Your friends may be talking about “applying early”. That seems nice and all, but what does it actually mean? When is “early”? What are the pros and cons?
In the simplest terms there are 3 general categories of application timelines: Early, Regular, and Rolling. Early timelines require that you get your ducks in a row over the summer to complete your essays, request your letters of recommendation, and all other aspects of your application by September or October. You will generally hear back in December or January. Regular Decision typically submits between November and January and is widely considered the “standard” timeline. You’ll hear back in March for most Regular Decision schools. Finally, schools that use Rolling Admissions consider applications as they arrive and will typically review applications in small batches. They’ll notify between 4-10 weeks after you submit and will continue reviewing until they have filled their target class size. Often Rolling deadlines extend into the early summer, but they may effectively close earlier.
Early Decision (ED) and Early Action (EA) differ in that Early Action is a nonbinding application. A few schools restrict you to a single EA school, but many allow you to apply to multiple campuses under their Early Action Plans.
Early Decision schools mandate that you only apply to them within the Early timeline AND that if they accept you that you are required to accept their admissions offer. Since you are locked into that school and they know it, so the school may use that leverage to offer a less comprehensive need/merit-based financial aid package. I attended a webinar with the Tulane Admissions Officers in 2023 where they explicitly mentioned that they had dropped their ED merit-based aid to offset increases in their percentage of need met for all students. You may request to be released from the binding nature of your ED application, but those are typically only granted if there’s a serious financial hardship. Otherwise you may be required to apply a semester or year later to other schools.
With the Early grouping there are three outcomes – Admit, Defer, or Deny. The addition of the deferral option means that you’ll be reconsidered with the Regular Decision candidates. Some ask if a Deferral means that they are more or less likely to be admitted in the Regular grouping. Unfortunately there’s no way to reliably project. It does mean that you’re on the border between an admit and a deny. If the school gets a higher amount of or a higher quality of applicant than their models predict in the Regular Decision period, it’s likely a bad sign for your admissions chances. But, their projections may overstate the quality or quantity of their RD applicants and as a result you may rise above the cut line.
Many schools will fill their most desirable majors disproportionately with Early applicants, which can artificially lower the Regular Decision admissions rate to desirable programs. For many schools, they do this because the yield, which is the college admissions term for conversion rate from an admissions offer to actually enrolling a student, is much higher for Early applicants. In turn, that provides the campus administrators with a higher and earlier certainty of the revenues (and demand for professors, classrooms, and facilities) that their future class represents.
The only type of client that we wouldn’t recommend exploring an ED / EA application is one who struggled early in their high school career and wants another semester of strong performance to support their “growth trajectory” narrative. Additionally, you need to have a solid understanding of how your family will pay for college. Check out our financial aid posts for more information and advice on that front.
Rolling Admission schools are appealing in that you can apply to those schools whenever you are ready. If you get nervous after a rejection from an Early Decision/Action school, you can add a Rolling Admission school to your list to mitigate some risk. Most, but not all, Rolling Admission schools have admissions rates in the 60s or higher, which means that you may be a good candidate for an aggressive financial aid package from them.
Bottom Line:
If you have your heart set on a school, want to marginally boost your admissions chances, and have the financial resources to pay for more than what your Demonstrated Need is for that school, Early Decision is the way to go.
Early Action is a great mechanism to marginally boost your admissions chances, maintain the flexibility to consider different schools, and potentially lock in one (or multiple) of your top choice(s) in the Winter.
For all others, Regular Decision and Rolling Admissions practices are the catch-all that offer a more permissive timeline, allow for your Fall Senior year grades to be considered, and provide the opportunity to shop around different financial aid packages.
College Smart Advising 
One response to “Early Decision? Early Action? Or Neither?”
[…] essays. The first is your conventional “Why Us?” essay which you can learn more about here. For the final two, Duke asks you to choose between five prompts that we’ll briefly summarize as: […]
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