I know there is usually a hard date such as Dec 15th or Jan 15th for when you can know if you’ve been accepted to a EA or an ED school. But will schools ever issue a decision early? Like for students who are clearly qualified for a school, will they get accepted sooner? Or does everyone get their decision on the same date.
I understand rolling decision works like this, where acceptances come as application come, but I am talking normal EA or ED.
They usually release on the same date for all.
To add on what CU123 posted, for EA/ED, each school will release all decisions on the same date. But the date is specific to the school.
For ED/EA - the Ivies will each have their own date. Usually it is not released until a week or so before decisions, maybe even a day or so before decisions. For RD, all of the Ivies release on the same date (“Ivy Day”) and the date is published well ahead of time.
Many public schools will not release EA decisions until January.
Most schools will say “by mid December”, but sometimes it is earlier than December 15. Sometimes it is later. It depends on the size of the applicant pool. Many schools have a typical release date (such as 2nd Friday of December).
UMich EA admission notice is typically sent over a few days starting from the Friday before the official date (which is typically around Christmas Eve). For deferral notice, it comes out a bit later.