College Admissions Advantage of Early Decision

High school students with their hearts set on a particular college would do well to employ a time-honored strategy: apply early decision.  By promising a college that they will attend, if accepted, students typically increase the odds that they will get a “You’re accepted!” email or letter. 

At some colleges, the early decision admission advantage is enormous. At The College of New Jersey, one of the highest ranked colleges in the Garden State, the early decision acceptance rate was 97% compared to the regular decision acceptance rate of 64%.

 

At Villanova University, a Pennsylvania school popular with New Jersey students, the early decision rate was 55% compared to 23% for regular applicants.

 

At American University in Washington D.C., the acceptance ratio was 86% to 41%, while at the College of the Holy Cross, located about an hour from Boston, the acceptance ratio was 81% to 36%.

These statistics are from U.S. News & World Report, which publishes the annual, highly acclaimed, “Best Colleges” guide.

 

Admissions officers know that high school students typically apply to eight-to-twelve different colleges and universities, with some applying to even more as the “Common App” accommodates 20 applications. Since these institutions may have multi-billion-dollar budgets (Harvard’s was $5.9 billion last year), it benefits them to identify and favor those students who will definitely enroll – and pay tuition – if accepted. 

 

Students not ready to commit to one college can still get an advantage over regular applicants by applying to colleges “early action,” which is non-binding.  Students can apply early action to as many schools as they like, as long as they meet the school’s early action deadline, which is typically November 1^st.  While the advantage is often not as great as that for early decision applicants, it can still be substantial.  First of all, both early decision and early action applicants tend to hear back from their colleges well before their peers who applied regular decision.

 

Also, there is an early action acceptance boost at many schools – even the most competitive.  For the Class of 2026, the regular admission rate at Harvard was 2.34%, while the early action admission rate was 7.87%. Similarly, Yale’s acceptance ratio of regular to early action was 3.17% to 12.09%. These two universities, along with Georgetown and Notre Dame, actually offer “restrictive early action,” banning their early action applicants from applying early decision to any school.

 

As numbers don’t lie, students should enter their senior year of high school ready to start filing college applications.

Susan Alaimo is the founder & director of Collegebound Review, offering PSAT/SAT^® preparation & private college advising by Ivy League educated instructors. Visit CollegeboundReview.com or call 908-369-5362