College Applicants Should Not Fear Commitment

If a school is your first choice and it’s a reach but not an impossible reach, apply there Early! You’d be crazy not to.

“My son doesn’t want to apply Early because he’s not ready to commit to any given school.” It’s a statement we hear quite often during free consultations with prospective clients. And it’s a statement that drives us bonkers. As we have long expressed on the pages of our college admissions blog, in news publications, and on our soapbox in the streets, to not apply Early is to waste the most valuable card you’ve got in your back pocket in highly selective college admissions. Don’t agree? The statistics tell the story.

The Early Decision / Early Action Unequivocal Advantage

For the Class of 2022, the Regular Decision admit rate at Brown stood at 5.7%. The Early Decision admit rate at Brown stood at 21%. At Columbia, 15.9% of Early Decision applicants earned admission compared to 4.3% of Regular Decision applicants. At Cornell, 24.3% of Early Decision candidates got in, while 8.3% of Regular Decision candidates got that same good news. Dartmouth’s RD admit rate stood at 6.9%. Its ED admit rate stood at 24.9%. At Harvard, 14.5% of Single Choice Early Action applicants got in compared to 2.8% of Regular Decision applicants. At Penn, 18.5% of Early Decision candidates earned admission, while 6.5% of Regular Decision candidates got in. At Princeton, 14.8% of Single Choice Early Action candidates got in compared to 3.8% of Regular Decision candidates. Finally, at Yale, 14.7% of Single Choice Early Action applicants earned admission. Yale’s Regular Decision admit rate stood at 4.7%.

While Mark Twain may have once said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics,” these statistics accurately paint the picture of the Early Decision / Early Action advantage in highly selective college admissions. In the end, students must commit to one school anyway. Why not do it in the Early round so the odds are so much more in their favor? [Crickets.] And for all you skeptics of the Early Decision / Early Action advantage (like the folks who claim the Early round only advantages the wealthy, legacies, recruited athletes, etc.), well, that’s simply not correct. Stay tuned to our college admissions blog to find out why these folks are not on point and watch Felicia (of Bye, Felicia) set them straight.

Curious where you should be applying Early? Want to know what that reach school (but not impossible reach) should be? Sign up for a free consultation in which we’ll answer questions about Ivy Coach’s services. We offer this very kind of advice during our one-hour evaluation. And, for seniors and their parents, no, it is not too late. Not yet.