Where ED and REA Matter Most: The Data on Early Admissions! – 2025-2026 Edition!

Most college admissions experts know that one of the tools that you have at your disposal if you are applying to competitive colleges and universities is early decision. Now, there is more than one type of early admissions process. There’s early decision, restrictive early action, single choice early action—which is pretty similar to restrictive early action—regular early action, and at some schools, there’s even more than one round. There’s early decision zero, early decision one, early decision two. And I know all of that can get confusing. So if you need to know more about that, check out my video where I break that all down. But for right now, in this blog, what I’m going to talk about is at which schools there is a very real advantage to applying early.

We’re going to focus mostly on early decision schools because in general, if a school is early decision—because you commit to go there no matter what—that school is more interested in having you attend than any old regular student and giving you an admission ticket. That’s because schools love to keep a particular metric high, which is yield. When they have a high yield, it improves their standing and some kinds of rankings. Yield no longer plays into US News and World Report rankings, but it does still play into other rankings. And it also plays into the cachet of a university. If everyone who gets in goes, that can lower the overall admission rate. And the lower your admission rate, the more rarefied and amazing your college seems. So, yield is really important to colleges. It makes their admission rates seem low, and it makes them seem like the cool kids that no one can get into. And so colleges are interested in early decision because it makes them look more exclusive. Sometimes, early decision programs convey quite a bit of advantage and other times they convey a lot less. So, I’m here to help you demystify that process so that you know if early decision at a particular college is actually worth it or not.

My name’s Brooke. I’ve been coaching students through the college admissions process for over 20 years. I work primarily with students who are applying to top 25 universities, but I certainly help students, especially with their storytelling and their essays, at all levels of the college admissions process. So let’s first dive into some colleges that don’t release data on this, but I still want to give you some intel on what the read is for those particular colleges.

First, I’m going to talk about early action and restrictive early action colleges that aren’t releasing data at all. Three at the top of my list are Princeton, Caltech, and Stanford. So all three of these universities offer a restrictive early action program. What that means is if you apply early to one of these programs, they will tell you by mid-December whether you’re admitted or not, but they make you promise that you will not apply to any other binding programs that are early decision during that time period, or any other single choice early action schools or any private schools with early action programs that are non-binding. And there are some exceptions in that case, like for example, Stanford makes an exception if there’s a scholarship deadline with the early action. So if you apply early to Stanford, you can also apply early action to USC so that you qualify for certain scholarship opportunities. But beyond those exceptions, in general, you can’t apply to any other private schools with early programs or any schools with early decision programs. However, you can apply early action to public schools when you apply restrictive choice early action. I don’t know why those are the rules, and I know it’s kind of confusing. I definitely recommend you check out my video where I go through all of the specific differences of all these different acronym early decision plans.

Here’s the deal at these three universities. Most of them will say they have a super competitive pool early. So though it may look like you have a better shot of getting in if you apply early, chances are your chance won’t be that much better than if you apply regular. There are some exceptions to this, and I don’t know Princeton admissions well enough to know if there is an advantage. But sometimes if you’re applying as a legacy, for example, at Princeton, maybe there’s some advantage to applying early. I know this is true at other schools like Penn and Harvard. If you’re a legacy, they want you to apply in the early decision or restrictive early action round. I’m not sure about Princeton because I just haven’t had as many students applying there early. And I would say with Caltech, they’re fairly new to the restrictive early action game; they had just plain old early action in the past. But I would say between Caltech and Stanford, I see kids get in regular decision there and I see kids get in early there, and I don’t see a huge bump between the early and the regular, if that makes sense.

At the same time, if you are a highly competitive student, if you are an excellent candidate and you know this is your dream school, it feels good to get in and be done. So I don’t dissuade you from applying early to these colleges, but it won’t necessarily make your chances better. 

Second, I have three colleges that don’t release data, but I actually think early decision matters quite a bit at these schools. The first is UChicago. As I always say, UChicago is probably one of the easiest, I don’t know, top 15 colleges to get into, but you must apply early decision if you want to get in. I have had the majority of my students who’ve applied to early decision UChicago get in. I also have found that you don’t have to have the biggest wow factor in the world to get into UChicago. One, you have to be able to write really great essays. Two, you have to have the metrics. You’ve got to have great scores and great grades. If you have those things and you’re a cool person and you can write great essays, you’ve got a good shot at getting in.

