<p>I understand Early Decision; it allows colleges to admit students who are definitely committed to attending, which helps protect yield. </p>
<p>But why do colleges offer Early Action? What benefit does it have to the school? Is it just a way to lighten the load of the RD cycle, or does it benefit the school in some other way?</p>
<p>And what about SCEA? I understand how it works, but I don't understand its purpose. If it's not binding the students to attend, then what does it matter if they apply EA or ED to other schools? How does restricting their EA app to one school benefit the school?</p>
<p>Colleges offer Early Action as a service to applicants who want to know an early outcome and, if the applicant is accepted, it gives the school a longer time to court the admittee into attending.</p>
<p>Restricted EA is practiced by a few schools who don’t want frivolous applications. They want to extend the benefit and enjoy the opportunity as I’ve outlined above – they just don’t want a flood of “impossible dreamer” applicants. By restricting, they assume that dreamer kid gets a dose of reality and instead, applies early to more realistic target schools. If he could apply early to college X and for EA to Stanford, why not apply to both? But if he’s restricted to one or the other, he’s forced to realistically choose.</p>
<p>I will echo the extra time to get courted for EA schools (and even early rolling admissions). While waiting on an (unlikely) EA decision, I recently heard from a public university on a scholarship there. They released decisions already (ages before most schools release anything), and I’ve already gotten courted with emails/phone calls from people in the specific school/major/advising services, etc. Analytically, I’m able to recognize that they have much more time than most schools do to ‘sell’ me, thus upping the chances I’ll attend.</p>
<p>I’d also think that EA is a way for a lot of schools to get a good idea of their class early on, which is helpful in looking at class composition, as well as getting the kids who are on top of their game with regards to apps; SCEA gets the same committed kids that would typically get ED, but for example, I applied SCEA to a school instead of ED to another (though I like the ED school more) largely because of financial aid. I have to be able to compare offers, and ED simply does not allow me to do that, so (SC)EA might also target more upper-middle class families unsure of their aid situations.</p>
<p>Re: restricted or single-choice early action</p>
<p>In practice, it appears that those schools are trying to avoid someone applying EA to several schools in what they consider their peer groups, since they state that the REA/SCEA applicants are not restricted from applying early (but not ED) to large numbers of other schools like:
public schools (though some may limit this to home state public schools)
schools where applying early is needed for merit scholarships