Jonathan Hughes: [00:00:00] With the rise of online college applications and the Common App, students can apply to many more colleges than they could in the past, and many of them do. As a result, colleges are looking at more applications, exponentially more applications, while still trying to fill roughly the same number of open seats That means that colleges can be more selective in who they admit, but it also means that many admitted students are likely being accepted by several colleges at once.

And colleges need to predict how many of these admitted students will end up attending their school. So when a college is deciding whether or not they’re going to say yes to your application, they often factor in how likely they think you are to say yes if admitted. That’s why colleges pay attention to demonstrated interest.

Did this student reach out to ask us any questions over social media? Have they taken a tour? The most definitive statement you can [00:01:00] make about your interest in attending a school is by applying early decision. Over the years, the number of colleges offering early decision admissions has grown, as has the number of students choosing to apply that way.

And all of this has led to students and families facing difficult decisions on whether early decision makes sense for them or not. Now, I haven’t defined early decision yet, because I have two guests here to help me to do that, and they’ll also help families think through whether applying early decision may be the right choice for them.

Joining me from Bright Horizons College Coach is the senior director of the education team, Shannon Vasconcelos, and college admissions consultant Christine Kenyon. Christine, Shannon, welcome to the MEFA podcast.

Christine Kenyon: Thank you.

Shannon Vasconcelos: Thank you so much. It’s great to be here.

Jonathan Hughes: What is early decision?

Christine Kenyon: Early decision is an application deadline that is a binding commitment that a student can make to one school and one school only.

So [00:02:00] oftentimes it has similar deadlines as early action, but basically it means that the student is committing to attending this institution if they’re admitted. So it requires an additional piece of paper that’s signed by the student school counselor or an administrator, a parent or guardian, and the student to make sure that everybody understands if you are applying to this institution via early decision, this is the only college you’re applying to via early decision, and you understand that if we admit you, this is where you’re enrolling.

This is where you’re going to college.

Jonathan Hughes: You mentioned early action, and I think a lot of people get it confused with early action, a- and it’s important that they don’t. Yes. So my next question then is for you, Shannon. What is early action?

Shannon Vasconcelos: Early action is very similar in terms of its timeline. You as a student apply early to a university.

You find out early if you’ve been accepted. But the big difference is early action comes without the commitment. You can apply to as many schools as you want to through an early action process, [00:03:00] and while you find out if you’ve been admitted early, likely in December for many schools, you don’t have to make your enrollment decision until May 1st.

So you still have plenty of time to weigh all your options, maybe visit the schools. You could even apply to more schools through a regular decision process if you wanted to. So you apply early, you find out early, but no commitment involved.

Christine Kenyon: I wish that they named them different things because it’s confusing to have early in both of their names, early action, non-binding, early decision binding, and oftentimes they have the same exact deadline.

Yeah. So make sure, students, that you are careful at the application stage, that you’re checking off the right box.

Jonathan Hughes: Okay. Now, when did schools start offering this option of applying early decision?

Christine Kenyon: I think where it really started to take off was in the ’90s. As it became easier to apply to more colleges because of application [00:04:00] platforms or applications that could be submitted to multiple schools, so you only fill out one application, but you can send it to five schools, I think colleges started to really want to understand who actually is going to enroll here, who wants to be here.

And so we’ve seen the rise in early decision happen over time. It’s very common now for many colleges to offer it.

Jonathan Hughes: What is in it for the college to offer early decision? What do they benefit from that?

Christine Kenyon: If we look at it historically, the common application was one of the first platforms where students could submit the same application to multiple schools.

So naturally, colleges started to see a rise in the total number of applications that they received. Then once we fully entered and embraced the digital age, back in the olden days, back in the 1900s when Shannon and I applied to college-

Jonathan Hughes: Me too. Me too.

Shannon Vasconcelos: How dare you Christine?

Christine Kenyon: You had to fill it out on paper or typewriter and mail it in.

That is no longer the case. Everything is digitized now, so it’s very easy, in theory, to apply as long as [00:05:00] you feel comfortable paying the application fee for however many colleges you want to apply to. So with that increase in applications, colleges want to make sure that ultimately their yield, which is the number of students who accept their offer of admission still stays competitive.

Jonathan Hughes: I wonder if you can just explain that a little bit more, like their yield stays competitive. What does that mean?

Christine Kenyon: So in an ideal world, if a university offered admission to five students, all five would say yes. In reality, those five students, let’s say, have also applied to 10, 10 colleges each, and they have offers from five colleges each.

