Hello everyone! My son is a junior and we are starting the college exploration process. I was really surprised to find that many of the colleges in our initial research (Brandeis, Colorado College, Oberlin, Union and as of next year Occidental) have Early Action admission programs. I understand Early Decision and why some people love it and others hate it. I get the pros and cons. I understand how it benefits the college and the advantages for some students. In comparison I don’t understand the motivation for the school to offer early action.
While I understand that Early Action is non-binding, and in many ways that’s a good thing, I’m having trouble understanding how it’s a benefit to the school and how it’s a benefit to the student considering the Early Action notification dates are after regular decision applications are due. If a student gets accepted Early Decision to a school they don’t have to put applications in elsewhere and the school knows they have that warm body next autumn. If my child applies early decision to Brandeis, and gets in they don’t have to do any other applications (of course most students probably have a good portion of their other applications done if not fully polished so that they don’t have a time crunch if they got accepted or deferred). However, if my son applied to Brandeis Early Action, he won’t hear back before all of his other applications are due. He still has to complete and fill out all of his regular decision applications. He still needs to come up with a list of targets and safeties. If he gets accepted to Brandeis Early Action, his applications to the other schools are already submitted and under review, in which case he might as well wait until the spring to hear the decisions from the other schools to which he applied. What’s in it for Brandeis? Do they think that if my son gets acceptance in January or February that he will have more time to research the school and maybe “fall in love sooner” and so have more attachment than for the regular decision schools which he has less time to research before the commit date? I’m sure it always feels good to get the news sooner and so sure I’d like my son to hear back in January or February as opposed to the end of March or beginning of April, I just don’t understand how it benefits the college. Thanks for your insights!
Agree that EA does not have the same commitment or benefit as ED for the student or the school. But this is how I view it:
-For the school, EA allows them to review a chunk of applications earlier than they may otherwise get them in the door. My experience is that schools recognize there is no student commitment for EA applicants – some colleges will accept those who are clear admits and may defer others to the RD pool. Every college will have different protocols.
-For the student, EA allows them to get the application filed earlier and hopefully get an admissions decision earlier.
Note that some very selective schools have Restrictive Early Action policies so read through the details of each college’s plan.
Many schools require students to apply Early Action in order to receive full consideration for merit scholarships and honors programs.
In addition, some universities admit the majority of their incoming class through EA. For example, the University of Maryland fills over 90% or more of its class during the EA round, making RD significantly more competitive. Purdue University follows a similar pattern, particularly for high-demand majors.
Other schools, such as UIUC, effectively allocate most seats in highly selective programs like Computer Science during the EA cycle, leaving limited availability in RD.
While some schools only give EA acceptances after RD applications are due, many give them earlier. Both my kids applied EA to all their schools that offered that option and had some acceptances in December. They liked their early acceptances and neither bothered with any RD apps. The benefit, of course, is getting the work done early so the stress of apps during senior year is minimized.
It is true there aren’t many schools with one unrestricted EA round that announce admissions decisions before winter break. That’s been an unfortunate change over the last 5-10 years. Many posters have already posted the reasons why this shift. If you are looking for an early admit, look to rolling admissions schools like U Pitt and/or schools that have multiple EA rounds, like Auburn. One selective school with EA that still announces decisions before the holidays is Case Western.
My second kid applied initially to only three colleges. Two via early action and one via rolling admissions. She had all of those acceptances before the first week of December. For her, that was THE plus. She was done with college application stuff and could enjoy her senior year.
Many schools give out EA decisions in December (or even earlier – my kids were surprised to find that a couple of their EA schools were auto-admit based on stats), so if a student doesn’t ED or doesn’t get into their ED school, a few EA acceptances can help cross potential RD schools off the list if they’re not as exciting options for the student. So sending off as many EA applications as possible makes for a much easier December/January, if it means the student won’t have to spend as much time on RD applications. Also, even for those schools that send out EA news in January, it’s nice to have some acceptances in your back pocket as you wait for RD decisions to come in.
I think there are great many benefits to applying EA when offered for the student.
Most already mentioned.
