This is the time of year when the team at Great College Advice get calls from parents and students asking whether they should apply to college via Early Decision (ED), Early Action (EA) or Regular Decision (RD). This decision is a very important one, especially if you are considering some of the more selective colleges and universities in the country.
For those new to the process, perhaps it might be helpful to discuss the differences between RD, ED, and EA.
Regular Decision, Early Decision and Early Action
- Regular decision is the normal process by which students apply by published deadlines, with a promise of receiving an admissions decision no later than April 1 of their senior year. Some colleges will give admissions decisions well before April 1, but the student is under no obligation to make a decision about whether to attend until the common response date of May 1.
- Early decision is a binding promise. Under this program, students apply early (usually by November 1 or November 15, depending on the college), and will receive their admissions decisions early–usually by December 15. In return for this early decision, the student, parents, and school counselor sign a pledge that, if accepted, they will attend that college. The student agrees to withdraw all other applications, and not accept any other offers of admission.
- Early action programs are a hybrid. Students may apply early under these early action programs and receive an early admissions decision. However, the student is under no obligation to accept the offer of admission and can wait until May 1 to select which college to attend.
When Should A Student Apply Early Decision?
I advise that students apply ED only
- when the college in question is clearly the student’s first choice,
- and when the family does not require need-based aid so will not have to compare college offers.
Some people point out that, statistically speaking, it is easier to get into a college during the ED process than RD. Thus, they ask me whether it isn’t a better strategy to apply early. The answer is yes–but only if you agree to forsake all other admissions and financial aid offers.
Many colleges accept as much as 30-35% (sometimes much more–see below) of their entire freshman class in the ED process. Liberal arts colleges, for example, may accept as much as 60% of the incoming class in the early application rounds. These early decision acceptance rates help colleges to drive down the overall acceptance rates, which helps colleges to rise in the rankings. And usually, the pool of ED applicants is smaller than the regular pool. So in a statistical sense, a qualified applicant has a better shot of admission in an ED process than in the regular process.
(For more on the statistical analysis of how this works, see the book The Early Admissions Game: Joining the Elite by Christopher Avery, Andrew Fairbanks, and Richard Zeckhauser.)
However, keep in mind that what may be statistically true for an entire pool of applicants may not be true for an individual applicant. Admission is not a matter of randomized statistics. If a student does not possess at least the minimum requirements for entrance to a particular college, she will not somehow sneak past the admissions gate in the early round. The fact is that every selective college has many more qualified applicants than space available. The students who receive an early offer of admission are just as talented and capable of doing the work at that college. Early applicants are still judged on their merits in the ED process.
Early Decision: Financial Aid
Some elite colleges award financial aid only on the basis of need and offer zero merit aid. But most colleges compete for students by offering deep discounts and other financial inducements to bring in the customers. So, colleges love ED because they need to discount much less–if at all–because you are not able to price compare multiple offers like you potentially could by being accepted to multiple universities during the RD process.
- This does not mean, however, that a student who has financial need should necessarily avoid ED altogether. Many colleges, especially those that do not award merit-based aid anyway (e.g., the Ivy League) will still award solid financial aid packages based on the family’s ability to pay.
- Students with high financial needs should be able to get a solid, early offer of financial aid from an ED institution. (And since insufficient financial aid is the only legitimate reason to be released from the ED commitment to attend, financial aid offices do have good reason to work with less affluent students who are accepted under the Early Decision programs).
- Still, the ED system tends to discriminate against students with high financial needs in other, more subtle ways–ways that are not easy to prove. If a student with high financial need is qualified for admission, but not necessarily a clear stand-out in the eyes of the admissions officers, she may receive a deferral to the regular round to compete for an offer with everyone else.
The reason? A high-need student costs the institution more money. If the admissions office feels that they will have to pay a heavy price (in tuition discounts or scholarships) to admit a student in the ED round, then the college may as well release the student from the ED agreement so as to “shop around” for better customers.
ED is not a good idea who strive to pay the lowest price for their college education. If you don’t mind foregoing your ability to compare one financial aid package against another, then ED might be a good admissions strategy.
The one exception might be for a student with high financial need who is also a standout, both inside and outside the classroom, and who can identify a first-choice college. If offered admission in the early round, this student can work with the financial aid office to come up with a reasonable financial aid package. And the student should make it clear that if the package is not good enough. He will ask to be released from the ED and promise to matriculate.
Quality students with high financial need may very well receive a deferral to the regular round. But if a college accepts the student under ED, then that student suddenly has more power to bargain for a good package. But even in such cases, students lose the right to comparison shop: unless they go to the regular round, they will never know what sweet financial deals they might have received from another college.
Generally, we advise clients who are price sensitve (regardless of their true ability to pay) to pass up the ED option and apply regular decision. This is the only way to compare college financial aid offers.
What is ED2 (Early Decision 2)?
In addition to ED1, most selective colleges and universities now offer an ED2 round.
ED2 deadlines are usually January 1st or January 15th. You make the same promise to attend as with ED1. Apply early and you will receive a response from the college around February 15th. And if you receive an acceptance in February, you must withdraw all other applications to other schools.
Why have colleges created ED2? Because it helps them manage enrollment better and helps them to lower acceptance rates overall. They would rather lock a student into her second-choice university. Thereby improving its standing in the rankings by recalculating two key criteria: acceptance rates and yield rates.
To explain, the “yield rate” is the percentage of students who receive an offer of admission who actually enroll. Colleges want high yield rates. Harvard’s yield rate hovers around 80-85%. Other top colleges may have yield rates that are as low as 20-25%. By raising the percentage of students accepted in ED1 and ED2 together, the yield rate is bound to go higher. The promise students make under binding ED programs means that the yield rate is 100% for students in these pools.
