How to make smart use of Early Decision and Early Action
There are benefits to applying either Early Decision or Early Action under the right circumstances. It is important for high schoolers and their parents to understand the differences between Early Decision and Early Action in order to use these options smartly to gain admission to one of the highly selective colleges.
What are Early Decision and Early Action?
Early Decision
Early Decision is binding, meaning that if you are accepted pursuant to your Early Decision application, you must accept the offer and attend that college.
Not all colleges offer Early Decision. For those that do, some offer a single ED phase while others offer 2 phases, ED1 and ED2 with different application deadlines.
Applicants are allowed to submit only one Early Decision application per phase.
Application deadlines typically fall on either November 1 or 15 for colleges with a single ED phase or ED1. while ED2 deadlines are usually on or about January 1 to 15.
Acceptances for single phase ED and ED1 are typically issued around December 15, though some will be earlier. ED2 acceptances are issued mid-February.
Early Decision applications are submitted through the Common App just like in Regular Decision applications.
Early Action
Early Action is non-binding, meaning that if you are accepted pursuant to your Early Action application, you are not bound to accept it. You can wait till May 1 to decide.
Not all colleges offer Early Action. There is typically only one application phase for Early Action.
There are no limits on how many Early Action applications an applicant submits.
Application deadlines for Early Action typically fall on either November 1 or 15.
Acceptances are typically issued shortly after ED1 acceptances, usually by the 3rd week of December to early January.
Early Action applications are submitted through the Common App just like in Regular Decision applications.
Why apply Early Decision?
The acceptance rates for Early Decision applicants are substantially higher than for Regular Decision applicants - this is the biggest attraction for and advantage of applying Early Decision to the highly selective colleges.
Even colleges with notoriously low single digit acceptance rates like Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, Johns Hopkins, University of Pennsylvania, Claremont-McKenna, Pomona and Williams College accept applicants through Early Decision at 3 to 4 times the rate they accept applicants through Regular Decision.
At some colleges, Early Decision acceptances range as high as 60% or more such as at Villanova University and Colgate University. At all top colleges that offer Early Decision, their acceptance rates for Early Decision are many times higher than for Regular Decision.
If you dream of attending one of these top colleges, you raise your chances of acceptance very substantially by applying Early Decision.
You can see a complete table of Early Decision, Early Action and Regular Decision acceptance rates at the highly selective colleges in The 61 Colleges with Low Acceptance Rates.
Why are colleges accepting Early Decision applicants at such high rates compared to Regular Decision?
Colleges value the commitment that Early Decision applicants make to attend the college if accepted, and they reciprocate by accepting early applicants in higher numbers. By accepting Early Decision applicants at much higher rates, colleges incentivize applicants to apply Early Decision.
More importantly, colleges actively manage a very important metric called the yield which measures the percentage of applicants accepted by the college who end up matriculating to the college.
The yield is an important component of the college rankings score - the higher the yield the better the score.
By accepting a substantial percentage of applicants through Early Decision, colleges improve their yields significantly, helping to boost their scoring for the college rankings.
Yield metrics are available for the highly selective colleges in The 61 Colleges with Low Acceptance Rates.
To apply Early Decision to that one special college, make sure that:
It is a “dream” college that you will be absolutely thrilled to attend if you are accepted. The acceptance is binding, and you lose all options to attend another college.
The amount of financial aid you will need to attend college is not an issue for you.
Even though you may be notified of your financial aid package simultaneously with your acceptance, and you will be stuck if the amount offered is inadequate and you cannot find a reasonable way to solve the financial shortfall. At some colleges, you will not be notified of your financial aid award till some months after you have been accepted meaning you commit without knowledge if you can actually afford the college.
Even though you can be released from an obligation to attend due to financial hardship, you will not have an alternative college to attend at that point and you end up going through the entire application process again.
The downside of Early Decision
It requires an early commitment to a college and takes away all other options. You must be very sure this is a college you will be thrilled to attend, if accepted.
The timeline for an Early Decision application is compressed. The application deadline is 2 months earlier in November instead of January when Regular Decision applications are due.
The shortened timeframe requires that you have your best possible test score in the bag in time for your application. Test scores are crucial for Early Decision.
For the class of 2027, the last viable test date for taking the SAT is November 5, 2022, and the last viable test date for taking the ACT is October 22, 2022.
