In this article, we are going to discuss the different types of admission plans, accompanied with a few examples of schools that have those admission plans.
Early Decision 1
In this admission plan, students are required to submit their applications from November 1st to November 15th based on the submission deadline of your school. Most schools in the US have this admission plan. As indicated by the name, the decisions come out early, mostly from Mid-december all the way to January.
For this admission plan, a student is only allowed to apply to one private school, and the student must make a commitment to the school. To make the commitment, you, your parents and counselor will sign the ED agreement. Unless there is a financial aid factor, such as inadequate financial aid, a student is expected to adhere to the agreement. Although it is not legally binding, failure to honor the agreement will lead to some consequences. If the other schools you have applied to learn that you have breached your ED agreement, you will risk losing all the acceptances in the other schools, and you will end up with no college!
You are also expected to accept your Early Decision offer a few weeks after you have been accepted and reject admission offers from other schools.
Most students apply to their number one target schools for ED, and this shows their commitment and interest in a school. As a result, schools are confident that the students they admit in Early Decision will enroll. Often, schools have higher acceptance rates in Early Decision as compared to the Regular Decision admission plan.
Early Decision 2
This admission plan is almost similar to Early Decision one in that it is binding. However, the deadline comes later, almost at the same time as Regular Decision deadlines. Decision dates are normally from Mid February all the way to March. This admission plan gives one enough time to pay attention to particular aspects of their application and polish it. A student will also get adequate time to decide whether they actually want a school for their Early Decision.
Early Action
This admission plan has almost the same deadlines as ED, and the decision dates still lie in the same category. Applying for Early Action shows that a student would like to hear from a school earlier compared to other schools. This admission plan is non-binding, meaning that even if a student is accepted, they do not have to enroll at the college.
Restrictive Early action/ Single Choice Early Action
This admission plan is also non-binding. However, in this case, a student is only allowed to apply to one private school. They are not allowed to apply to any other Early Action private school or Early Decision school. However, students are allowed to apply to Early Action Public schools. These REA schools include Princeton, Harvard and many more schools. It is important to check a school’s Early Action guidelines and rules before applying.
Regular Decision
This is the one admission plan that allows students to apply to as many schools as they would want. However, a student is allowed to apply to a maximum of 20 schools on the Common App. So if you applied to let’s say one ED school and 2 EA schools, then you can apply to 17 schools on the Common App for Regular Decision.The submission deadline for Regular Decision ranges between January 1st and January 15th. Decisions normally come out from Mid March all the way to April.
A student is given up to May 1st to accept or rescind the admission offer. The main advantage of applying in Regular Decision is that a student normally has a wide variety of schools to choose from.
Rolling Admissions
Schools with this type of admission plan normally take applications almost all the time throughout the year. Acceptance is on multiple cycles until the required class size is met. This means that even a week before classes kick off, you can still apply to a school. An example of a school with this type of admission plan is Xavier University.