Yes, Amherst’s is like Brown’s open curriculum.
It’s advantageous if you’re interested in small, discussion based classes taught by professors rather than having large lectures with a session in a smaller group led by a TA. Professors are hired in part for their ability to integrate undergrads into their labs. It tends to be a bit more intellectually intense and a close-knit community.
That being said, LACs such as Amherst, Williams, Haverford, Carleton or Pomona.. are extremely difficult to get into and you’d have to withstand the idea no one’s heard of it (except among East Coast leaders, grad schools, etc.)
But it IS unlike anything you’d find in Australia.
(In my opinion, your US college should be of the same academic caliber as UMelbourne AND bring something UMelbourne doesn’t have.)
Yeah, there are cases where a college might say you need to apply ED to get a specific advantage, like sometimes with recruited athletes.
A few programs also legitimately fill up quickly (these tend to be more rolling or EA cases than ED cases, though).
And then there are the cases broadly known as yield protection. This is complicated, though.
The basic premise of these cases is that they would actually love to admit you RD–if they thought they had a decent chance of you actually enrolling. But their yield model is saying you are very unlikely to enroll, which is basically suggesting they think you are very likely to get an offer you prefer. Like say their normal, acceptable, RD yield is around 20%. But their yield model estimates for you it is more like 2%. Or 0.2%. Or so on.
So they waitlist or even reject you instead of admitting you, because they don’t want to waste an RD offer on you. I note not every college does this. Some just don’t get a lot of applications from people who are not seriously considering them as one of their top options. Others might actually try to turn a 2% case into a more promising case with a nice merit offer.
But some colleges have little or no merit, and get a lot of applications where realistically, they are like 10th or worse on the kid’s ranked preference list. So those colleges might actually do this sort of thing in RD reasonably frequently with kids who in theory they would like to enroll, but in practice think are extremely unlikely to accept an offer.
Then in cases like that, applying ED will obviously take your estimated yield percentage from something very low to something very close to 100%. Problem solved! Now they just admit you, because they want to enroll you, and they know it is extremely likely you will. Of course if they don’t want to enroll you, applying ED won’t change their mind, and they will still reject you. And if they are not sure, they will just defer you. But some percentage of applicants would be the sort who would get the yield protection treatment in RD, and will get admitted ED.
OK, but when would this apply to an International applicant to Penn? Almost never.
To begin with, their yield model would almost always say they had a really good chance to enroll you even if admitted RD. So they will probably admit you RD–if they want you, of course–confident there is a good enough chance you will enroll.
And then ED is a little tricky with Internationals, because their non-US options may not particularly care about them breaking an ED commitment to a US college.
Anyway, hopefully all this helps the OP understand a bit better why EDing to a US college like Penn isn’t likely to actually change their decision. If Penn wants the OP as a student, they will likely accept them in RD as well as ED. If they wouldn’t want them in RD, Penn will not accept them ED either. And if Penn isn’t sure, it will just defer them to RD.
I’ll just toss in that many kids seriously considering LACs are more or less planning to get further advanced degrees–academic programs, professional degrees, and so on.
And in fact one of the reasons undergrad-focused institutions like LACs are more common and more promiment in the US than most countries is many of our terminal degrees are later than usual–like law and med degrees are postgrad degrees, in many other professions you will sooner or later want some sort of Masters degree, and so on.
OK, so in the US it makes perfect sense for some kids to choose a college which really focuses on undergrads specifically for their undergrad. And then grad and professional programs are often happy to admit lots of these kids, because they know the ones who did well at their undergrad institution and get good recommendations are likely to do well in their grad/professional program.
I do think this is a bit of an issue, though, for Internationals where their first university degree is more likely to be a terminal degree. However, if you are an International who might well consider continuing on to a second program, particularly in the US, then I think it could be a really good idea to consider LACs and other undergrad-focused institutions. Including because your admissions chances, particularly as a full pay International, might be a bit better, since some other highly qualified Internationals may be less likely to be applying.
I would not apply ED to a school that is not your #1 top choice. As others have said, the stats regarding the alleged admissions boost from applying ED are skewed because legacy students and recruited athletes typically apply ED. In many cases they will be getting accepted because they are legacy or because they are recruited athletes, and applying ED is not as big of a help if you are neither. Also, you are a competitive applicant for HYPSM and I do not think that you should cut off your chances of applying to these schools if you were to get accepted ED elsewhere.
I do know people who have attended MIT, Stanford, Columbia, Harvard, Caltech and a few other highly ranked schools and at least most of them did not apply ED (I am not sure if any of them did). Admittedly the size of any ED boost will vary depending upon which university you are considering.
Also, your “safety” in Australia is a superb university.
There is one thing that is bugging me. I recall a number of years ago reading a post (possibly on a different web site) from an international student who got into the University of Toronto as an undergrad, did VERY well there, and then was rejected by every medical school that they applied to in Canada and was quite unhappy about this. The issue is that getting accepted to medical school as an international student is insanely difficult, and can be much more difficult compared to getting in somewhere as an undergraduate student. This is just as true in the US as in Canada. If your goal is to go to medical school, then attending university in the US and hoping to get into medical school in the US is a very, very tough path. It might be safer and more likely to succeed to attend one of the excellent universities in Australia for at least undergrad, and possibly undergrad and medical school also. I will admit that I do not know whether attending a highly ranked university in the US would harm your chances of admissions to medical school in Australia.