Your teacher recommendations are due 2 months earlier, and your package and request to your teachers must be made much earlier.
Your essay must be finalized 2 months earlier as well.
Your application for financial aid must be ready for filing on the same day as your application for admission.
If you depend on receiving adequate financial aid to fund your college costs, then you are taking a big risk in applying Early Decision. You are committing to attend a college without confirmation that you will have the funds to pay the costs of attendance.
Who is Early Decision for?
It is for you if:
you are very confident of your college choice, and
you are very confident that you will be able to meet the costs of attendance regardless of the financial aid award.
The best use of the Early Decision option is for application to that “dream” college, whether it is a “stretch” or “right fit” school - the chances of admission are much better than they could ever be during Regular Decision.
Some applicants looking for certainty, use their Early Decision option on a “right fit” school. This is great so long as they would be thrilled to attend no matter what.
Benefits of ED1 and ED2
Colleges with ED 1 and ED2 phases provide applicants with 2 chances at securing a position at a top college early.
Since ED1 acceptances are issued in mid-December, applicants who were not successful in that phase will have time to prepare and submit an application in ED2 by January 1 to another college.
Whether it’s ED1 or ED2, an applicant is limited to one Early Decision application per phase.
Early Action
Unlike Early Decision, there are no limits on how many colleges you can apply to Early Action.
An Early Action acceptance is non-binding, and you can wait till you receive your Regular Decision acceptances before you make a final decision on which college to attend.
However, acceptance rates for Early Action applications are similar to acceptance rates for Regular Decision applications. Applicants do not increase their chances of admission by applying Early Action.
So why apply Early Action?
Get a head start with your top choice colleges
Even though only 13 of the highly selective colleges offer Early Action, you can get a head start by applying Early Action to the ones that are on your college list.
Since the acceptances are non-binding, this puts you in a very good position to wait till you receive your Regular Decision acceptances before deciding which college you want to attend.
The 13 top colleges that offer Early Action include Babson College, Colorado College, Georgetown University, Georgia Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Northeastern University, Tulane University, University of Michigan, University of Chicago, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, University of Southern California, University of Virginia and Villanova University.
Hedge your financial aid risk by applying Restrictive Early Action
Another 5 colleges offer Restrictive Early Action - California Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Stanford University, University of Notre Dame and Yale University. Princeton University has reinstated its Restrictive Early Action program for the 2022/2023 application cycle.
The REA programs typically limit who you can apply to simultaneously - ED and EA applications to private colleges are off-limits, though you can still apply to public and foreign universities with non-binding programs.
This is a great option for applicants with very strong academics and extra-curricular activities, but who will need certainty in the amount of financial aid before committing to the college.
Lock in your “safety” school
For applicants who want comfort and certainty as they proceed with college applications, applying Early Action to their “safety” schools locks in one or more “safeties” to fall back on early in the process no matter what happens with the Early Decision or Regular Decision applications.
Check out acceptance rates for Early Decision, Early Action and Regular Decision at the Best of the Rest Colleges.
The downside of applying Early Action
The biggest downside to applying Early Action is the compressed timeline. The same concerns apply here as they do to Early Decision.
The application deadlines for Early Action are the same as those for Early Decision meaning that you must achieve your best possible test score much earlier than if you applied Regular Decision. For the class of 2027, the last viable test date for taking the SAT is November 5, 2022, and the last viable test date for taking the ACT is October 22, 2022.
You have to gather your teacher recommendations 2 months earlier and your essay has to be ready 2 months earlier.
Well prepared students can proceed comfortably with Early Action , but those who have not set their preparations in motion early enough will have a very stressful time without necessarily achieving the result they desire.
Do what’s best for you
The advantages and disadvantages of applying early have been laid out above.
The big question you now need to ask yourself is how prepared are you to apply by November 1 or 15.
Will your essay be in good enough shape by then?
Are you ready with your information package for your recommenders so you can make your request your first day back in school for Fall term.
Are your test scores within the target ranges yet? You have 2 chances left for the SAT and only one more chance with the ACT to reach the target scores.
If you can answer these questions affirmatively and with confidence, then you are on track to apply early. If not, you may be better off applying Regular Decision where you have 2 additional months to polish your essay, get your recommendations and take one extra try at getting your test scores within the target ranges.
See: Application and Financial Aid Deadlines for Top Colleges 2022/2023
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