The Truth About Applying Early?

Applying to College
1

<p>Somebody help, I am hopelessly confused.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>What is the difference between applying EA or ED besides the whole binding/ non-binding thing? Does one have a higher acceptance rate?</p></li>
<li><p>Is it true that the only kids who apply early are those who don't need financial aid? Because I need financial aid. Would there be a difference between the aid I get early and the aid I get through regular decision?</p></li>
<li><p>The biggie: does applying early increase my chances of admissions? Should I apply early to target or reach schools? Also, is the early applicant pool stronger than the regular?</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Thank you to whoever reads all this! I need some guidance!</p>

2

<p>Wow embarrassing. I meant 3 not 4.</p>

3

<ol>
<li><p>Every school’s EA and EDs stats are unique so it’s hard to generalize, but I’d say at many schools ED admit rates appear to be higher than EA admit rates at schools that offer only the latter. That may just reflect the types of schools that only offer EA, however. </p></li>
<li><p>A higher percentage of full-pays probably apply ED because they figure, what have I got to lose? Some applicants with financial need do apply ED. I’d be careful in choosing my spots, though. Every school is going to tell you that you’ll get the same aid package whether you apply ED or RD, because they follow the same formula. But the thing is, at most schools you won’t know in advance what that aid package is and whether it’s affordable, and you won’t be able to compare aid packages across schools. I certainly wouldn’t advise applying ED to any school that doesn’t meet 100% of need, because they might “gap” you for a large amount. And even among schools that promise to meet 100% of need, “need” is often defined differently from school to school, and different schools offer different mixes of grants, loans,and work-study. So there’s some risk in applying ED if you have financial need; probably greater risk at some schools than at others. There’s no financial risk in applying EA, because that’s non-binding; if you don’t like their offer, you’re free to keep shopping. </p></li>
<li><p>You hear different things from different schools about whether applying early increases your chances of admission. Most will say yes, if you’re the kind of candidate we’re looking for, applying early will help you. But it probably won’t help if your stats are sub-par for the school; they’ll just figure they can do better in the RD round. Exactly how much it helps is again going to vary by school, but in many cases it won’t be as much as appears just from the naked stats. Many schools (especially those that emphasize athletics but don’t give athletic scholarships) use ED to “lock in” recruited athletes, the ones the coaches are lobbying for. Many also give special consideration to legacy applicants in the ED or EA round. For applicants who don’t have that kind of “hook,” applying ED or EA is probably most helpful if your stats are above the middle of their typical entering class. One of the things they’re trying to do in the early round (especially ED) is to establish a core of the class with strong stats, that then puts them in a stronger position to meet their target stats as they move through the rest of the admissions process. (Also they may be looking for some high-stats ED admits to balance off some of the recruited athletes whose stats might be a bit low for the school). And depending on the school, they may need to accept some slightly weaker applicants toward the end of the RD process or as they’re trying to fill up the class from a waitlist. With all that in mind, it wouldn’t make much sense to give special consideration to an unhooked applicant with weaker stats during the ED cycle, because that’s just going to make it harder to reach their targets later on. So I’d say applying ED probably helps you most with match-type schools.</p></li>
</ol>

4

<p>Thank you! So helpful.</p>

5

<p>I’m not an admissions officer or a college application expert. Take my answers with some grains of salt.</p>

<p>1) No school I know of has both an EA and an ED admissions cycle; it’s either EA or ED. However, data for EA/ED vs. RD for schools that do both rounds almost always show a higher acceptance rate for EA/ED than for RD. It can’t be said if EA has a higher acceptance rate than ED (or vice versa) because no school (at least, not one that I’m familiar with) offers both EA and ED.</p>

<p>2) Definitely not for EA, because of its non-binding nature. It’s reasonable to assume that many ED applicants don’t need FA (though, of course, you can opt out of an ED acceptance if their FA package isn’t good enough). I don’t think that FA packages for ED vs. RD would be any different, but I’m not 100% sure of that.</p>

<p>3) Many deans of admissions (including Harvard’s and Yale’s) have said this about EA/ED: that they only accept those that would 100% be accepted RD anyway. In that sense, applying EA/ED doesn’t increase your chances of acceptance. However, applying early (especially to an ED or restrictive/single-choice EA) shows some modicum of “Hey, you’re my first-choice,” which can’t hurt.</p>

<p>In that vein, I’d recommend you apply early to reach schools, assuming your stats & application are up to par. It seems many EA/ED schools, including Harvard and Yale, defer a majority of their applicants (Stanford is much more heavy-handed with the rejections, though). So, it doesn’t hurt to submit your application early to a reach school, have them defer you, and then get a second chance/second read come the RD round in the spring.</p>

<p>The early applicant pool is probably stronger. However, my take on that phenomenon is that the early applicant pool is smaller than the RD pool. The slackers, last-minute applicants, etc. all go into the RD pool, which decreases the RD pool’s overall strength. It’s my opinion, then, that the early applicant pool is stronger not because it has more strong students, but because the RD pool has more weak students.</p>