<p>ED can make Christmas and President’s Day a lot less stressful. It doesn’t do much for Columbus Day or Thanksgiving.</p>
<p>Of course, there’s always the possibility of a nasty surprise that makes Christmas (and beyond) much more stressful. But that’s still better than not learning you made a serious error assessing your chances until late March, when your other options are really, really limited. At least in December you have a few weeks to course-correct if that’s necessary. That happened with a friend of one child. She applied ED to the college she (and her counselors) thought of as her safety, because that’s where she really wanted to go. She barely worked on other applications, because why bother? She was deferred, and it was a wake-up call to everyone. The next few weeks and months were awful for her, but nowhere near as awful as the spring and summer might have been if she had only applied to her “safety” and a few reaches and been rejected everywhere.</p>