Types of College Deadlines - What You Need to Know

If you’re in the throes of college admissions season, chances are you’ve heard of the various deadlines available for high school seniors to completely submit their application. These universal deadlines, mandated by each college, can be conveniently managed on universal application portals such as the Common Application or the Coalition Application. However, though of these application deadlines require that all supplemental components are submitted in conjunction with the application (transcript, essays, letters of recommendation, etc.), by leveraging the odds that are associated with each application deadline, we believe that we can leverage a student’s best foot forward in the competition Read on for an in-depth explanation of each application deadline option and the risks/rewards associated with each:

Early Action (EA):

We highly recommend that EVERY high school senior takes advantage of this deadline option if offered by a school on his/her working college list. Why? It’s not binding, it’s usually much earlier in the admissions cycle (think October versus January), and as a result, admissions decisions are typically shared earlier (think end of the calendar year). We believe that Early Action (EA) is a competitive option for all high school seniors in their admission timeline, baring that they have checked the following off of their to-do list:

• Taken all standardized tests (so ACT and SAT testing needs to be completed by summer to have scores returned in a timeline fashion)

• Be “on the ball” in terms of application process (this is toughest on our athletes who are either in peak season or peak training during the fall—coupled with a stacked coursework schedule and now applications). Being organized, allowing time each week to work on application essays, building profiles, tweaking resumes, etc. is crucial.

Early Restrictive Action (ERA):

Some colleges offer Early Restrictive Action (ERA) as an application option, contrastingly. Most notably, Notre Dame now offers this option for applicants. Contrary to Early Action, ERA is binding—meaning that if an applicant receives an acceptance from a school where he/she denoted ERA, they must redact all outstanding applications. Failure to do this swiftly and effectively can result in a dismissal from the ERA school. This deadline option is geared towards students who have identified this school as their “top choice” and wish to find out an acceptance decision early. Similar to Early Action, these ERA deadlines are typically in the Fall (namely, October) and require full “buy-in” and organization from the applicant to submit a competitive application package.

Fundamentally, the applicant pool for ERA is smaller than that of Regular Decision (RD)—simply from a sheer statistical standpoint. Our practice has access to previous admissions cycles with reported data that outlines the number of applicants (and thus, yield %) of a ERA reporting period versus a RD reporting period.

Early Decision (I and II) (ED1 an ED2):

Now, other schools offer two binding deadline options for students who rank them as their #1. Everyone wants to be courted—even schools.

These are denoted by Early Decision I and Early Decision II deadlines. The only thing that is different about them is their timeline—ED1 is in the Fall whereas ED2 is typically early January. Again, this option is geared towards students who have dreamt about this school for years and can only picture themselves attending this college. Just like ERA, binding deadline agreements attract a small number of applicants merely because of the finite implications of the process.

Regular Decision (RD):

The more “traditional” application timeline is Regular Decision (RD). Typically January 1 of senior year, these schools allow for a full academic semester for seniors to juggle classes and applications. The downside of this timeline option is the sheer volume of students who opt to wait until January to apply. Now, this may be the only viable option for a) The schools that don’t offer ERA and/or b) The student is not confident to apply ED1 or ED2 because of the binding contingency. Regular Decision is non-binding and there is no limit to how many schools a student applies to within the RD timeline.

Our Approach:

• Keep in mind that the “hard deadline” imposed by schools means that EVERYTHING needs to be submitted—not just the application. That means essays, letters of recommendation, official ACT/SAT score reports (ordered and paid for via CollegeBoard), official AP Exam Scores (ordered an paid for via CollegeBoard) official transcript (requested by high school), senior course list (requested by high school), school report (from high school), and counselor report (from high school).

• With our WLG seniors, we do extensive prep work over the summer before August 1 (when Common App essay prompts are officially released). This leverages our students at a competitive advantage to be organized and check things off the application to-do list even before school starts back.

• We ensure that we meet each and every deadline. To do this effectively, we impose an internal deadline on our students to the tune of one full week prior to the “official” school application deadline. UGA has an October 15th EA deadline? Better be sure we are all completed by October 7th. We find this alleviates anxiety and “scrambling” at the last minute going into a deadline, which can spike sloppiness, careless mistakes, and over procrastination tendencies. The only caveat to this is Regular Decision (typically a January 1 deadline) where we require all applications and outstanding materials to be submitted to the school by December 15th—before finals and Holiday Break.

• We highly recommend each and every student applies EA if that is an available option on their working college list.

• We do not push students to apply ED1 or ED2 if they are uncomfortable with that approach. If that’s the case, we will just work strategically to competitively submit aggressive application portfolios at the time of Regular Decision.

Have additional questions? Drop us an e-mail or call below.