This. I’ll be encouraging my son to apply EA to every school on his list that offers it (and one of his schools doesn’t offer EA but prioritizes merit for apps in before the RD deadline). I don’t know about the percentage accepted after deferral, but I can’t see a reason not to take advantage of EA, especially if you’re planning to ED and your application is ready anyway. My daughter only applied EA to one school (none of the others on her list offered it), but it was really nice for her to get an early acceptance, especially when the rejection from her ED school came a few days later.
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My D22 didn’t have that many schools on her list that offered EA – but the few she did have differed vastly.
I’ll give you specifics – University of Georgia takes only tippy top kids in EA (they have a transparent algorithm where they give you points for the number of AP and DE classes taken, etc) – and they defer the majority of EA applicants. But then a large number of deferred students get in during the regular decision round. My kid did get in during EA (we’re in-state).
Tulane, on the other hand, really wants to fill its class with ED applicants – they’re huge on demonstrated interest. They’re also notorious for yield protecting. My D22 applied EA --and got at least three emails from them asking her to convert her application to ED, which she declined to do. She was deferred, and then she was waitlisted in regular decision. She declined her spot.
So, I think colleges use it differently, but in general I think there is no down side to applying EA if it’s available.
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Random single data point - UNC Chapel Hill - if you aren’t accepted during EA, you are rejected. There is no deferral. While, in retrospect, we appreciated not being left hanging so S25 could move on, we didn’t know ahead of time that that there was no deferral option so when he opened the portal and saw the rejection notice it hit harder than it otherwise might have. (It’s so hard to get in from out of state, that we weren’t surprised that he didn’t get in, but his application was so strong we figured he’d be a really good candidate, so we were thinking he might get in, but be deferred at worst.)
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I did not know this! We toured UNC for my older one, and yeah getting in from out of state is nuts (she ended up not applying) – but sheesh. 
This isn’t 100% (but based on my S24’s cohort of friends it’s pretty accurate)
Our S24 In-State EA
Deferred to RD
Waitlisted at RD
Then around HS Graduation or maybe a couple weeks after he was given a “You’re highly qualified but we just don’t have the room for you” officially Declined letter but given an offer for guaranteed Sophomore Start in Fall of 2025
This was predicated on (1) Full time 1 year attending a US Accredited 4 year program (2) Keeping in Good Standing without disciplinary marks (3) and a laughably mediocre GPA average (compared to what it takes to get into UNC as a first year admission)
He finished his first year at Purdue in DSB with a 3.97 and has just started at UNC this week.
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S23 applied to all schools as early as possible. Most were rolling admissions while 2 were EA. He was waitlisted at both and removed his name from one and stayed on the list for one. The one where he remained on the list? Never officially rejected him or accepted him. He just never heard anything even though he emailed several times and went through an interview. He also let them know it was his top choice. And the interesting thing was that his father was an alumni.
D26 has 4 schools that are EA or RD. She will apply EA to all and then as soon as possible to the ones that are rolling.
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Maybe it was for OOS? As far as we could tell, there were no OOS students deferred or waitlisted. Or it may just have been the sample size (we knew several kids from our HS, plus the cohort here on CC. Regardless of whether it was a most rejected or all kind of thing, in retrospect, I really am glad that he wasn’t deferred or waitlisted - my kid is the kind who would’ve had a hard time just moving on, and would’ve kept hoping “just in case” and it would’ve drawn the whole process out. So if they do reject all the OOS students, I don’t actually think that’s a bad thing. They know that they have a state mandated percentage of in-state students, and it’s pretty high. They know they can’t take that many OOS students. May as well tell them early so they can move on.
The only downside to the whole process, in my mind, is that I feel like OOS students need to be really prepared for what the OOS acceptance rate is - fortunately, S25 was my second kid and I’d been paying attention to that stuff so he knew what the likelihood was. For some of his friends, though, it was a shocker.
Given Carolina has a very low wait list conversion, I would agree it’s probably ‘easier’ to just rip the band-aid off right away.
Unfortunately, we have a D26 with UNC as her #1. She is highly competitive for the admissions pool - but that just means she gets the privileged of being a 50:50 or maybe a 65:35 roll of the dice there, again.
For S24, the EA: Deferred, RD: Waitlist, then Declined process was just short of being staked out and bitten by red ants for him. EA App was due Oct 15th, EA decision came out around Jan 20th, then RD decision didn’t come out until mid March… and after that we basically said - wait listed at UNC is just a soft rejection so we were looking at all his other options. When the Decline “but” offer came in (first off he didn’t even read the whole letter…and it was like 6+ paragraphs long so I don’t know how his brain didn’t hit pattern recognition and click on "hey, somethings not right with this rejection letter - I had to march him back upstairs to make him read the whole thing to me), then we had to re-evaluate all the options because we knew pretty much 100% that he’d only be spending one year on another campus and that changed things pretty quickly.