And so Any year, a university could end up with far fewer enrollees than they hoped based on the number of students that they’ve applied, or perhaps a few more, they’ve over-enrolled. And so the concept of yield is just trying to really nail down the metrics of how many students can we admit to ultimately make [00:06:00] sure that we enroll our class of students, that the breakdown of where the students come from align with our institutional mission, and that we’re fulfilling the institutional priorities for this year.

What does the president want to see? What do the trustees see? What are the alumni asking for? So all of those different metrics are taken into account, and that’s why I think early decision has become more attractive for colleges because there are a lot of variables, and we’re talking about, 17-year-olds, 18-year-olds in high school making a very big decision.

And so early decision allows colleges to understand, all right, if we admit these students, this number of seats is full in our class for next year. And for the student, it lets them know, hey, you know where you’re going to college, and it’s only December.

Jonathan Hughes: This seems like a good time to let you know that if you’re listening to this with someone in mind, someone interested in early decision, or who you might at least think might be [00:07:00] interested in early decision, go ahead and send them this episode.

Now I’ll get to the student side of it then- Yes. … with Shannon. So are more students then applying early decision?

Shannon Vasconcelos: We have seen increasing numbers of students applying through an early decision process in recent years, though it is actually still a relatively small percentage of students compared to the entire base of college applicants.

The latest numbers I saw, I think, were about 13% of students apply early decision somewhere. So it’s a relatively small percentage. There’s a wide discrepancy in who applies early decision based on race, ethnicity, based on first generation status, based on family income, all sorts of characteristic.

We see very different early decision application rates. We may see some very privileged communities where something like three-quarters [00:08:00] of students are submitting an early decision application. But on the whole, it’s a fairly small percentage, though is increasing in recent years. And the other numbers that are increasing, which I find very fascinating, is the percent of a school’s class that colleges are now filling through their early decision process.

That has skyrocketed in recent years. One of the schools I worked at, 10 years ago, they were maybe filling close to 20% of their class through their early decision process. They’re now filling more like 60% of their class-

Jonathan Hughes: Wow …

Shannon Vasconcelos: During the early decision process, and that is not an uncommon pattern across a lot of these fairly selective private schools that offer early decisions.

So that is obviously going to put more pressure on students to feel like they have to apply early decision. If I want the numbers to [00:09:00] work in my favor, I feel an added pressure to apply early decision these days.

Jonathan Hughes: Early decision may give you a leg up in terms of being admitted if a college wants to admit a certain percentage of their-

Their class through early decision. Does early action give you any sort of benefit as far as that’s concerned?

Christine Kenyon: So I think that for any student who is ready to submit their application in the fall of their senior year- Applying early action is a really great thing because oftentimes you just, you hear back earlier in the senior year.

And again, it’s non-binding. You have until that universal enrollment deadline of May 1 to decide whether or not you want to go to that college, and you could choose not to. So I think depending on the school, there can be some benefits to applying early action simply because it’s a smaller applicant pool.

And in my experience as a former admission counselor, if we wanted to see more information, we wanted to see more grades in the student’s senior year, or [00:10:00] we wanted to wait and see how our total pool looked in the regular decision applicant pool, we would defer a student. And so we’d say, “Yeah, apply early action.

W- you’ll either get admitted, yay denied because we’re not the right fit for you and we know that at any cycle that you would apply, or deferred, which means that we will reevaluate your application in the broader pool of the regular decision candidates.” So I think whether or not a student applies early action is up to them.

We certainly don’t want anyone to rush and feel as though they’re submitting a sloppy application or they’re pressing submit just because the deadline- … is sooner, and maybe the math and the odds will work out better in their favor. But certainly if a student does feel like they’ve had consistency in their coursework and grades, they’re done with their testing, if that’s going to be part of their application process, and their school has the capability to submit on their behalf all of the supplementary materials that are [00:11:00] required, Teacher Recs, transcript, et cetera, then by all means, apply early action, and what a joy to start to hear back from colleges a little bit sooner in your senior year.

Jonathan Hughes: It might be nice to just- Throw out some dates of deadlines that you’ve seen for early action and early decision. What’s the earliest that you’ve seen, and what are some other common- … early action, early decision deadlines?

Christine Kenyon: Great question. So the traditional early action and early decision deadlines tend to be around November 1 or November 15th.

