The Advantage of Thinking Early Even If You Decide Against Applying Early

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Many students habitually cut things close to the wire, and they extend that habit to the college application process. But even if you do not plan to apply “early” to a college, there are advantages to getting your application in well before the deadline. The most obvious case is if a college uses rolling admissions to select students as their applications come in, rather than waiting until they can compare applications to each other. Used at many state universities, like the University of Michigan, and some less selective private colleges, rolling admission allows a college to accept qualified students up until the freshman class is full. Clearly, applying early is better than applying at or close to the deadline so that your application will be considered while there is still room.

But there are advantages to getting your application in well before the deadline for other colleges as well. Even if you are applying regular decision to a college with a January 1 deadline, you can submit your application as early as you want once the applications are available.

One of the most comical things is that close to half of our applications come in during a two to three day period right before the deadline. If you come here around December 30, you’ll see the FedEx truck, Airborne Express, UPS, all lined up out here. We literally have buckets and buckets of mail that come in.  - Thomas Parker, dean of admissions and financial aid at Amherst College

Getting your materials in early even if you want regular cycle review means that they will arrive earlier than the deadline “crunch” and be filed and acknowledged earlier (and be more likely to make it successfully to your folder rather than go astray). You will be notified online or via postcard that your file is complete, and you won’t have to worry whether a letter or test scores will get there on time. And if something does end up missing, you’ll have lots of time to get a replacement sent.

Because admissions committees start reading files that are complete soon after the closing date, you’ll get a reading by staff members who are fresh and not yet fatigued by the many hundreds of files they will read during the winter. It’s impossible to know, of course, if that will make any difference in the final decision, but it can’t hurt. Getting applications in early also means that you can enjoy the holiday season with your family, rather than spend it worrying about applications. You (and your family) will be glad that you took the advice.

And Humor Always Helps Keep Things in Perspective

Mike Mills, director of admission at Miami University, penned the following parody for the Journal of College Admission.  Hope you will enjoy it.