Early decision
Early decision or early acceptance is a common policy used in college admissions in the United States for admitting freshmen to undergraduate programs. It is used to indicate to the university or college that the candidate considers that institution to be his or her top choice.
Some colleges offer early admission plans known as Early Decision or Early Action, and some offer both. Others accept applications in a relatively long window known as rolling admission. ED differs from EA in that it constitutes a binding commitment to enroll; that is, if offered admission under an ED program, and the financial aid offered by the school is acceptable, the candidate must withdraw all other applications to other institutions and enroll at that institution. Early action is not binding, so a student admitted to a school early action could choose not to enroll in that school. Furthermore, ED programs require applicants to file only one ED application, while, depending on the institution, EA programs may be restrictive or non-restrictive and allow candidates to apply to more than one institution.
In the case of certain colleges with established competitor institutions, such as schools in the Ivy League, some college counselors speculate that ED can serve to mitigate the problem of students failing to matriculate to a particular school in favor of a 'superior' one. For example, one college might only admit a candidate deemed qualified for another, 'superior' college under ED, for in regular decision, should that student be admitted to the 'superior' competitor, that student would be unlikely to attend the college that originally offered the ED admission.
Significance
Schools which offer an ED admission plan look to benefit from a near certainty that the admitted applicant will attend. As a result, the admission yield is increased by admitting more students at the ED stage. The timing of the ED process also helps admissions offices spread the work of sifting through applications throughout more of the school year. A number of schools which had EA plans have recently added ED plans to EA, or have switched to ED and jettisoned EA.Many schools offering ED regularly fill over 50% of their class through ED admits. The implication is that there will be fewer places available to the Regular Decision applicant pool. Universities with half of their class filled by ED admits include Penn, Duke, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, WUSTL, Tufts and NYU. Many liberal arts colleges also fill around half their class during the ED process.
In recent years, there has been a marked trend in the number of ED applicants, and in the proportion of the class being admitted via the ED process. As of 2019–20, almost every highly selective college admits more students through ED than it did a decade ago, but among them, there has been a remarkable shift in the admission strategy of a few schools resulting in as much as 60% of the class being selected from the ED pool compared to 30–35% only a few years ago.
Early decision Admissions, Admit Rates and Trends 2012-2020
Admit rates for the ED pool are generally much higher than the overall admit rate for a college and even higher still than the admit rate for the Regular Decision pool. Most institutions include data on the number of ED applicants and ED admits in their annual Common Data Set, and trends for an individual institution can be readily complied. At the most competitive schools, the number of ED applicants has increased at a more rapid pace than Regular Decision applicants. Although the ED admit rate has declined at these schools in recent years, the absolute number of ED admits has managed to increase while the absolute number of Regular Decision admits has fallen rapidly and all the admit rates have also fallen.| Freshman Year | ED Apps | ED Admits | ED Admit Rate | Total Enrollment | Enrollment filled by ED Admits | Total Apps | Total Admits | Overall Admit Rate | RD Apps | RD Admits | RD Admit Rate / |
| 2012-13 | 38,840 | 11,471 | 29.5% | 32,349 | 35.5% | 441,414 | 91,034 | 20.6% | 402,574 | 79,563 | 19.8% |
| 2013-14 | 41,668 | 11,965 | 28.7% | 32,245 | 37.1% | 460,125 | 89,200 | 19.4% | 418,457 | 77,235 | 18.5% |
| 2014-15 | 44,535 | 12,887 | 28.9% | 33,325 | 38.7% | 489,518 | 90,153 | 18.4% | 444,983 | 77,266 | 17.4% |
| 2015-16 | 48,104 | 13,281 | 27.6% | 33,150 | 40.1% | 507,082 | 89,644 | 17.7% | 458,978 | 76,363 | 16.6% |
| 2016-17 | 51,466 | 14,003 | 27.2% | 33,546 | 41.7% | 527,956 | 88,376 | 16.7% | 476,490 | 74,373 | 15.6% |
| 2017-18 | 55,128 | 14,800 | 26.8% | 33,702 | 43.9% | 545,985 | 84,271 | 15.4% | 490,857 | 69,471 | 14.2% |
| 2018-19 | 62,598 | 16,328 | 26.1% | 33,843 | 48.2% | 596,080 | 77,615 | 13.0% | 533,482 | 61,287 | 11.5% |
| 2019-20 | 71,882 | 16,940 | 23.6% | 32,792 | 51.7% | 623,294 | 71,818 | 11.5% | 551,412 | 54,878 | 10.0% |
A few schools have seen ED applicants more than double in the 2012-2019 period, including Rice, Emory, NYU, and Boston University. The number of ED admits has also doubled at NYU and Boston University over this period, and although the increase of ED admits at other schools has been less dramatic, that increase has nonetheless reduced the number of RD admits meaningfully because half the class or more is now being filled by ED admits. At WUSTL and NYU, about 60% of the class is now taken up at the ED stage.
