<p>Money
My son found application fee savings in doing EA. If you apply to both MIT and Caltech EA and get into one of them, you don’t need to send anything else RD. He had a list of about 12 schools he was GOING to apply to, but he had a great EA and Rolling acceptance rate, so just didn’t bother applying to 4 schools (at least) in December. </p>
<p>NOTE: This is only for saving money, NOT for saving time. You still need to get the applications ready, because you don’t want to be starting new ones after being rejected from your two favorites. If you ARE rejected or deferred from both EA, it’s a signal to improve your app or get a few slightly lower schools. Also, rolling admission schools (I think) have the best acceptance rates for the earliest students, so you want to make sure you do all the rolling schools ASAP.</p>
<p>Also, aren’t there application fee waivers available? Can you talk to your HS counselor and find out more about those?</p>