My daughter is applying for regular admission at a college that doesn’t offer rolling admission - i.e., everyone not applying ED gets their application in by December 31st and everyone hears back at the same time in the spring.
In this situation, is there any disadvantage to having waited until late December to apply? A friend tells me that it would have benefitted my daughter to have applied earlier (to be clear, she didn’t mean ED, she meant getting into the queue for regular admissions earlier rather than later.)
Does anyone know if this is true? Thanks for any intel, and I apologize if this has been discussed in another thread. (if so, I couldn’t find it.)
If she is applying under a non-rolling RD program it doesn’t matter when the application gets in as long as it it before the deadline. Try to not wait until the very last second in case there is a computer glitch or something like that.
@happy1 is absolutely right!
I applied to my two EA schools, Chapman and Drexel, the night of Oct 31st (the day before the Nov 1st deadline), and I’m applying for a dance major so they both required audition videos (I’m international). So because of scheduling issues and studio times, I had to wait until the deadline date to film my auditions with my dance teacher, then I had to edit them and upload my applications the same night. I started uploading around 11pm but my WiFi decided to act up right then and they were taking forever, so I uploaded my CommonApps in the meantime, and paid the Drexel app fee without a problem, but then the payment for Chapman would not go through from Flywire so I couldn’t upload the app, (even though we paid twice and I got confirmation from Flywire that the payment was received). Anyway, I had a really long email exchange with CommonApp for weeks after that and then finally decided to email Flywire direct a few weeks ago. They said they had gotten the app fee (by this time, my Chapman EA app still had not gone through and I was also emailing their admissions dept saying it was out of my control, I was doing everything I can to get my app to them asap) and contacted CommonApp, who eventually refunded my mom’s card. By this time, I just withdrew my Creative Supplement and cancelled my application to Chapman, since we realised California is way too far from any family we have in the US for me to be living there by myself for 4 years.
Moral of the story: upload your apps AT LEAST 2 days before the deadlines [-O< , I definitely learned my lesson, most of my January RD apps are pretty much in already, I just have to send my transcript (when I go back to school the 2nd week of Jan after the holiday break), ACT scores and finish 2 or 3 supplements.
I suspect schools review applications as they arrive so reviewers won’t go nuts in January. Further, they probably have rated or summarized completed reviews for further discussion. There would be no advantage to the school to have a due date that eliminates applicants whose materials arrive shortly before the final due date and are wonderful applicants. Personally, I would add your concern to the list of things of minimal concern really to college admission anxiety.
Usually, applying toward the end to colleges like you mention creates only one risk: your screwing up your application because of the rush or your failure to send needed items in time, e.g., it can be a real disappointment to find out on Dec 29 that your high school cannot send your transcript because it is closed for the holidays. Particular colleges may also have some other risks, e.g., the application deadline date for scholarship consideration or for certain academic programs may be earlier than the regular application deadline, and you should check the particular colleges for those.