But I actually saw the Dean of Admission speak this past summer and one data point that he shared in his talk is that about 60% of their class is filled with students from early rounds. And that seemed kind of low to me. Because in my mind, 90% of everyone I’ve ever seen get into UChicago gets in early. So I asked the Dean why and he said basically the only students that are getting in after that 60% in general are students that he says fulfill institutional goals. What are institutional goals? That could be students who qualify for Pell Grants because they want a certain number of students that are low income so that they’re reaching out into the community and having a diverse socioeconomically diverse class. Two, it could be that you play the French horn and they need a French horn in the orchestra. Three, it could be that you’re majoring in something kind of niche and they don’t have enough people interested in UChicago that want that major. That could be the classics, it could be Russian literature, or whatever it is. And he also mentioned that sometimes you need to check multiple boxes to be able to get in that regular round because they’re really trying to build a class, not just accept the best students. It’s not a meritocracy, it’s building a community. And they want to build that community and they want to have certain levels of diversity of interest, diversity of background, and other things like this. And so they’re trying to fill in those gaps. Filling institutional goals is a really hard tall order because it’s hard to know what an institutional goal is any given year. One year UChicago might need a French horn player, another year they might need an oboe. It might change instruments or skills, and that can be really hard to game. And so my best advice if you want to go to UChicago is definitely apply early. If not early decision, early action at minimum.

Number two on my list is New York University. I definitely see students who are much weaker academically getting into NYU early than getting in regular. Most of my students who end up at NYU because they got in regular are superstars academically. They have awesome grades and good test scores: 35 ACT, 1540 SAT, and straight A’s. But they have a weakness in their application that didn’t get them into an Ivy or other top 20 university. And that could be that their activities are a little bit weak, they didn’t do a lot of activities, they have no leadership roles, they haven’t won any competitions, they haven’t done any independent projects, and they’re majoring in something super competitive that everybody else wants to major into, whether that’s business or engineering or whatever it is. Sometimes those students also end up at NYU and they trickle down, as I like to say. They didn’t have a wow factor. Sometimes it’s also that they’re not great essay writers. They have great grades and they understand a lot, but they’re struggling with production of writing. That also gets into NYU a lot. But if that’s not you, if you don’t have amazing grades, if you don’t have a 35 in your ACT, early decision might be the way to go.

And finally on my list is Wake Forest, and I’ve also had students get in there early. So, just something to take into account.

The other thing that’s happened is there’s four colleges in the top 51-ranked colleges that recently released early decision options: University of Southern California, University of Michigan, University of Florida, and Florida State University. Now, I would bank on early decision mattering at these schools and giving you a leg up in terms of admission percentages. And I’m just going to leave it at that. It’s true that we don’t know exactly what’s going on there. It’s true that there could be only a minor advantage. But why would you start an early decision program if you weren’t planning to try to increase your yield and really utilize it to your advantage? That usually means they’re going to let in a few more people that may have slightly lower stats or may have fewer activities or maybe less glowy, shiny, amazing students, because they know they’re going to go there. So that’s going to help them reduce their admission rates and seem really exclusive. It’s going to help the optics. So those schools are also something to keep on your radar. We’ll see once the data comes out because all of these programs are pretty new. They had early decision last year, but that data often takes a year and a half to come out. So once I have that data, I will include it in a video like this probably next fall.

Little to No Advantage

So let’s get into some lists. I’ve broken down the rest of the schools where I have data into four lists. And I’m starting with the “why do these schools even have ED” list? The schools that I’m going to talk about first are schools where their ED admission rate in some cases is lower than their regular admission rate. Now, a couple things can cause this. One, some schools attract a lot of really strong candidates only in the regular decision round because they’re nobody’s dream school. Okay, so you have to think about that effect, which the data doesn’t completely show. So for example, Brandeis University may have a lot of really smart students, but a lot of the kids who end up going there or get in, they’re not going to want to commit to Brandeis ED. They’re going to want to shoot their shot and see if they can get into a higher ranked university. And if they can’t, well, then they’re going to go to Brandeis. And so that could sometimes account for this differential. Why is the regular decision higher? The regular decision pool at some of these schools might just be stronger. But at the same time, it makes me think that you’re not getting a huge advantage by applying early.

Now, another interesting school on this list is Georgetown. I still have some students applying early action to Georgetown because they love Georgetown, and they know they really, really want to go there. And they just want to find out as soon as possible. Fine, fair, cool. But that admin rate is lower than their general admin rate, which makes me scratch my head a little bit. Now, it is true that sometimes students from the early round roll into the regular admin round and then they get counted in that regular admin round because they were deferred instead of rejected. So that’s also a possibility for some of these numbers. But in any case, what I tell students, if Georgetown is your dream school, you don’t have to apply early there because I don’t think it’s going to convey that much advantage. And Georgetown, by the way, is only early action. When it’s early action on our charts, you’re going to see EA next to it. And I’m just telling you that so that you understand it’s non-binding. But other schools in this list, RPI, University of Rochester, UConn, Brandeis, and Case Western are also on this list. So those are schools where applying early, the biggest upside is knowing and otherwise you’re really not necessarily doing yourself a favor. You don’t really have to ED.

