<p>you don’t have to have one math/science teacher rec and one humanities rec. I had both my APUSH and my APEL teachers write me recs as those were my strongest subjects and I have great relationships with those teachers.</p>
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<p>My standard answer (note – when I present advice as a statement, you should take it as a possibility, which you should consider and turn over in your head, and potentially discard) to this is that if I think you have a pretty good shot, apply SCEA. If you’re the kind of student S is waiting to reject from past rounds’ experience then wait it out, because AOs are human, are not going to defer a huge portion of SCEA applicants, and might just chuck you if you’re at the very, very weak end of the SCEA pool. “Weak” meaning by their criteria.</p>
<p>You yourself don’t seem like you have a terrible chance at S, so I’d say SCEA is fine, and go for it. And as a note, I have advised other posters that I don’t see them getting in SCEA, so I’m speaking in earnest.</p>
<p>thanks for the elaborate answer! I was wondering about this because I had heard that you shouldn’t apply SCEA unless you’re a very strong applicant; if you’re not you have better chances RD. I sort of have my hopes set on stanford so I’d rather not rush things and do what is more applicable to me. thanks for the awesome advice though!:)</p>
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<p>Basically there isn’t necessarily evidence to support this claim as far as I know, and as far as quite a few other posters have seen. The advantage to SCEA could also be perceived to be that you’re showing a heightened interest in the school. </p>
<p>However, one thing is clear: when you’re applying early, you should apply somewhere that you’d both be quite happy to attend, and somewhere you think you have a strong application for. Just if anything, for the satisfaction of getting in somewhere wonderful early. For instance, I could see certain math/science fans having stronger applications for Caltech, and if they liked that school a lot, but still had S as the first choice, I’d say apply to S RD, and the former early.</p>