Another school year is approaching, and upcoming seniors are busily getting ready for the college app season. One of the main things to consider when applying to college is whether you should apply Early Decision, Early Action, Regular Decision, or Rolling enrollment to that particular college. So some people reading this post will wonder: what do these terms actually mean? and what are the pros and cons?
Early Decision is for students who are absolutely sure where their first-choice college is and who are financially worried-free. Typically, most of the early decision applications are due in early November, and you can only apply to one college as ED. Thus, you should be completed with the standardized testings and be satisfied with your GPA. One of the benefits about early decision is that the ED acceptance rate is higher than the RD acceptance rate. For example, Cornell University normally accepts about 15% of the applicants through regular decision and about 30% of the applicants through early decision, nearly double of the RD applicants. While the high acceptance rate may be tempting, you should always keep the cons in mind as well when applying early decision. ED is binding, meaning that you must attend the school if you get accepted. Also, the applicant pool tends to be more competitive compare to the RD applicant pool. Once you get accepted through early decision, you must withdraw from all other college applications and commit to that college.
Early Action, like early decision, is for students who want to apply to college early. There are many similarities between early action and early decision. These include: applications due in November, higher acceptance rate than regular decision, and receiving the admittance letter earlier than the RD applicants. However, early action and early decision differ in terms of bindings and number of colleges that you can apply to. In contrast to early decision, early action is not binding. That is, you can decide whether if you want to go to that particular college or not when you get admitted. You can also apply EA to as many as colleges you want. Just remember. Some colleges do not offer early action. Single-Choice Early Action is another thing you may want to consider. Prestigious colleges such as Princeton and Stanford offer SCEA. Similar to early action, Single-choice early action is not binding at all; however, like early decision, you can only apply to one college as SCEA.
Regular Decision is when most students apply for colleges. The applications are typically due in early January. Thus, you have the benefit to re-take your standardized testings to improve your scores. If you did poorly on your gpa and your class rank, you can pull them up using your first semester of your senior year. This is another benefit you can obtain if you apply as regular decision. However, there are some cons such as lower acceptance rate and getting your results in March.
Rolling Admission does not have a deadline unlike the three above; it opens in the early fall and continue throughout the summer. One of the pros of rolling admission is that you get to get your result within few weeks. However, many selective colleges do not offer rolling admission. You must need to check with your colleges that you are applying to. Although there is no specific deadline, you have to be aware of the deadlines for financial aids, housings, and scholarships.
The first thing you need to do is to check whether ED, EA, SCEA, RD, and rolling admission is available at the colleges. Every college varies. For example, while Stanford offers SCEA, it does not offer ED. After checking with your colleges, you can decide which action is better for you!
Hope this post was helpful to you. Good luck and feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Just leave a comment below.
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