How To Decide Whether — And Where — To Apply Early Decision

Around this time of year, many high school seniors are beginning to think more and more seriously about whether (and where) to apply Early Decision to college. Although many of the questions that students and parents are asking are technical and strategic (will applying early help my chances? At which college would it help most?), at the end of the day, the decision isn’t primarily about the strategy of it (although understanding the strategy helps). This may be a predictable stance from someone who specializes in taking an emotionally intelligent approach to college admissions, but ultimately, deciding whether to apply early decision is less about strategy and more about emotions. Here are the three steps students and parents must take to reach this decision:

Step 1. Understand what Early Decision is and how it works

Applying to a college Early Decision is a binding agreement that, if admitted, you will attend the college. It’s not easy to back out of but it does significantly improve your chances of admission. Colleges care about their ‘yield’ (how many accepted students end up matriculating), and offering Early Decision is one way to ensure a higher yield rate. In general, applying during the Early Decision round is an excellent choice. However, there are many myths out there (including that students who need financial aid shouldn’t apply ED)—I wrote this article breaking down the top five misunderstandings about early college applications which need to be understood before moving forward with applying Early Decision. But understanding how it works isn’t the only important part:

Step 2. Deciding whether to apply Early Decision

Yes, this is a strategic decision—but it’s also an emotional one. Strategy-wise, the case for applying ED is strong. Emotionally, students often struggle with the idea of potentially closing doors to other schools. (This is also true of narrowing a college list, by the way.) But, in the same way that choosing off of a menu isn’t about rejecting all other options, applying Early Decision isn’t about rejecting the schools that you won’t be applying to in that round, but rather, about choosing the one you will be.

Every choice we make in life will close some doors, but we have to allow that to happen in order to continue to move forward. Many students fixate on the regret they may feel if they get accepted to their ED school. They choose not to apply ED to, say, Brown University, so as not to regret ’never finding out’ how they would have fared in Cornell’s admissions pool. But, although this can happen and should be anticipated, it’s also important to anticipate other regrets, including the regret of applying to both in the Regular Decision round, being rejected, and ‘never finding out’ if you would have been accepted had you applied with the increased odds of Early Decision.

Step 3: Choosing, and falling in love with, your Early Decision school

This is another decision that many students and parents try to view strategically but must also consider on an emotional level. Not every college offers Early Decision, so students with a ‘dream school’ that doesn’t often struggle to decide if they should apply ED somewhere else. It’s not about settling—plenty of top schools including UChicago, Penn, Pomona, Duke, and Columbia offer Early Decision, and plenty of others don’t. My recommendation is that students should only apply Early Decision to one of their dream schools—but that they should try to have more than one dream school.

If students have at least one dream school that offers Early Decision, applying ED should be an easy choice—but if it’s not, think carefully about why that is and what emotions (or myths) may still be silently impacting that decision. Admissions to top schools is both incredibly competitive and incredibly unpredictable—plenty of students are rejected by a ‘match’ school and accepted to a ‘reach,’ for example. Students and parents must emotionally prepare for at least some bad news—and part of that is getting excited about, and falling in love with, more than one school.