<p>PrincetonDreams – There really isn’t any Early Decision program at an “equally competitive” school, except perhaps for Columbia and Brown (and, honestly, if Princeton is your first choice, it’s very unlikely that Columbia or Brown is your second choice). Harvard is just like Princeton, Yale and Stanford have SCEA, and MIT and Caltech have plain old regular EA. So if you are in fact a competitive applicant to Princeton, you have lots of places to which you can apply early that will not prevent you from applying to Princeton even if you are accepted. (Also, Georgetown, BC, Chicago.) There’s no reason not to take a shot at Stanford or Yale (you would be pretty happy if you got into either of them, even if Princeton rejected you later), or, say, a combination of MIT, Caltech (if you like it), and Georgetown.</p>
<p>Of course, in general you don’t see anything like the same apparent advantage applying EA as you do ED, precisely because the EA schools attract a lot more applications than binding ED schools do.</p>