It is intended as another chance for applicants to show commitment, and another tool for the school to protect its admission yield.
However, the University of Virginia, followed by both Harvard and Princeton, reinstated their single-choice early action program to promote diversity and provide opportunities for students looking for such an option in 2011.
[11] If financial aid is a concern or if a family is "shopping for the best deal", then it is usually advised to apply early action or regular decision instead.
[13][14][15] A student who backs out for other reasons may be "blacklisted" by the early decision college, which may contact the student's high school guidance office,[9] and prevent it from sending transcripts to other colleges, and high schools generally comply with such requests.
[9] Critics of the program argue that binding an applicant, especially one that is typically seventeen or eighteen years old, to a single institution is unnecessarily restrictive.
[23][24] A contrasting view is that by applying earlier in the year, the accepted ED students have "first crack at the money,"[12][14][23] particularly at competitive schools without large endowments.
[12] Universities with very large endowments may be unique in their ability to provide aid equally generously to students regardless of their application plan.
[4] The timing of the ED process also helps admissions offices spread the work of sifting through applications throughout more of the school year.
Some college counselors speculate that ED can serve to mitigate the problem of students failing to matriculate to a particular school in favor of a "superior" one.
[35] This is usually attributed to three factors: first, candidates who apply "early" can only present colleges with their transcripts until the end of junior year of high school and therefore must be particularly strong applicants with very persuasive transcripts;[citation needed] second, candidates who apply "early" have dedicated themselves to an institution and are more likely to match the institution's admission standards; third, student athletes sometimes apply "early" to their top choice school to demonstrate their commitment to a college varsity coach who, in turn, can push their applications in the admissions process.
[38] As of 2019–20, almost every highly selective college (where admission rates are below 25%) admits more students through ED than it did a decade ago, but among them, there has been a remarkable shift in the admission strategy of a few schools resulting in as much as 60% of the class being selected from the ED pool compared to 30–35% only a few years ago.
[39] A similar trend exists across the most competitive liberal arts colleges in early decision application and admission numbers, with over 50% of the class being filled at these schools from ED admits compared to only about 44% in 2012–13.