Does applying with non-binding early action increase your chance of being accepted?
No you just get decisions earlier.
Of course, we can’t prove it increased her chances, but our gut feeling is yes, it helped her chances of acceptance by applying non-binding EA, where applicable.
She got all of her applications in early, even to those that were not officially EA applications. She didn’t feel like much would change, grade-wise or EC-wise, first semester of senior year, so she sent everything in.
Her HS has Naviance, and she looked at the acceptance rate data of EA vs. RD for previous classes and concluded there might be an advantage to applying EA.
It was very nice to have acceptance decisions (& merit) by mid-December.
Good luck!