<p>Yale has EA but if you apply EA there you are prohibited from applying EA or ED elsewhere. Harvard has no early program. The rest you list have only ED. Your post indicates that you are not certain you absolutely want to go to one of those ED schools over all the rest and in that situation I do not recommend ED. Chances of ED are better at Hopkins or WUSTL than others but you have chance at all assuming future test scores are good.</p>
<p>You can look up the ED/EA vs. RD acceptance rates for all of those schools, to get an idea where there is an admissions advantage. I think the Princeton Review book has those numbers for schools that make them available. Some are also available here:</p>
<p>Also, do you have access to Naviance at your school? If not, search this board for some Naviance guest login/passwords for other schools, and look at the difference in results for ED/EA and RD for your schools. WUSTL doesn’t make their ED acceptance rates available, but anecdotally they seem to be higher than their RD rates. (My son is a WUSTL ED admit.)</p>
<p>Yale is REALLY tough to get admitted to, so unless your stats are exceptional, I wouldn’t recommend to “waste” your one EA/ED chance there. </p>
<p>BTW, a few other top schools with non-binding EA, so you can apply to multiple schools, are U. Chicago and Notre Dame.</p>
<p>The more popular the school (e.g., USNWR ranking), the less likely ED/EA confers an admissions advantage over RD. The difference between ED/EA and RD acceptance rates at these schools is mostly due to the differences between the features of the two populations. The USNWR article above ignores this issue, but it is pointed out in the comments below the article.</p>