Decision Plans

Not only is it challenging enough to create a balanced list of schools that you like and earn high enough test scores for schools that require them, but now you also need to come up with an admissions plan. Early decision, early action, regular decision, restrictive early action, single choice early action, oh my!

The main decision to be made is to apply early decision to your one top school or not. Early decision typically boosts your chances of getting in. The graphics below are my final ones from Judi Robinovitz's webinar that I have mentioned a few times now. There is another amazing resource to see how much of a boost you will get by applying early decision at certain schools. If you Google Big J Educational Consulting, you will find great interactive charts.

Here’s the thing with early decision. It is a binding contract. You need to like the school enough that if you get in, you will retract all of your other applications. You are only allowed to apply to one school under an early decision plan (and one under early decision two if ED one doesn’t work out). Most of the highly rejective schools only offer early decision or regular decision. You will see in these attached pictures not only how much of a boost in percent chance of being admitted early decision gives an applicant but also what percentage of the class is filled by early decision. It really can offer an extreme advantage to those who can and choose to take advantage of it! Another thing that it offers is being locked into paying sticker price. Tuition, room, and board can come pretty close to $100,000 per year for many highly rejective schools. These schools don’t typically offer merit aid anyway; they tend to put their money toward need based aid for lower income students.

Early decision is a way for colleges to bring in top dollar. If they are filling a large percentage of their class through early decision, these are typically full pay students. Many people think that this is yet another thing that favors the haves over the have-nots. Obviously, the regular decision pool has an exponentially higher number of applicants than the early decision pool. There are so many things to navigate as students are applying. This is another reason to get started during junior year and take full advantage of the summer between junior and senior year to have your list and strategy locked in and ready to go.