As college deadlines quickly approaches for early decision and early action applications, time is running out for applying to those schools.

An early decision is a binding contract due Nov. 1. When a student wants to follow this route, their signature is needed along with the parent and counselor to sign off saying that if the student gets chosen by the college in December that’s where they are going and have to withdraw any and all other applications. Something to consider while applying is that a student can only submit one college early decision application.

On the other hand, early action normally due around Nov. 1-15, is non-binding contract where students receive an early response usually in January or February, but accepted students don’t have to commit until the normal reply date of May 1.

“For the ones that are non-binding, I am doing early decision and for the ones that are binding, I am just doing regular,” senior Joseph Martinez said. “I did UT first and I just did Caltech a few days ago. I would do early decision if it is non-binding because I don’t want to be stuck and forced to go to one school.”

While students are filling out the application, they need to think about what the admissions office requires and any additional personal information needed. There are many parts to a college application and one of the important parts is the essays which makes the applicant become more than just academic statistics of GPA and test scores.

  “It took me a while (to do the application),” senior De’Vauncia (DeeDee) Frank said. “I had to get all of my information together. You just have to go back and re-evaluate everything you’ve done in high school, and so that’s kind of the tricky part.”

All admissions offices have different views on what students would be the best for their school, but applicants have to understand policies, gather facts about how colleges use early decision and review outcomes before they can begin to decide if applying early is in their best interests.

  “It’s a tedious process,” Counselor Shelly Harrison said. “Always reach for the stars and apply to your dream schools, but make sure you have some realistic schools because you are waiting on your dreams school to say ‘yes’. Go ahead and let your okay schools say ‘yes’ while you are waiting on that dream school; you can always tell the okay schools ‘no’.”

 The Common Application is a resource that many students may use to apply to any of more than 700-member colleges and universities in 49 states. Alternatively, Apply Texas is also a good source to use for applying to just Texas institutions, and it allows the student to narrow down their choice to in state schools.

https://www.commonapp.org/

https://www.applytexas.org/adappc/gen/c_start.WBX