Early Decision/Admission

Old_College_Try
Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:24:20 +0000

I’m no expert, but here’s what I understand.

If you are accepted early decision, you must attend that school. If the FA is insufficient, you can ask the school to reconsider, but if the school ultimately disappoints you with their aid package, you’re out of luck (I’ve heard that the school can release you of this obligation, but it is extremely difficult to get released). This is the primary risk of ED.

Yes, need-blind schools offer ED. FWIW, Harvard and Princeton eliminated ED a few years ago. They thought that other schools would follow, but most did not.

The only two restrictive early admission schools I know of are Yale and Stanford. Harvard and Princeton offer no early processes. The rest of the Ivies are ED.

Yes, you could apply to all the colleges that offer non-restrictive EA. Decisions are usually mailed out in mid-December. For EA, the decisions are mailed in one big bunch, so applying EA before the deadline does not speed up the answer.

The earlier you apply to a rolling admission school, the sooner you will hear. A variety of schools do rolling admissions, both big and small. Usually, the top schools do not offer rolling admissions, however.

If you’re looking for generalizations, the best schools that I know of that offer non-restrictive EA are Cal Tech, MIT, and Georgetown. Stanford and Yale are restrictive EA. Harvard and Princeton offer no early options. The rest of the great schools are ED.

I am not a fan of EA or ED. The percentages look better than RD, but a lot of schools use EA and ED to accept recruited athletes and legacies. For this reason, the percentages are higher. Pull up archived messages from this board from December 16th of last year. Most unhooked applicants (even those with amazing stats) were getting rejected EA and ED, and they had to suffer 4 more months before they received some good news. I don’t want to ruin one-half of my senior year because I was rejected early.