So the expansion of early decision programs helps colleges to improve their yield rate.
Should you apply for ED2? Yes, if you have a clear second choice school.
When Should You NOT Apply Early Decision?
You should not apply early decision (ED) if:
- you do not have a reasonable chance of admission. You should not apply early decision if your test scores and academic performance (in other words, your GPA) are generally lower than the majority of students the college ordinarily admits.
- you are NOT one of the more privileged classes of applicants who have one or more admissions “hooks.” These hooks include recruited athletes, legacy students with a parent who attended, or underrepresented minorities.
Too often, applicants look at ED as a sort of miracle play. Students with standardized test scores and transcript grades that are mediocre will begin to think of ED as some sort of lottery: “I may not have a strong application, but hey, you never know…I might just get lucky.”
While luck plays a role in admissions, luck will not overcome lackluster test scores and ho-hum grades.
You can easily look up the “middle 50%” of test scores submitted by successful applicants to each college. If you have no hooks and you are below the middle 50%, your chances of admission at any of the top-tier schools that accept fewer than about 20% of their applicants are going to be very low. If you are in the lowest quartile of accepted applicants, your chances decrease to nearly zero.
For example, if you are a solid B+ student with a very good, but not awesome SAT score of 1350, you should not apply ED to the Ivy League. Your chances are super slim. Use your ED power where you are at or above the upper quartile of admitted students.
Apply Early Decision to a School You Love–and that Loves You Back
If you are not Ivy League or Stanford material, how should you play the ED game? Should you still go ahead and apply ED to the Ivy League or apply ED to Stanford anyway?
In a word: No.
Our recommendation is to focus on colleges and universities that will appreciate you for who you are. You need to focus on schools in which you are in (at least) the top half of the applicant pool.
If you apply ED to such a school, you are more likely to get accepted because you have made the promise to attend. These schools will look at your application as an opportunity. If your test scores are above their 50% line, you will help that school improve its statistics. If your grades are better than those of the average applicant, you will help that school raise its academic profile.
And if you don’t need financial aid and your family can pay the full cost of attendance, well then you will enhance that school’s bottom line.
You have given this school many reasons to love you, and if you are promising to attend if admitted…then you just helped that school lower its admissions rate, too.
And what if you are just below the average for the applicant pool at this university? Then luck–plus the ED promise–might just be enough to pull you into the accepted pile.
What about Early Action (EA)?
Generally speaking, I encourage EA applications whenever a student is certain he or she finds the school attractive. Even if the student is applying to ED somewhere else, if she can complete applications for other schools that accept EA applications, I say do it.
The only exception is in the case of students who meet two criteria. First, they must have grades and/or test scores that are not yet in the “zone” for a desired college. Second, they must commit to making considerable, noticeable, measurable academic progress in the first semester of the senior year.
Keep in mind, however, that it is very, very difficult to make this academic improvement in a single semester. The last-ditch effort can raise your cumulative high school GPA by only a modest amount. And here again, wishful thinking can cloud the decision-making process.
Too often I find students who will insist that they will work hard in their senior year to improve, only to fall back into old habits and make no significant improvement at all.
Therefore, it is better to focus on applying to schools within reach at the end of the junior year. Choose schools that are within your range. Choose schools that can still offer you the opportunities you seek and satisfy your college search criteria. A successful early action application to a school where you have a reasonable chance of admission will give you a mental and emotional boost in December. Just think how good it will feel going into the winter holiday with an acceptance letter in hand! Even if this school is not your number one choice, at least you’ll heave a sigh of relief that at least one highly desirable college has accepted you.
Early Decision or Early Action?
As with most things, the decision about whether to apply ED or EA depends on a lot of factors.
- I generally encourage students to apply ED to schools that they find highly desirable and where they stand a decent chance of admission.
- I encourage all students to submit at least one Early Action (EA) application. In fact, I tell students to submit EA to all schools on their list that accept early action applications.
- There is definitely an advantage to applying ED and EA. But only if you are realistic in assessing your chances of admission.
The admissions game is not a game of chance. It is not a spin of the wheel or a throw of the dice. You can reasonably asses and calculate your own chances of admission–based on a realistic comparison of your academic and testing profile with those of successful candidates in the past. Don’t believe in miracles; they generally do not happen in the world of college admission.
Nevertheless, play your hand intelligently and know how to play the admissions game. With that knowledge, you can raise your statistical chances of getting what you want from this process.
What is Restrictive Early Action?
These weird and wacky exceptions to the general ED and EA policies exist only at a few institutions. They happen to be some of the most difficult universities to get into: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford.
These schools offer a hybrid early application process that combines elements of both early decision and early action – Restricted Early Action (REA):
- First, these policies do not require the promise to attend. You can apply early to these schools without making a promise that you will attend if accepted.
- Second, these policies insist that you cannot apply to other schools in their early rounds. There may be certain exceptions. For example, you may apply to public universities in your home state, or you can apply early to schools that give away scholarships only to early candidates. So you really need to read the fine print.
Why don’t these schools force you to make the promise to attend? Because they don’t need to. Their yield rates are already the highest in the country. They say they don’t want to “burden” you by forcing you into this early promise. However, realities on the ground tell us that most will say “yes” to an offer of admission to these schools. In practice, once admitted to one of these schools, very few accepted students will go on to submit applications elsewhere.
So why do Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford force you not to apply early to any other schools? Because they can. Students are so eager to receive offers from these schools that they will forego other options for the possibility–however remote–of admission to one of these super-elite universities.
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