I think what would be the least stressful for the kids, and possibly most efficient for the colleges, would be to offer more EA options and fewer restrictions on them. My kid likes Brown, but I don’t think either of us are ready to ED that. Would be nice if she could EA the top few schools on her list and get some idea where she stands, and possibly eliminate other applications from ever happening (and kids who applied to a few reaches EA and were disappointed would be able to rethink and emphasize matches more on their RD). College say it’s perfectly ok and normal not to know what you want to study, even as a college freshman, but somehow you’d better be sure in October of your senior year you know you want to study whatever it might be at our school??