But we’ve been seeing a little bit of date creep happen in the sense that as applicant pools grow, so more students are applying to colleges, admissions offices have more files to review and make decisions on. We’ve seen some of those deadlines move up a bit, especially in some southern institutions- where it’s more common to go back to high school in the second week of August. So for example, UNC Chapel Hill offers early action, non-binding, but their deadline is October 15th, [00:12:00] and so that’s a little bit earlier than November 1, especially if you don’t start school until after Labor Day. But traditionally, November 1 is around the time that early action and early decision deadlines will be held, and then regular decision is typically around January 1 or January 15th.

One thing I want to point out is that something, there are two different… There can be two different early decision deadlines.

So early decision one occurs typically in October, November, December of the senior year, and students typically hear back within one to two months of that application. Now, early decision two is something that some colleges offer where they say, “Hey, we get it.

A lot of students applied early decision one. Maybe you got bad news, and now your number two school, we have become your number one school- … because that didn’t work out. We love that. Great. Apply early decision two here.” And that early decision two deadline is typically the [00:13:00] same as the regular decision deadline, January 1, January 15th, but the student will hear back their decision in a month, in February, and then they could potentially know this is where I’m going.

So I think if the family has the ability to consider early decision as a good admissions and college finance option for them, think about early decision one and early decision two, and that’s something that I talk with students about all the time to say, “There is not one perfect glass slipper college for everyone.”

College is exciting and challenging and fun and overwhelming. It’s all the things, right? And so you should be applying to a number of different schools that ultimately could fulfill overall what you’re looking to accomplish in college. And so if you have two institutions that you feel you like and they offer early decision one and early decision two, I think it can be a really [00:14:00] good thing mentally and emotionally to say, “All right, what’s the plan?

I’m applying to a couple schools early action. I’m applying ED1 to this institution, and if I don’t get in, I am prepared and I’m working on all the details to apply early decision two to this other institution in January.”

Jonathan Hughes: Okay, now let’s talk about the other part of this, because we’ve been talking about admissions the whole time and the impact on whether or not you- you’ll be admitted, but there’s also financial aid, right?

So how does financial aid interact with early decision? Do you have an earlier financial aid deadline as well as an earlier college admissions deadline if you’re applying early decision?

Shannon Vasconcelos: Generally, you do have an earlier financial aid deadline because the colleges want to be able to notify you of your financial aid offer at the same time they’re notifying you of your offer of admission, especially if it’s early decision as oppo- opposed to early action, where you have to put down your enrollment deposit immediately.

You need to know what your financial aid is. So typically, the [00:15:00] deadlines are, for financial aid, are the same as the admissions deadlines, or maybe just slightly l- later. So if it’s No- Novem- November 1st admissions application deadline, it will often be a November 1st financial aid application deadline, maybe up until November 15th.

Sometimes they give you a little extra time. But very similar early deadlines so that you can be notified about your financial aid at the same time you’re notified about your admission. With early action, typically the same process, though there’s sometimes a little bit more flexibility with the financial aid application deadline because you don’t have to make a decision until May 1st.

You have more time, so maybe you could apply for financial aid a little later, get an award a little later, but it would be in your best interest to submit those financial aid applications early, even if the school gives you a little extra time. The l- more you push it off, the later you apply for financial aid, it’s likely you’ll receive a later financial aid decision.

[00:16:00] So if you want to know all the information as soon as possible, apply early.

Jonathan Hughes: Can you talk about the danger of applying early decision without knowing what financial aid you are going to receive because you’re making this binding d- commitment to a college before you see any financial aid.

Christine Kenyon: This is such a good question, and part of the reason why I really think of early decision as a full family decision in the sense that the cost of college has skyrocketed so much, no student should ever take out full loans to cover the cost of their attendance at a university.

Full stop. It’s just not a good idea. So because of that, you need to have your parent or your guardian aware that you are applying to this binding deadline, and you want to have done your research to understand, how generous is this college with financial aid or [00:17:00] scholarships or merit aid?

What are my odds of receiving some sort of aid? Do I meet the qualifications that the federal government states in order to qualify for federally funded financial aid? All of those questions are really important to think about because you want to go into this with eyes wide open, and joy if you’re admitted.

You don’t want to say, “Yay, I got in. Oh my gosh, it’s going to cost that much? How- … how are we going to navigate this?”

Shannon Vasconcelos: One thing that I always recommend that families do in advance of submitting an early decision application is completing the net price calculator on the college’s website. Those calculators will give you an advance idea of what kind of financial aid you will qualify for at that school.

