I could have nearly half of my American apps done. I didn’t want to be working on seven school’s applications all at once. Applying early to many of my top choices meant that I didn’t need to have a safety school. People looking for a financial safety might have needed to apply to a few other schools. In my case, I might have applied to my state’s flagship, whose RD deadline is after those of all the schools above.</p>
<p>If my son had any idea of where he wanted to attend or what major he might want, it would make it a little clearer. And, I reiterate, while he has a very good SAT, he is, in no way, a tippy top candidate-I would say he is a late bloomer-, so I’m just trying to figure out what might be the best way for him to go about applying. He keeps saying yes to schools to apply to, but I have a limited budget for App fees. </p>
<p>Well, it’s only July. 
After some visits and more talks, we might be able to whittle the list down and make some decisions.</p>
<p>
Careful! Only accepted early via early decision, not early action or single choice early action.,</p>
<p>Also @younghoss Harvard never had an ED program. They had single choice early action (SCEA) which they said they dropped because they felt it gave wealthy students an unfair advantage and then put back in a few years later. I think because they got so inundated with applications, and didn’t actually attact more minority and SES students but they never really gave a coherent explanation.</p>
<p>There’s no downside to regular early action unless your first semester senior year grades are going to be better than your junior year grades.</p>
<p>
It depends on the college. The SCEA/REA admit rate is expected to be notably higher than the RD admit rate due a generally more qualified applicant pool, as well as a greater portion being the “special cases” you listed . However, the ratio between the SCEA admit rate and the RD admit rate can be completely different at schools with similar general selectivity, suggesting a different degree of benefit. For example, this year Harvard’s SCEA admit rate was ~21%, and their RD admit rate was ~3%. In contrast, Stanford’s SCEA admit rate was ~11%, and their RD admit rate was ~4%. Both schools had a similar overall admit rate between 5 and 6%, and Stanford probably has more “special cases” due to a greater athletic emphasis with recruited scholarship athletes and such, yet Harvard admitted a tremendously larger percentage of their class via SCEA than Stanford, leading to a what is likely a substantially different degree of benefit from applying SCEA at Harvard and Stanford. Note that the RD admit rates above do not consider deferred candidates since I do not have stats on the number of deferred admits.</p>
<p>An older study that attempts to measure the degree of benefit for ED and EA at selective colleges is at <a href=“http://web.stanford.edu/~jdlevin/Papers/EarlyAdmissions.pdf”>http://web.stanford.edu/~jdlevin/Papers/EarlyAdmissions.pdf</a> . They found applying ED led to a similar average increase in chance of admission to increasing M+CR SAT score by ~175 points, after controlling for a variety of other factors, including “special cases”, such as legacies. </p>