I want to pursue a business major as an international student in the us. I am applying to good public universities like Penn state, Purdue and Florida. I am double minded about applying early through early action or go for regular decision. What should I go for?
No reason not to if it’s not binding.
Note that Penn State has rolling admissions, not EA/RD.
Guys, the advisor in my school says to apply in regular decision to have the best chance if the sat is not in the top quarter of applicants (about 50th percentile). What should I do?
Your advisor needs to get better in math. Top quarter would be 75 percentile.
Yes, that is what she meant. My around the 50th percentile for most of the universities I’m applying to. Do I have a lesser chance if I go for early action?
The University of Florida has one deadline: November 1st. Technically, they do accept applications after that date, but very few students are accepted from that pool.
This is an interesting discussion. My son is only applying to schools where his stats place him in the top quartile, so applying EA will definitely give him an advantage. However, as in the case of OP, if you sit in the bottom half is it a ** disadvantage ** to apply EA?
I’m interested to hear opinions.
I would think it would be a disadvantage (unless you have a coach’s tip). And that could end up in a deferment or on out right rejection depending on how the school handles their EA pool.
It’s not that simple, because you have three situations:
UF , Purdue, and Penn state don’t have EA but a “priority” system, meaning if you apply after the priority deadline you’re kind on a waitlist till everyone who did apply before the priority deadline has been processed - at those schools you should apply between now and November 1st, period. Your odds are MUCH lower if you apply later.
If you’re applying to a college that admits 45-50% of its applicants, it’s in your interest to apply EA as it indicates more interest.
However if you’re applying to a college that is more selective than that, then you should wait for RD.
OP: How much does your advisor know about the US college system?
Maybe contact someone in your country that can advise you: https://educationusa.state.gov/
Jaime Garcia, former admissions counselor for Northwestern University and presently director of college access at Chicago Scholars:
If you are 100 percent sure where you want to go, seek early admission. Generally, college admissions officers know that those who apply for early decision are those who have a higher satisfaction rate when they are on campus. Because early decision is a great indicator for this satisfaction, schools frequently have goals and benchmarks for admitting a particular percentage of students through early decision. They won’t tell you this, but early-admission acceptance rates are often higher than regular acceptance rates. It is also less competitive because the applicant pool is smaller than regular decision.
Any school that is rolling you should apply to as soon as you can as applications are reviewed and acted upon in the order received.
As for the EA/RD choice I’d say if you plan to do something to improve your application significantly (ex. retake standardized tests, if you feel a need to show first semester grades) than wait for RD, if your application won’t change significantly then apply EA.
@happy1 Dumb question. Do schools with rolling admissions “wait-list” applicants like schools with traditional EA/ED/RD timetables?
@STEM2017 Dumb answer…I don’t know for sure. My kids rolling applications were all acted on – I can’t think of anyone who was deferred at a rolling school but of course one person’s experience is a small sample. When UM had that modified rolling system one of my D’s friends application was not acted on quickly – he heard later than he expected and I wonder if they were holding it off to the side. In my experience there are a lot of deferrals for EA schools.
At the risk of becoming one of those “broken record” posters:
I often recommend a book called “The Early Admissions Game” for this question. Written by two Harvard profs and a Wesleyan AD, it is a detailed, statistical analysis of ED, it’s advantages and disadvantages. A summary from an article by Louis Menand in The New Yorker says:
They do cover athletes and legacies in the book and still show a clear statistical advantage for the unhooked, although not equal to the overall difference between ED and RD. (Note the use of the term “average applicant”.)
Yes, the analysis was a few years ago and application numbers have increased, but to date no one who points out that fact has any data to show the percentages have changed.
@Postmodern I haven’t seen your post before, so thank you for sharing again.
I have to believe that Early applicants are more self selecting than Regular Decision applicants, and therefore have high stats in general. I dont have data to back this up, but it would be my assumption. Does the book address the average GPAs and test scores of the Early applicants versus Regular applicants? Again, I would guess that the stats of the Earlys are probably higher than the Regs. So if you are ** borderline /b, and hoping early will give you an edge, it might work against you as you will look much worse vis-a-vis the rest of the pool. Your borderline application might look stronger in the Reg pool.
Ah, but what do I know? I’m overthinking everything as usual.
^^^ Yes, @STEM2017 , it does address those variables to a degree. And as for the point of it working against you, my recollection is that students deferred to the RD round did substantially better that students with similar stats.
What I do recall pretty specifically was that they saw no admissions disadvantage to applying ED if you were certain it was your first choice.
They did mention that ED benefits the school more than the applicant, WRT 1) financial aid and 2) getting top students who play the odds game and don’t apply to more selective schools that they have a shot at.
It’s still in print. I bought mine for one of those “$0.01 and $3.99 shipping” deals on amazon and it was one of those weeded library volumes with the plastic book cover that I love.
I actually found it a better explanation of admissions in general than any of the other books on that subject I purchased, and I am embarrassed to admit how many that is.
@STEM2017 Yes, some “rolling admission” schools do put students on a waiting list. Rolling admissions schools tend to be less selective (and/or have a very large number of applicants, but some do strive to be more selective.
Below are the numbers for UCF, one of the more selective (49% admit rate; middle 50% of enrolled students have an ACT score from 24 to 28)
Number of qualified applicants offered a place on waiting list 3,928
Number accepting a place on the waiting list 2,267
Number of wait-listed students admitted 305
A lot of in-state students(90% of enrolled undergraduates are in-state students) that don’t get accepted to UCF, get accepted to other state schools and enroll, without waiting for UCF to make an offer off a wait list.
UNF, another Florida public university with rolling admissions. does not use a wait list.
Best way to tell is to look at the CDS info, section C2.
Very helpful. Thanks @Gator88NE !
Going to go take a look at Pitt CDS.