From everything that I have heard the University of Melbourne is excellent and you are a very strong applicant applying there (by the way someone I know was accepted to Melbourne for a PhD so I do know a little bit about it – their acceptance however came in late after they had already agreed to attend a different school for a PhD so they got their PhD in the USA).
so i take it this yield protection model probably wouldn’t apply to any of the universities that i’ve listed above then? I’m now inclined to REA stanford and give it a shot, although they haven’t taken anyone from australia very recently i think… Can you break ED commitment and go somewhere else if you got accepted RD on the grounds of being unable to pay the fee of the ED school or is that still illegal
just wanted to clarify that melbourne university is my “safety” because for victorian students they will accept anyone who meets an ATAR threshold and that requirement is really very very easy to meet, so like 80% of the kids at my school go to melbourne uni which honestly although it looks good in rankings i know for sure i won’t be meeting as many innovative and “amazing” ppl as i could in the states. Does the legacy and recruited athletes issue also apply to the REA and EA schools?
ED: They can’t make you come if your parents can’t pay. You wouldn’t even get a visa.
REA/EA is different, since it’s non binding.
If Stanford is your favorite then apply REA and see 
There is no law governing ED, so it’s not “illegal” per se. But you claim to be a full pay student. If you truly cannot afford the cost of attendance, then you shouldn’t apply. It’s bad faith to apply and then break your commitment because you want to go elsewhere. In fact, your ED acceptance will require you to withdraw all your RD applications.
If you do break your commitment in bad faith, they can’t come after you but it will reflect poorly on your school and impact future applicants.
I agree that she had a strong desire to apply ED to one school such as Stanford and you are willing to commit to go and not playing any kind of game to see where else you could get in, then apply ED and see what happens. Remember too it’s not cheap to fly from Australia to California although it’s less of a challenge than to fly to the East Coast of the US. there are a lot of flights to LAX. Not sure how many fly into San Francisco but I’m sure there are. Just not the airline I typically use. Have a back up list or start the applications for the schools you want to apply to VA but if you get into your ED school, you are honorbound to hold the other applications and commit.
REA is not the same as ED. It’s not binding, but the “restrictive” part means that you are restricted from applying to other private colleges or universities under any early application plan (like Early Action or Early Decision). You can, however, apply to public universities and international institutions early action as well.
If you apply ED and are accepted, assuming you can pay for it, you are supposed to withdraw any other applications so you don’t get to wait to see what the RD results are. There is also a time limit to accept ED, so you don’t get to hang on to that offer without accepting while waiting for other decisions. If you accept the ED you pay a deposit and undertake to agree to the financing conditions.
To summarize REA sounds like the decision plan you want, not ED. (Once you’ve committed to your ED choice, in December typically, you can’t break that commitment in March unless financial circumstances have changed).
That being said, all your top schools would cost roughly the same so I’m not sure what you’re thinking of. 
Look into Wake Forest, Tulane, UNC? Fordham for a safety - very different offerings from UMelbourne in terms of community and environment, excellent odds of internships in NYC.
And if you are doing it the way you’re supposed to, you won’t actually have any alternatives (in the US at least) in March as you were supposed to have withdrawn those other applications.
United Airlines flies from Sydney to San Francisco.
Yep, but as mentioned, that’s not an airline I typically use which is why I don’t know their schedule. Quantas probably does as well.
Yes, I don’t think you will really get any ED “boost” applying to colleges like that, and so it is perfectly fine to just apply REA instead. Or basically, pick your favorite first, then apply early however they do early applications, if you feel like it.
ED would really only make sense for you if there was some US college you really loved but they would not necessarily know that. Like we briefly discussed LACs, and some might normally assume they have little chance to yield a full pay highly qualified International. But suppose you ended up really loving one. Then maybe applying ED there would help in the sense they would not be tempted to waitlist or reject you due to a yield concern.
But if your favorite remains a college like Stanford or such–then the real benefit is just seeing if you can get an early answer, which you can get from REA as well as ED.
Others covered this too, but–you are supposed to figure out if you can pay before you agree to apply ED. For US applicants, this includes using the college’s NPC, and saving the results. Then if you are not sure you can afford what they will charge, or want to compare offers, you are not supposed to apply ED.
Very rarely, there is a legitimate change of circumstances (like a parent loses their job), in which case you can try to negotiate a new offer. Similarly if their NPC ended up inaccurate (through no fault of yours), and you saved the result, you can try to get them to match. In cases like that, if you can’t work something out, they are supposed to release you, you should not have to break your commitment unilaterally.
Part of the problem with Internationals is they seem to often apply without knowing they can pay. To be fair, NPCs can be inaccurate for Internationals, but I have encountered a lot of Internationals who didn’t even look. And again if you are unsure, you are not supposed to apply ED, because you don’t have a right to make a commitment you are not sure you can keep–but it appears many do anyway.
Theoretically an International who then unilaterally breaks their ED commitment could get in trouble with any other US college that admitted them, because that is an ethical violation. They won’t take you to court, because that would be a big pain and bad press. But if another US college agreed you behaved unethically, they could withdraw their offer.
But I gather Internationals in this situation often are not taking a US offer anyway. And since whatever university they are actually attending might not care about any of this, they may see it as low risk to just take a shot at a US college ED without knowing if they can pay.
Which is part of why ED might not “boost” them. Again, if the college thinks you might walk away anyway, despite the commitment you signed, then it doesn’t solve their yield concerns.