<p>Seeker, if your girls apply “early action” (there is no “early decision”), they only fill out part 1 of the application, and then one of three things will happen: accepted, deferred, or denied. If your girls are deferred, they will need to fill out part 2 of the application, which gets into all the ECs, etc. Be forewarned that there will not be a lot of time between the date that they are advised of the deferral and the deadline for submitting part 2 of the application. They will then be judged along with the other deferrals and regular deadline applicants. As I said in an earlier post, the risk (very small in your girls’ case) is that if they apply early action and are denied (as opposed to accepted or deferred), they cannot then apply with the regular decision applicants (who would have filled out part 2 of the application from the get go, and thus had their ECs before the admissions office). But, as I also said, I think there is almost no chance that your girls, with their basic stats, would be outright denied – deferral should be your worst case outcome. My son, however, is not quite as strong as your girls on the grades and standardized tests, but has very good ECs, and we made the decision that he would just apply regular decision (which he has already done) so he can be sure to get all that good info before the admissions office.</p>