A similar trend exists across the most competitive liberal arts colleges in Early Decision application and admission numbers, with over 50% of the class being filled at these schools from ED admits compared to only about 44% in 2012-13. Notably, the absolute number of ED admits has increased, even though the number of RD admits, the RD admit rate, the ED admit rate and the overall admit rate have all gone down.
| Freshman Year | ED Apps | ED Admits | ED Admit Rate | Total Enrollment | Enrollment filled by ED Admits | Total Apps | Total Admits | Overall Admit Rate | RD Apps | RD Admits | RD Admit Rate / |
| 2012-13 | 13,018 | 4,988 | 38.3% | 11,275 | 44.2% | 137,864 | 29,517 | 21.4% | 124,846 | 24,529 | 19.6% |
| 2013-14 | 13,908 | 5,175 | 37.2% | 11,299 | 45.8% | 141,246 | 28,820 | 20.4% | 127,338 | 23,645 | 18.6% |
| 2014-15 | 14,214 | 5,117 | 36.0% | 11,387 | 44.9% | 143,625 | 29,346 | 20.4% | 129,411 | 24,229 | 18.7% |
| 2015-16 | 15,233 | 5,355 | 35.2% | 11,493 | 46.6% | 153,964 | 29,853 | 19.4% | 138,731 | 24,498 | 17.7% |
| 2016-17 | 15,100 | 5,622 | 37.2% | 11,467 | 49.0% | 157,988 | 29,188 | 18.5% | 142,888 | 23,566 | 16.5% |
| 2017-18 | 16,247 | 5,850 | 36.0% | 11,540 | 50.7% | 166,967 | 29,168 | 17.5% | 150,720 | 23,318 | 15.5% |
| 2018-19 | 17,496 | 5,972 | 34.1% | 11,808 | 50.6% | 184,066 | 29,585 | 16.1% | 166,570 | 23,613 | 14.2% |
| 2019-20 | 18,105 | 6,044 | 33.4% | 11,693 | 51.7% | 195,740 | 28,607 | 14.6% | 177,635 | 22,563 | 12.7% |
Features
- Binding commitment. Early decision is a binding decision, meaning that students must withdraw applications to other schools if accepted. It is not legally binding, but there is a commitment involved with penalties for withdrawing for spurious reasons. Advisers suggest that this method is only for students who are absolutely certain about wanting to attend a specific school. If financial aid is a concern or if a family is "shopping for the best deal", then it is usually advised to apply early action or regular decision instead. The one stipulated situation under which a student may back out of the agreement is if the financial aid offer is insufficient. A student who backs out for other reasons may be "blacklisted" by the early decision college, which may contact the student's high school guidance office, and prevent it from sending transcripts to other colleges, and high schools generally comply with such requests. In addition, the jilted college may contact other colleges about the withdrawal, and the other colleges would likely revoke their offers of acceptance as well.
- Application timing. Candidates applying early decision typically submit their applications mid-October to early November of their senior year of high school and receive a decision around mid-December. In contrast, students applying "regular decision" typically must submit their applications by January 1 and receive their admissions decision by April 1.
- Greater chance of acceptance. Applying early decision brings a greater statistical chance of being accepted, possibly doubling or tripling the chances of an acceptance letter. In 2009, the average early acceptance rate according to one estimate was 15 percentage points greater than regular decision applicants. There is less agreement, however, whether it will help a borderline student win acceptance to a competitive college. Early Decision candidates tend to have stronger educational credentials than regular decision candidates, and as a result, these candidates would have been admitted whether they applied by early or regular methods, and therefore the greater statistical likelihood of acceptance may have been explained by membership in the stronger applicant pool. But the commitment of an early decision application demonstrated by a borderline student can still be beneficial; "colleges really want qualified students who want them" and are more likely to offer acceptances to students ready to make a full commitment.
- Other benefits. Students can know sooner where they will attend, removing uncertainty and the need for multiple applications and the associated costs.
- Early Decision II. Many colleges now offer two different early decision plans: an early plan known as "Early Decision I" with the application due in October and decision in December, and a later ED plan known as "Early Decision II" with the application due in early January and decision in mid-February. The Early Decision II timeline is designed to allow students to apply to a new "first choice" school under ED after they find out in mid- to late December they have been unsuccessful in their Early Decision / Early Action application to another school. Although the application deadline of early January for Early Decision II may be the same as for Regular Decision, the Early Decision II application is a binding commitment to attend if admitted, with the benefits and drawbacks to the applicant and the college being similar to Early Decision I in most respects. It is a way for the applicant to show commitment, and for the school to protect its admission yield.
- How early decision affects financial aid. When admitted as an early decision applicant, with no other acceptances in hand, a student's bargaining position is weaker because the student cannot compare offers from different colleges. Since the applicant is declaring an intention to attend if accepted, the school can "pinpoint the smallest amount of financial aid it will take for the student to attend." The applicant who is sensitive to financial aid may suffer from the likelihood of the aid amount being less than the expected amount. Several reports confirm that early decision applicants tend to come from wealthier families. A contrasting view is that by applying earlier in the year, the accepted ED students have "first crack at the money," particularly at competitive schools without large endowments. In any case, if a highly desirable ED admittee may withdraw because of financial concerns, the college "may pull out all the stops" to prevent this, and that the possibility of backing out for financial reasons gives an applicant some form of negotiating leverage. Universities with very large endowments may be unique in their ability to provide aid equally generously to students regardless of their application plan.
Possible outcomes of early decision