<p>Regardless of how you feeling about your ED vs. EA chances at say, Brown vs. Stanford, don’t go ED if you have other schools that you would love to go to. You say that Brown and Stanford are about equal, but you would also love going to Princeton/Yale. Don’t commit yourself to ED to “increase” your chances of admissions per se. Such was the case with me – I felt I had no discernible chance at getting into Stanford and I felt that I wanted a stronger chance so I almost went ED to Duke/Penn (hadn’t decided yet). In the end, I decided to apply for everything regular decision.</p>
<p>Just think:</p>
<p>10 or 20 years from now, you don’t want to think back and regret that you had applied early decision, because WHAT IF you had gotten into Stanford/Yale/Princeton. I would apply early action to either Stanford/Yale and then go with regular decision for the rest. Just my two cents.</p>