So you want to be well-informed when you enter this process. To Christine’s point, you don’t want to be surprised after you’ve been accepted early decision, you’ve committed to the school, [00:18:00] “Oh, I actually can’t afford this school.” You don’t want to put yourself in that situation. Do, so do the net price calculators in advance, and be comfortable with the numbers that calculator shows you before deciding to apply early decision.

Now In the worst case scenario, you can withdraw from your early decision contract in the case that the finances make it impossible. That is the fine print in every early decision contract. The colleges don’t want to put you in a terrible financial position where y- you can’t actually afford the school.

So if anyone is in, ends up in that situation, don’t hesitate to take advantage of that opt out if the finances really make it a hardship on your family to attend. That is always an option that I want to make [00:19:00] sure that students understand that it is an option. But y- you don’t want to put yourself in that position to begin with, so do your due diligence upfront, understand what the school will cost you before you decide to submit that early decision application.

Christine Kenyon: Early decision is not a binding contract. It’s not a legal document. So no university is going to go and drag the student- … out of their home and say “You committed to attending,” or, make you give them money. It’s j- it’s not going to happen, right? The clarification is that it is a commitment, and the commitment states that you have done your research as a family to understand what, generally speaking, the cost of attendance would be, and that cost of attendance is something your family feels comfortable with.

Let’s say somebody in a family unit, the student applies early decision November 1. Yeah. And one of their two working parents loses their job on- … November 25th. That is a, a situation where, first and foremost, absolutely the student, the family should call the university and let [00:20:00] them know that their financial circumstances have changed.

If they’re admitted early decision, talk through that and see what can be done. Because at the end of the day, college administrators want students to enroll at the campus who are going to be successful and happy, and part of that is making sure that you can afford to be there, and you can take advantage of all of the amazing resources on the college campus.

Always know that if it is truly not possible to meet the total cost of attendance because of a change in circumstance at early decision, the colleges will do everything that they can to work for you. But you got to do your research first and foremost.

Jonathan Hughes: 99% of people, I’m sure, are going to follow the rules and apply early decision to one school, but what happens if they don’t?

And yeah, what is the sort of People ask, what are they going to do? Yeah. What is the enforcement mechanism here?

Christine Kenyon: If a student applies early decision and can’t enroll because of financial circumstances- … that have changed, that [00:21:00] is a very human experience. Yeah. The colleges understand that. If a student applies early decision and has also applied early decision to another institution which really shouldn’t be possible, but sometimes

Jonathan Hughes: Because they need so many different people to sign off on it.

Christine Kenyon: Correct. Correct.

Shannon Vasconcelos: People find a way.

Christine Kenyon: People find a way. Or you submit an early decision application, but as you’re waiting for the decision you find out you got in early action or via rolling admission- Yeah … to a different institution- Sure … that you didn’t think you’d get into, and now you’re like, “Oh, man, I’m so excited. I want to go to that school instead.” It is very important to understand that the college admissions office is going to note that. Okay. So if they find out that a student has not in good faith committed to their institution, and they try to get out of the enrollment agreement because they have applied to other places, the university might call the other institution and say, “Hey, you had a student who also applied early [00:22:00] decision.

So did we. What do you want to do about this?” They will absolutely call the school counseling department the college counseling department at the student’s high school, and in some cases, that could burn a bridge between that high school and the university’s admissions office. There was a great article in the last year about Tulane, and they were very candid in saying there’s a student who applied early decision to Tulane and then pulled out.

Yeah. Decided, “Nope. I’m breaking this. It’s not for financial reasons. I got into another school, and I want to go there.” Tulane has not admitted a student from that high school-

Shannon Vasconcelos: Wow …

Christine Kenyon: in the years since, and they were very candid in explaining that they could not trust that this good faith commitment students from this high school were making would actually result in them enrolling at the institution.

And so why should they admit more students? [00:23:00] Yeah. So for the student who applied- college could rescind their offer of admissions. Admissions is a small world. You could pick up the phone and call y- you know, somebody that you are very close to and travel with and have been- Yeah … to conferences with and say, “Hey, did this student also apply early decision to you?”

So that could end poorly for the student. It could also have ripple effects on the relationship that the university has with that high school, and that’s really hard because school counselors have so much on their plate. They are working so hard to support their students through the college application process, and admission counselors work so hard to establish relationships and communities where they can build trust and say, “Hey, let me tell you about my university and why we think it’s a, it could be a good fit for some of you here.”

So when that trust is broken, it’s just sad for all parties.

