Deciding About Early Decision and Other Early Options: Does Applying Early Help Your Chances?

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It has been common knowledge for many years that the percentage of students accepted via early decision is usually higher, sometimes much higher, than the percentage accepted during the regular cycle. Colleges have routinely asserted that the files of early applicants are stronger as a group than those that arrive for regular review and that differences in qualifications account for the higher acceptance rate, not differences in standards. A group of researchers at Harvard University, however, has analyzed admissions data from fourteen of the most selective colleges in the country (all of which agreed to participate under the condition that the names of the colleges would not be revealed) and reached a different conclusion. Christopher Avery and his colleagues showed that early decision applicant pools, overall, were academically weaker than regular decision pools and that an early decision applicant on average received an admissions boost that was roughly equivalent to an increase of 100 points on the SAT, even when legacies and athletes were excluded. These findings directly contradict what most colleges have been saying publicly for years about their early decision programs. 

I was surprised there was such a consistent result—that all of the colleges were favoring early applications. I was also surprised by the magnitude of the advantage.  - Christopher Avery, professor of public policy at Harvard University and coauthor of The Early Admissions Game

Although Avery’s research is not without flaws and is based on data now more than ten years old, high schools with strong guidance programs have known for many years that colleges have not been candid about the boost given to those who apply early decision. Students and their counselors have watched classmates with equivalent records have very different outcomes in the admissions process due to when they applied. As a result, the number of early decision applications has gone up dramatically over the last ten to fifteen years, increasing faster than the number of applications overall.

Some colleges have also been open in telling legacy applicants that their legacy hook will be considered only if they apply early, reinforcing the idea of early decision as a strategy. The Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Cornell University, for example, tie the legacy preference to an early application. The same situation sometimes applies for recruited athletes—they are told that they will lose their hook if they don’t apply early.

Counselors cringe when they hear students say, “I want to apply early—I just don’t know where,” because it shows that these students feel great pressure to make a choice, perhaps prematurely, to maximize their chances of admission to a selective college without adequate thought to the qualities of the college, except perhaps its prestige. Once students do pick a school, the pressure continues, often intensely, up through the decision date. Students tend to think, often correctly, that an early decision application is their best shot at their dream school. Acceptance is greeted with great joy, while denial and deferral all too often are met with despair.