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<li><p>Just to be clear: All “Early Decision” acceptances are binding on the applicant. But “Early Action” acceptances aren’t. Colleges have either one or the other program, or none; I don’t know of any college with both. Yale and Stanford are both “Early Action” colleges, although uniquely they forbid early action applicants from applying EA or ED anywhere else. There are lots of other Early Action colleges that don’t have that rule – MIT, Cal Tech, the University of Chicago, Georgetown, Boston College, to name a few. </p></li>
<li><p>Legacies: A couple of years ago, a friend was told by a senior admissions officer at Harvard that the admission rate at Harvard for Yale and Princeton legacies was not meaningfully lower than the admission rate for Harvard legacies. Obviously, they don’t publish that data. I would be surprised if Yale is much different.</p></li>
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