But the ones for my S20 and now D26 are (and from what I see from other postings):
~Getting the apps out of the way so senior year can be a better experience
~Finding out earlier so one can have loads of time to make the decision (and more time to work in college visits for the schools that they have been admitted to- not everyone can afford or has the time to visit every school and has to save those visits for schools that have accepted them)
~Some schools prioritize acceptances for the incoming class from the EA group (make sure to research this- I have seen many surprises from certain schools about high stat students getting waitlisted in the RD round)
~EA applicants are sometimes prioritized for merit, scholarships and other small things that may matter to them
~ If the students has a long list of applications- can be nice to break them up into two groups to help them not be overwhelmed
~Having an admission in hand early can take some of the stress off while waiting for the rest of the schools
D26 submitted 6 applications-
5 EA applications came out by mid-Dec (CU Boulder instate was the last one she received- they announce those earlier than OOS applicants)
The 6th one she switched to ED at the last minute and also got that one mid- Dec (if had stayed EA- would have gotten that one mid-Jan)
Did not intentionally plan it out like this, all schools she was interested in had an EA option- but it sure has been nice to have her decision in place and not having to stress over admission decisions anymore.
What the schools get out of it- not sure.
But since more and more are adding EA in- I assume that they are getting something from it. Maybe they are losing good applicants who have been able to build a relationship with the EA schools (since there is more time to do this). Curious as to what the schools get out of this also? - I have a few theories- but really just guesses.
My D26 is also looking at LACs and from my perspective, her EA admits really took the pressure off. (She is still really stressed out, so she doesn’t agree, but it enabled me to relax knowing she already has some great options.)
From the schools’ perspective, I think it gains them some goodwill and also gives them more time to court the accepted students. Some of these schools might have gotten minimal attention from my daughter if she heard from them in March along with her other RD schools, but this way we’ve had a couple of months to seriously consider them and schedule visits.
I think this trend toward EA and earlier RD notifications may continue for most LACs (other than the very selective ones who don’t have to court students). As you noted, Oxy is doing it next year and Oberlin did it for the first time this year. Kenyon didn’t do EA but did early RD notifications several weeks ago, and Franklin & Marshall is releasing today for at least some applicants.
I think the school gets to better target its aid. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the EA pool is more affluent than the RD pool. So admitting a portion of the class early- and seeing how many of them accept with no aid, gives better intel for distributing the funds in the RD round.
The reply date for the EA is the same as for RD so how would they know how much aid is left for the RD round? These private schools with Jan/Feb EA notification dates have no idea of the yield from EA until after the RD decisions have been made.
Just to underscore what has already been said. Unless you expect something hugely important to the student’s application to happen early in senior year that you really want to wait till first semester senior year grades are out, there is no downside to applying EA, but there is upside. Earlier decisions (even if not all in Dec), better consideration for honors and merit, first option at space in the class and (in the case of my C26) all applications done and dusted by early-mid November, which relieves stress of applications around winter break and S1 exam period. For what it’s worth, our counselors noted that more and more students are applying EA so - while for some schools this seems to anecdotally just result in more deferrals - those left applying RD are at a disadvantage for all these things. As someone else noted, having admits in hand by end January (the latest we got and I think probably as late as you’ll get an EA decision) also makes it a lot easier to plan admitted student days which are often around late March or early April, compared to only getting your RD decisions sometime in March for many colleges. We were lucky that all the schools my student was interested in offered either EA or rolling admittedly, obviously there are many that don’t.
See the Pitt merit thread, they have been handing out all through their rolling period. Anecdotally, people who apply to Pitt later in the cycle are more at risk both of running out of space in classes (lots of waitlist decisions given) or merit (if you can trust Reddit).
I don’t think this is necessarily true, a lot of people wait till after the March/April admitted student days to commit (even though a number of colleges do hold either a series of admitted student days or a special EA admitted event which students can attend before RD date). They also mostly have, I think, Feb/Mar deadlines for FAFSA so aid packages are not necessarily known before then.
I think one thing schools would really like to know, but have no clear indicator of - is how serious a student is about attending. They want to maximize their yield numbers.
Even though there is nothing binding about it, it takes motivation and initiative for students to apply EA, which the schools credit as a signal of genuine interest. So I think they get that out of it at least.
Some schools really lean into this, and take most of their admits out of the EA pool, considering those the ‘serious’ applications.
I don’t think that’s true at all. I have seen some very generous aid packages mentioned for EA, for people who submitted FAFSA early on. Unlike ED, applicants are free to compare aid packages before deciding, and it is explicitly noted on a number of my student’s EA portals that they can get the aid packages before deciding whether or not to commit.
One possible indication might be the number of EA students who sign up for admitted student days? We are only visiting the shortlist of 2-3. But I would also guess they have decent data historically on what % of students yield from EA.
