What Is Early Decision?

I remember back in the mid-90s when I was job hunting.

Near the end of my job search, I had settled on a couple of positions and it was down to the final interviews.

The human resources person at one of these places knew that I was looking at other companies. So on my third interview they offered me the job. But they also added that unless I accepted the position right there on the spot, the position might not be available to me later.

This was a curveball for me. I had never been in that situation. I felt blindsided and confused. I wound up passing on the job; mainly because it left a bad taste in my mouth, and I wanted to see what the other places would offer me. It worked out in the end, and it was a life experience and lesson learned.

Early Decision and Early Action

Colleges and universities take a similar approach to students. They have ways to get students to commit and accept admission early.

Early decision is when you apply to a college at an early date. Most colleges that accept early decision applications set the application deadline at November 1st. Students will normally hear back on the school's decision sometime in December.

If a student is offered enrollment (accepted) under early decision, then the student (and family) are bound and committed to accept the offer. Committing to an early decision offer has its pros and cons:

Pros

- You're done. Congratulations. You got into one of your top-choice schools. No more college searching.

- Your chances of being accepted to this school would have been up to 50% less had you accepted a regular decision, which normally arrive in March or early April.

Cons

- You must attend that school, the contract is binding.

- You will most likely miss out on seeing what financial aid would have been available to you by both the school you have agreed to attend, PLUS all the other schools that you are now saying "no thanks" to; because of your early decision acceptance.

So it's good and bad. Most advisors agree that the ideal circumstances to apply as an early decision is when:

a) The student is 100% sure about the school and it is their top choice.

b) The student and family can afford it, even if they don't receive any financial aid.

Early Action

Early action is more forgiving as it is non-binding. And in many cases, it's a good thing to apply early if you want to see if one of your top school choices will accept you. And even if they don't accept you under early action, you can still reapply under their regular decision deadline. So there really is no downside to applying under early action.

Each student is in a unique situation with different goals and objectives. In our case, Kiki will likely apply early action with one or two schools and regular decisions with the rest. We don't play on applying early decision with any schools because of financial aid reasons. Specifically - we cannot commit to some of these schools unless there is financial aid involved. So we will see.

Questions or comments? Please share.