The Early Admission College Application Process

Sorting Out Early-Decision and Early-Action options.

There are a myriad of aspects that make the college admissions process extremely complex for the average student. Among the many choices that students must consider are the publicly funded state versus private college, the small liberal arts versus the larger, career focused campuses, the urban versus rural settings, as well as the choice of major and of course, the financial aid package available to prospective students. Though all of these factors are important, another is of critical importance to students.

Just as significant as the decisions listed above, today's students must give careful consideration to a concept known in general as Early Admission. There are essentially two different forms of early admission, that of Early-Decision and another form known as Early-Action Admission. Under the Early-Decision concept, students apply to colleges in November and receive their answers by Christmas. If accepted, students must commit to attending that college. Under Early-Action admission, students may apply early to one school and still submit applications under regular decision to any number of other schools. Again the student will receive notification by December from the school being considered under the Early-Action concept, but the student then has until May 1st to consider other options before making a commitment to the Early-Action college.

Colleges adopted the early admission practice years ago in an attempt to lock in top students. For the average student, it is hard to imagine that some applicants accepted to Harvard or Yale actually choose not to attend these illustrious institutions. But those schools are indeed rejected by some students. At Yale, nearly one in three accepted students choose to attend another college. Therefore, even these highly selective schools have to estimate how many accepted students will actually choose to attend. Since these school seek to have a full freshmen class, they must select a larger number of students than spots available to account for those who opt to go to school elsewhere.