<p>The biggest thing I think you could do boost your application would be to take on leadership roles in the extracurriculars that you’re involved in. It’s hard to make huge changes to your GPA at this point, and given the score difference for your SAT, unless you do something very different this time, it’s likely not going to change much. Have you thought about taking the ACT? Sometimes people do better on that than the SAT.</p>
<p>In terms of early vs. regular decision, I’m not sure it would make a big difference. When you apply early action, if they definitely want to accept you they’ll accept you. If they definitely don’t, you’ll be rejected. But if they’re not sure, you could be deferred to the regular decision pool and you’d be no worse off than if you had applied that way in the first place.
The difference could come if the overall applicant pool is different than expected. For example, if they accept EA students based on certain expectations of what the stats of all applicants (EA and RD) will be and the overall pool ends up being more competitive than expected, some students may be admitted EA who wouldn’t have been otherwise. Likewise, if the overall stats are lower, some EA students may be rejected when they would have been accepted RD. Given the overall trend of Northeastern, I would expect the first situation to be more likely in terms of the type of applicants they get. They try to avoid this problem by what I mentioned before - deferring borderline EA applicants to RD.
Basically, my take on it is that it won’t make a difference when you apply, but since NEU is your first choice, I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t apply EA. At best, you’ll be accepted and have a weight off your shoulders. At worst, you will know you’re not going to Northeastern and have time to critically think about other choices.</p>