Slight Advantage

Next on my list are schools where you might see a very slight advantage if you’re applying early. Those schools are University of Virginia, Lehigh, University of Notre Dame, Santa Clara, Rice, George Washington University, William and Mary, and Syracuse. Now I want to point something else out in the data beyond just the admission rate and that is the percent of the class that is made up of people who apply early. And though I’m putting University of Notre Dame in the slight advantage category, I want to point out that I think it might be more than a slight advantage, because 78.80% of their class is made up of people admitted early. So I have to think that maybe Notre Dame, it’s a little more important to apply early. I will also say for Lehigh, I do think that early conveys an advantage. And this also might be a victim to that idea that I expressed earlier. I have strong students who ended up going to Lehigh, but sometimes those students have big goals. Sometimes they want to go to an Ivy League school and they don’t get in. But those students often also apply to Lehigh because it’s a safety or it’s a fit. And so some of this admin rate differential may be due to that fact as well, that it’s almost 2x, but because their general population applying to Lehigh may actually have stronger applications than the kids who apply early decision. But even then, we still have almost 63% of the class being filled in that early round. So again, I wouldn’t just look at these percentages and this like 2x rate. I’d also look at the right column and see how much of the class is filled by early decision. If half or more of that class is being filled by early decision, you’ve got to think it matters if you apply early. So my advice to you guys is if one of these is at or above 50%, that’s another factor that you should be looking at and thinking that it will help you if you apply early.

Solid Advantage

At these schools, you have a 2-3x chance of getting in early. This is when it really starts to count. If you want to go to one of these universities, you are reducing your chances of getting in if you don’t apply early. WashU St. Louis, Harvard, Boston, Yale, Cornell, University of Miami, Boston College, Emory, Villanova, Johns Hopkins, and Carnegie Mellon. A lot of these on this particular list have ED1 and ED2. That means there’s two rounds. Generally, your chances are higher in ED1 than in ED2 because they start to fill the class and then the institutional needs get filled up. All these schools are building a class, they’re not just admitting the best students. So if you filled a niche already in the first round of ED, you can’t fill the same niche in the second round. So your odds are higher in the first round, and they reduce in the second round, but a lot of that has to do with chance. And it has to do with how common your interests are. If you have really uncommon interests, the impact is going to be lower. If you have very common interests—you want to major in CS or pre-med, or you want to do business at a school with a business school—you’re looking at a more competitive situation.

Again, I want you to look at this right-hand column. WashU, over two-thirds of their class is filled by early rounds. I have had students get in early, and I think it increased their chances. So definitely take that into consideration. Emory is also filling tons of spots early. If you want to go to Emory, early is a great way to go. The other thing is a lot of those kids get picked up in an ED2. Same with WashU. WashU and Emory are the kind of schools where a lot of my students don’t want to apply ED1 because they want to go for their dream school, but then when things trickle down, when they didn’t get into Yale, they say “Why don’t I just try to go to Emory?” Also, Boston College and Boston University, I see a lot of higher admission rates if you’re willing to ED. And you can look through the numbers on the rest of those.

High Advantage

When I have students who say that the schools on this list are where they want to go to, I am really pushing hard for them to apply ED because your chances are so much higher. And even restrictive early action when it applies, but by the time we’ve gotten to this list, we are now at a strictly early decision list. None of these schools are early action. And that’s because the odds here are enormously higher if you apply ED. At these schools, I would even venture like if you want to get in, ED is really your best shot. So, go for it. And I would say this definitely plays true to my experiences. Do I have kids get in regular decision? Sure. But the quality caliber of a kid that can get in early is you don’t have to be as amazing or jaw-dropping, and you can still get in. So, Northeastern, Dartmouth, and Tulane. If you want to get in there, early is 100% the way. Especially if you’re looking at their ranges of SAT and ACT. 70% of the class at Northeastern got in early. If you look at SAT ranges, you better be above that 75th percentile if you want to get in regular. 

Dartmouth, Tufts, Brown, Penn, Columbia, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, and Duke. And I will say of my students that I’m coaching, if they want to go to Brown, Penn, Columbia, Northwestern or Duke, my ED kids get in at a really high clip. My regular kids do not. It’s just a lot more competitive. Have I had students get in regular? Yeah, I had one get into Northwestern regular decision and I’ve had some get into Brown regular, but they were really interesting and had totally crazy stories. Dartmouth, not so much, so if you want to get into Dartmouth, go early. And its admin rate is over 20% for an Ivy, and that’s crazy. That’s so high for an Ivy League school, and Northwestern, also over 20% admin rate. That’s insane. So consider applying early decision, especially if one of these is toward the top of your list.

In any case, I hope you like this blog, and I hope you found it helpful. And look at all this data, again, both at what percent of the class is being filled by all of these early applicants, as well as what your chances are. And hopefully it helps you in your college making decision process.

Early Decision vs Regular Decision Admissions Rates