Jonathan Hughes: If you apply early decision, are you likely to get less financial aid than you would have if you applied regular decision?

Shannon Vasconcelos: [00:24:00] I am comfortable saying that When you apply early decision, you will likely get a similar financial aid offer as if you had applied through an early action or a regular decision process.

You could imagine that colleges don’t have much incentive to be particularly generous with scholarship funding for their early decision applicant pool because those students have already committed to come regardless of any scholarship offers. Now, we know in the agreement there is the financial opt-out if needed so that puts some pressure on the colleges to keep them honest, so to speak.

But also I’ve spoken with all of our colleagues at College Coach who have worked at dozens and dozens of colleges all across the country, honestly looking for evidence that colleges may lowball early [00:25:00] decision students, and with very few exceptions, I really haven’t found that to be the case.

Now, what you do give up by applying early decision is the ability to compare offers from other schools. You’ve committed to this school. If you accept me, I will enroll. I will withdraw any early action applications that I may have out there to other schools. So you never get to see, or some- occasionally if the early action school replies to you sooner than the early decision school, you see the offer from the early action school, but you can’t accept it.

You don’t- … get to make that comparison and make s- the really informed financial decision that this is the best financial fit for me. What I always advise students to think about before deciding to apply early decision to their first choice school is to ask themselves the question, what if my second choice school offered me a great big scholarship?[00:26:00]

Would that move school number two ahead of school number one for you? And if that’s the case, maybe early decision isn’t the right fit for you because you do want to compare offers, and the money is going to make a difference for you. The other piece with not being able to compare offers is you also don’t get to negotiate for higher offers.

Now, in the case of changed financial circumstances, you can always submit an, a financial aid appeal, ask the financial aid office to reconsider your offer in light of these changed circumstances. But what you can’t do with an early decision acceptance is say, “Hey, thanks for accepting me, but I just heard back from my early action school, and they gave me more money.

Could you match that offer?” That pure negotiation is really off the table when you apply early decision. So that’s what you’re giving up, which may end up [00:27:00] reducing what scholarships you could have received. But in terms of the pure initial offer, I haven’t seen many colleges really low-balling early decision students.

Christine Kenyon: That’s great. And one thing that’s, that I find interesting is that there are some schools that incentivize students to apply early decision. Ah. So they will waive the 75 or $100 application fee. The University of Denver, right on their website, is very forward in saying, “Any student who applies early decision to our institution and is admitted will automatically receive X amount of scholarship dollars.”

There, there are those institutions out there that want this to be something that is beneficial for both the university and the student, and certainly colleges understand that financial commitment, it is something that you really need to think long and hard about before submitting that early decision application.

Jonathan Hughes: What are the ideal circumstances for a family to apply early decision?

Christine Kenyon: So I think as students and their families are starting to visit [00:28:00] colleges and research colleges, the most important thing is to consider the financial aid and scholarship implications alongside the admissions implications. It is very enticing to see some of the early decision admission rates in comparison to the regular decision admission rates.

So it’s like, “Oh, this is a no-brainer. I’ll apply early decision.” But you also want to make sure that you have a full understanding of what the total cost of attendance would be. So if a family has saved enough money to cover the full cost of attendance comfortably for their child to attend, whichever institution, and the student has found a school that they’re really excited about, and they would be so thrilled if they were admitted, then early decision can be a really awesome thing.

It is the best when you hear from a student in mid-December that they got into their early decision school and they know where they’re going to college. It’s just such a relief for them. They, they have… it’s the best, right? But it is something that You’ll, the student will need to talk to [00:29:00] their school counselor about, their parent or guardian, and ideally the admissions office or the financial aid office at that institution just to make sure that all the information that they’re understanding is accurate.

And if there are any questions, by all means, pick up the phone and call and ask, and make sure that you have a full understanding of what that cost would be.

Jonathan Hughes: Is there anything else that you’d like to say before we go?

Shannon Vasconcelos: I think we’ve said it- … probably multiple times, but just inform yourself. It’s not a decision to be taken lightly, so make sure that you’ve done your research before applying early decision.

You know this school is the right academic fit, social fit, and financial fit for my family.

Jonathan Hughes: Thank you so much for being on.

Shannon Vasconcelos: Thank you. Thank you.

Jonathan Hughes: I think we helped a lot of students with that episode, and if you liked what you heard, we’ll be back with more. Until next time, my name is Jonathan Hughes, and this has been the MEFA [00:30:00] podcast.