The title pretty much says it…what if I apply in the ED program of Cornell and also apply early to some other private univ?
First examine the Corne;l admissions page and check any restrictions on ED. And what do you mean by applying ‘early’ to some other private? ED, EA, or just sending RD ‘early’.
I meant,what if someone applies to a school through restrictive early decision,but also applies to other private colleges early…is this possible or will that person just not be able to submit his app to other colleges?
you can apply to colleges that offer non-restricted early action such as MIT, Caltech, Uchicago, and Case Western Reserve University in addition to Cornell Ed.
You can apply to another private university Early Action, if allowed. You cannot apply to another college ED, nor will the Common App (or your GC, for that matter) let you apply to another private college ED.
You can apply wherever you feel like, as early as the applications become available. However, you can only indicate that ONE of those applications is an Early Decision application. For institutions that offer Early Action, you need to check their specific policies, because some will not allow you to apply in that category anywhere else.
If there is a chance that money will be an issue for you, the general advice is to apply early to several Rolling Admissions institutions that will let you know if you have been admitted and if you have been awarded Merit Aid before you are likely to get a Yes/No answer from any ED institutions that may or may not be affordable for you.
Applying early to multiple schools is entirely possible–our daughter applied ED to her top school and early action to three privates–you just have to sweat the details a bit.
As you know, there are lots of different flavors (early decision I/II, early action I/II, restrictive or single choice early action, rolling admissions, schools with multiple priority windows), and the terms and conditions can vary widely–especially for restrictive early action.
While there are some general rules, like only being able to apply to one ED school at a time, the bottom line is that what you can do and when is nearly always situation-specific. There’s a nifty program called College Kickstart (www.college-kickstart.com/features) that tracks all of the terms and conditions and helps you figure this out painlessly. All you have to do is provide it a rank ordered list of schools you’re interested in and your academic profile and it’ll come up with the recommendations from there. It knows, for example, that applying ED to Cornell means that it’s OK to apply EA to Northeastern and rolling to Penn State but not REA to Boston College. Or that applying to two schools Early Decision can be perfectly appropriate so long as they are not simultaneous (e.g ED I vs. ED II).
Good luck–early admission is a really important concept/opportunity and worth the time to understand.
The problem is if you get in ED to Cornell and also get into MIT. You still have to go to Cornell
@saphireny, absolutely. ED is binding so the moment you’re admitted you have to withdraw your other applications. But if you’re deferred or denied, the other early opportunities are completely in play. Hearing back from these schools in December can make for a much more pleasant holiday break 
This is not quite true. You have to withdraw your other applications once you determine the FA offer makes the school affordable. You don’t get to compare FA offers since FA offers for EA students go out with RD students (generally).