I know University of Maryland fills MOST of the class from EA, so that is an example of a school where it really does pay to apply EA. Also, most of the schools my D26 is applying to require EA to be considered for merit scholarships (separate from need based aid). Just something to consider.
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Not that I’ve shared this with C26, but I’m freaking out a little about Boulder. I’ve now seen two separate reports (not that I can find it on Google now of course) that over half the current entering class has a 4.0 high school gpa. How is this even possible with an 80%-ish admit rate? I think it’s going to be SAT or bust for them.
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Pulled the Common Data Set. Looks like 53%?
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CU Boulder is becoming more of an outlier/unsure thing than it has in the past!
I am sure that you already know- but they do look at Weighted GPAs over UW so that 4.0 is a bit skewed.
I keep seeing this school all over social media and it looks like it is being predicted to be even more popular this admission cycle.
I think the admit rate is so high because they readily offer ‘Exploratory Studies’ to most that do not get direct admits to their desired programs. 
Good luck to your C26. This school is also on D26’s list.
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I’ve known for a long time that D26s school is intense and has high achieving kids. But, I just looked at the college matriculation information for the class of 2025 and found it stunning. 12% of the class is going to HYPSM. 20% is going to an Ivy League. 25% to Ivy League plus Stanford/MIT. And, while I may have missed a school who fits into this category or gotten something slightly wrong, I calculate that 72% are going to a school with a sub 20% admit rate! That is insane.
D26 is not interested in very many schools that fall into those categories and two of her top three schools have admit rates higher than that and nobody from her school matriculating there next year. I’m hoping that’s good for her and will mean less competition from her school, but who knows maybe these other kids apply and get admitted and just don’t go. Her favorite reach (sub 20% admit) is popular at her school and has multiple kids from 2025 attending.
I know I’m probably trying to read something into data that doesn’t really tell me much, but the statistics from her school just shocked me when I did the math.
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The CDS (thanks @2026SwimMom ) says a scale of 4.0, though.
I wouldn’t mind exploratory for C26 in one sense, but if they stick to architecture it might mean an extra year - I’m not sure what EnvD courses they could take if not directly enrolled.
It’s so hard to predict with their “barbell” of low GPA and high SAT. I can only hope that colleges do put greater weight on later years GPA, but there was a 25 with similar GPA trend to C26 who got deferred from EnvD at Boulder. (I think he applied TO though)
…I cannot wait for all of this to be over and to just know one way or the other.
I cannot remember your C26s exact major choice at Boulder.
Usually in exploratory studies they let you take most classes that would be in your desired degree plan as long as you meet the pre-req’s.
But just in case you have not seen this one (been updated recently)- this is for 2025 admission cycles acceptances.
I am more of a visual girl vs form/tables and such 
First-Year - Plan | University of Colorado Boulder
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Thanks, yes. They have wgpa below the middle 50 and SAT well above it. So…who knows 
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Weighted grades are still on a 4.0 scale – I agree with @co2mom that the GPA is reflecting a weighted GPA whenever that is reported.
Here is what they say about grades:
The grades you have earned while in high school or secondary school play the most important role in determining your competitiveness for admission to the University of Colorado Boulder.
Since there are many different grading scales and weighting methods, we use the total weighted GPA provided by your graduating high school, using a standard 4.00 scale. GPAs that are not on a 4.00 scale are converted accordingly.
If your high school does not provide a weighted GPA but provides a total unweighted GPA, we will use your total unweighted GPA on a standard 4.00 scale. If your high school does not provide a GPA or the GPA provided does not include all completed high school courses, we will recalculate the GPA according to the grading scale in use at your high school at the time the course was completed. When recalculating a GPA, we will not add weight for honors, AP and/or IB curricula because there is not a standard format for the designation or grading scale for these courses. However, we do consider the number of honors, AP and/or IB courses you take when determining the rigor of your overall curriculum.
It’s been a few years now, but my S20 applied and was accepted at CU Boulder OOS and with merit. He had lower grades (like a 3.3 UW including several Cs), but lots of AP classes (with scores of 4/5) and a 1510 SAT.
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Can I just throw in here:
I really am hating this college application stuff!!
What should be an exciting time (some stress expected- but should be healthy competitive type of stress!) is just riddled with stupidity, stress and negative anticipation.
I wish I had a solution- and maybe one day it will self-correct. But that day is not today!!
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