<p>Yale will obviously be a reach, but am I qualified candidate for Early Action? Yale is a top choice for me. </p>
<p>UW GPA: 4.0
W GPA: 4.3
Academic Rigor: taken most rigorous courses available each year (two 4s on AP exams, four 5s)
ACT: 35
SAT I: 2290
CR: 800
M: 770
W: 720
SAT II : Math II: 790 (two more planned for Oct and/or Nov (I checked, these dates are okay with Yale))
ECs: Volunteering, Athletics, Student Government, Girls State, other clubs (nothing spectacular in terms of leadership, but ECs every year)</p>
<p>Caucasian Female</p>
<p>Basically, what I'm asking is, are chances truly better with EA, or is EA competition greater? Is it worth it (in general or with my applications), to do single choice early action if you are interested in the college?</p>
<p>If Yale is your top choice, then you have nothing to lose if you apply early. If you are planning to apply to a bunch of schools though and Yale is not necessarily your top choice, you could apply in the next cycle (especially with SCEA). EA shows that you are beyond a doubt interested in Yale that you have made the choice to do SCEA. Remember you can also be deffered, so it’s not like you have only two options. However, if you want things such as first semester accomplishments to show up, you could wait until RD. From the looks of it, you certainly are qualified, but only you can weight the costs and benefits</p>
<p>@shawspencer @ucbalumnus Thanks for your help. Yale is the only school I am considering applying EA for. I know it is single choice and I know ED is out if I do apply SCEA. This is my dilemma: Columbia really is my first choice (Yale is definitely my second), but ED concerns me from a financial aspect. How much can they work with you? What are the consequences, if any, of turning it down due to financial reasons? I have run net price calculators for both, and Yale’s is better, but I can’t know with super high accuracy because my parents are divorced. I could likely afford both, but am hesitant with ED due to finances. Maybe I just don’ know enough about ED.</p>
<p>The main thing is, when you get the ED admission and financial aid package, you have to accept or decline it then, without being able to compare it with other schools’ financial aid offers.</p>
<p>If you have a net price in mind that you need to see, and are comfortable deciding on just a comparison to your target net price, then that is different from the situation of wondering whether you will get a better net price somewhere else that you may choose at the better net price.</p>
<p>I would urge you to apply EA, if it’s your top choice. Yale was my top choice, but I didn’t apply EA because I didn’t want to not get in early, but I now wish I’d just applied EA, because I ended up getting into more schools than I would’ve liked, and my decision was much harder, ultimately. </p>
<p>Also: Yale’s deferred student acceptance rate is still higher than the RD acceptance rate. </p>
<p>Since you’re choosing between Columbia and Yale to apply early to, I will say (with regard to the financial aid issue) that Columbia was slightly cheaper for me (by about $1000), but the packages were very similar. But obviously that can vary, person to person.</p>
<p>@Tanboyrunfast Thanks for your feedback. Yale is looking slightly less expensive based on net price calculators, but it is hard to be exact due to family situation, and of course it is an estimation. Did you get into Yale? Where did you end up attending?</p>
<p>I was accepted to Yale, and I chose to attend (It was my first choice all along). But, I do spend a lot of time thinking about whether it was the right decision or not, and some days I feel like I made the wrong decision and I should be going to Stanford, or Columbia, or I think that I should’ve picked a liberal arts college for that environment (Williams, Amherst, or Pomona). But these feelings usually pass pretty quickly, and I’m pretty sure that I made the right decision.</p>
<p>I also attend a pretty small, very competitive magnet school. Being around students who were rejected by the schools I had been accepted to made me feel pretty bad for having so many acceptances, especially the schools I really wasn’t considering anymore.</p>
<p>If I had been accepted to Yale early, I wouldn’t have applied anywhere else, and I think I would’ve been so overjoyed that I wouldn’t ever be thinking on my decision.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Does the price difference matter in choosing between the schools?</p></li>
<li><p>Is your family financial situation relatively simple (married parents’ income is mostly wage/salary that does not vary much), or complicated enough so that net price calculators are less reliable (divorced parents, highly variable income, income from small business ownership or rental real estate, etc.)?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>@ucbalumnus Yes, thanks for all your help. These are some things I will have to think about. While these calculators are less reliable for me and financial aid is a must, there is unlikely to be a large enough difference between either school that would automatically throw one school out.</p>
<p>If you think you’d still choose Columbia over Yale given similar aid packages, I’d apply ED to Columbia. They give good aid and Yale is unlikely to give you much more or less than Columbia because as far as I know their aid policies are pretty similar. </p>
<p>In my opinion, applying early when there is a constraint - (ED or SCEA) is always a tough call. </p>
<p>In your case, both Columbia and Yale are very difficult to gain admissions. Yale says that applying SCEA does not increase your chances. I think recently someone showed at Harvard that it did in fact increase your chances, probably because they underestimated the number of RD applications and therefore the competition was much greater in the RD round. The opposite would be true of they overestimated the number of RD applications. </p>
<p>ED however, definitely increases your chances, always. With ED you basically have to accept or reject the financial aid package before you’ve seen what your options are. That’s unacceptable to some. </p>
<p>If Columbia is your first choice, you definitely increase your risk of not getting in by not applying ED. In other words, applying (ED Columbia & RD Yale) is more likely to get you into one of the two schools than (SCEA Yale & RD Columbia). </p>