<p>Would someone please explain the difference between Early Decision and Early Action and Single Choice Early Action. If a student applies to a school with the Early Decision option, may s/he also apply to Early Action schools? If s/he is admitted EA but not ED must the student withdraw other applications, or is s/he permitted to apply to other schools regular decision? Thank you.</p>
<p>ED is binding-- EA is not.</p>
<p>Some of the Early Action schools require you to not apply to any binding ED schools at the same time. I believe Georgetown was one of these. You may still apply to any RD schools you want, or other EA programs.</p>
<p>ED: It's binding. Accepted students must commit to attend. No opportunity to compare financial aid packages from other schools. Students generally apply by Nov 1 or 15 and get a decision by Dec 15. Some schools (not many any more) have a second ED plan (ED II) with a decision in January or February. If you're deferred ED, you're no longer bound by the ED contract, which means that if you wind up being admitted in the RD round, you don't have to attend. </p>
<p>EA: Timetable is similar to ED, but EA is not binding, allows RD applications, and generally allows other early applications. You have to check specific schools' policies.</p>
<p>SCEA: A shrinking number of highly selective schools (I think it was down to Yale and Stanford this year) use SCEA. Students who submit SCEA apps can't submit ED or EA apps to other schools, but they can apply simultaneously to rolling admission schools (generally large publics) and they can apply anywhere RD. Students who are accepted in the SCEA round don't have to withdraw pending applications.</p>
<p>One final thing: As mamabear noted, some EA schools forbid simultaneous binding ED applications, but most don't. And a few ED schools forbid simultaneous EA applications (I think Brown does this), but most don't. I'm not sure why any of the ED schools does that -- since part of the deal is that if a school accepts an applicant ED the applicant is bound to go there, so all other applications are irrelevant -- but some do. </p>
<p>Obviously, a student can never have more than one ED application outstanding at a time. But it's fairly common to submit an ED application and one or a few EA applications, or just to have multiple EA applications, as long as none of the EA applications is SCEA.</p>
<p>thanks for your help everyone</p>
<p>If your ED application was defered, do you still have the same chance to get in compared with RD applicants.</p>
<p>girl2mom, I don't think anyone knows that for sure, but the only reasonable approximate answer is "yes". Colleges seem rarely to give information on how many ED students they defer, and never to give information about how many of those students are ultimately accepted. Anyone who has followed a few classes knows kids who were deferred ED and ultimately accepted, as well as kids who were deferred ED and ultimately not accepted.</p>
<p>There are two obvious factors at play: First, a student whose ED application was deferred is clearly not so compelling that the college felt it HAD to admit him or her (or so uninteresting that it felt it ought to reject the student). In the RD pool, absent some major additional information, the same application is probably still going to be one that, at best, could go either way. However, second, the admissions committee knows that, at one point at least, the college was absolutely that student's first choice, and the student was committed to enroll if admitted. Even though the contractual commitment doesn't apply in the RD round, if an admissions committee is looking at two otherwise identical students (something that never happens in reality, only hypothetically), it seems likely it would favor the student whose past behavior showed he or she loved that college more than anywhere else.</p>
<p>I know this isn't your question, OP, but am just offering up gratuitously the conventional wisdom from reading many CC posts. The only good reason to apply ED or perhaps even EA is because you absolutely feel this is your first choice school, after researching others. It seems to me that people who create ED apps only to improve on their admissions chances (and not sure if it's their real favorite), and then get accepted (and are bound by contract to GO) sometimes experience remorse. They wonder if it is really the best place for them, what their chances would have been had they waited to apply to several places RD (including that college). Although there's no evidence, generally colleges say that they offer the same FA package whether you're ED or RD, but people feel that they get offered less from the ED situation. And at least there's no chance to compare or attempt to interest a college in hiking up its aid with several acceptances in hand during April. </p>
<p>There's a difference, college by college, as to what percentage of the class is admitted ED. For example, stats I recall (don't know the current) at Amherst showed a very small percentage of the incoming class admitted ED (most deferred over to the RD round instead, some rejected outright). By contrast, at Brown and Vassar, I recall stats nearing 40% of the class admitted during the ED round. So you can't generalize from one school to another how much applying ED (or EA) will "improve" one's chances. Check on prior year stats from each college: what % of the freshman class was admitted ED. Don't cross-compare colleges or make broad assumptions that an ED or EA app "always" improves your acceptance chances by some 40%!</p>
<p>Another thing to consider is, if you wonder about taking a gap year, some colleges don't let you have it both ways: at some schools, ED precludes a deferred admission (gap year). Just another wrinkle there.</p>
<p>It's a lot to think about. Just wanted to throw all that out there, in case it's new to you.</p>
<p>You can see why an ED app is a great boon IF you are sure it's your first choice, and if you know it'll help your chances so much that it offsets your need to compare options (academic or financial) in April. Those folks are VERY happy to know their outcome by December! (my daughter)</p>
<p>The other famous pitfall is to apply ED and not work on the other apps at all, so if a deferral or rejection comes in in December, SUDDENLY there are 7 or 8 apps to do all that month, all due between Jan. 1 and 15. Say bye-bye to Christmas vacation! (my son-1). </p>
<p>BOTH have graduated college and are extremely happy with their outcomes as graduates, although daughter missed the gap year she longed for, and once he got there, S ended up loving one of the choices from his RD round MORE than the ED place that declined him in both rounds.</p>
<p>EDIT: EA came in after their two processes, so I don't know if you can say exactly the same things about EA and ED above. Usually I think "ED" when I write out their experiences, b/c that's all there was then.</p>
<p>P3t has edited her post, but the CC gods ought to see whether they can get their nanny software to allow people to use common adjectives and adverbs in English that end in -ful, or -fully, and the immediately preceding phoneme of which ends in -st-, such as wi*<strong><em>l, lu</em></strong><em>l, boa</em><strong><em>l, re</em></strong>*l. Really, we're not being rude to one another!</p>
<p>Thanks, JHS. I try to speak like a lady.</p>
<p>For those trying to figure out what happened, I used a word that has, in the middle, an unrelated four-letter series that is an abbreviation for, to express it nicely, "please stop talking immediately"</p>
<p>JHS is right, it's really silly to turn a word that means "longingly", or full of wishes, into something that sounds potty mouth and full of asterixes!</p>
<p>Thanks for defending my honor.</p>