When, if ever, should one switch from early action (not ED) to regular? Ever ok to ask the schools?

We thought fall semester grades would be available in time to send to schools before they make early action decisions. As it turns out, our school does not release grades until mid-late January, which is the time early action decisions come out. Now wondering if we should switch since grades for fall semester are best she’s ever gotten, and will raise her cum.gpa. We had thought EA was a good option because less competition. How do you guage which advantage is better? Less competition or higher gpa??

Waiting for first semester grades to boost cum GPA is one of the best reasons people do not apply EA or ED. How much will this affect your daughter’s chances? Hard to say w/o knowing the school or the GPA boost she’ll be getting.

We thought her school would be sending grades earlier.
UVA, UNC CH, UWisc. Mad. Our HS is highly ranked. Her Scores are in line with these schools. GPA was 3.67. First 2 quarters of sr. year gpa has been 4.0. Many APs.

It’s not true that there is less competition EA, schools like BC specifically state that there is MORE competition EA. DO those schools defer everyone EA or do they reject too? If they defer it won’t make a difference because the app will just be pushed to RD. I’m not positive about this but couldn’t you send the first quarter grades if they’re out just to give the schools a sense of how she’s doing? I’m pretty sure my school sent first quarter grades to EA schools but I could be wrong.

Thanks. We did send her fall Q1 grades to some schools that would take them from us. 2 schools wouldn’t take them because not from school. It was an E-report card generated by the school, but it came from us not school (they wouldn’t send for some reason.). We haven’t gotten the “E-report card” yet for Q2. We will try to send those.

Indeed. In part because these students do not need senior year grades for a competitive application.