The case against applying ‘early decision’ to college

It’s college application season. The whole process is a lot to take in — I’ve been a college professor for 20 years, yet when my oldest son applied last fall, I was surprised by how much I didn’t know.

One choice in particular proved daunting: Should you apply early decision (ED) or regular decision (RD)?

When you apply for regular decision, you submit college applications in the fall, get answers in the winter, and then choose a college from among your options in the spring. On the other hand, when you apply for early decision, you submit an application in the fall with the promise to withdraw from all other college searches immediately upon being offered admission, usually in December. Whereas RD students usually don’t know where they are going to college until late spring, ED students who are accepted at their top choice have their college plans cemented by Christmas. (A hybrid option called early action permits a student to request an early, nonbinding offer, with the decision whether to accept admission not due until May 1.)

The practice of offering a choice of admission between regular and early goes back at least 60 years, but it’s becoming more prevalent than ever at elite schools like Emory, Colorado College, and Grinnell. At many of these schools, ED admits make up more than half of the freshmen class, curtailing the availability of spots for RD students. 

The reason competitive schools offer early decision is obvious: it’s a moneymaker. If you have an applicant with the desired profile, you can simply admit them with the knowledge that they are now locked into the freshmen class regardless of cost. This allows admission offers to build the shape of class that they want, while lowering the admit rate for regular decision students, thereby making the school look even more competitive. 

But it’s a lousy deal for students and parents. In fact, this deal is so bad that both sides of the political aisle have good reasons to agree to end it. 

Conservatives are focused on making a college degree worth what students pay for it. If you care about the cost of college, you should be opposed to early decision. Value is a function of cost and benefit, and each of those is relative to your options. But with early decision, you have to make a college choice before knowing either the final cost or alternative options.

Imagine if we sold cars this way. You walk onto the lot and decide that, all things being equal, you’d prefer a Toyota over a Kia. Fair enough. But what if your choice were between paying full sticker price for the Toyota or getting the Kia for 50 percent off? That would change a lot of minds. 

That’s exactly what happens in college admissions. Colleges rarely make students pay full tuition, and the amount they take off is called the discount rate. The discount rate has been climbing for years as colleges compete for students; this last year, the discount rate at private colleges topped 50 percent. However, students don’t know how much their tuition will be discounted until they are accepted, and by then it’s too late for students locked into early decision. 

Going to Duke would be amazing for many students. But for most, going to the University of North Carolina at a 50 percent discount would be even better. If we’re serious about curtailing the cost of college, the higher education marketplace needs to allow students to shop offers against one another. Early decision actively prevents that. 

On the other side of the aisle, liberals are focused on broadening access to higher education. If you care about equity in the college admission process, you should be opposed to early decision. Who do you think benefits from a process that increases your chances of admission on the provision that you are both application-savvy and able to pay full tuition? Answer: students whose parents are wealthy and well-connected.

Research from Education Reform Now confirms this. Students who attended independent, private high schools are 3.5 times more likely to apply early decision than their peers at public schools, and applicants from the wealthiest ZIP codes in the country are twice as likely to apply ED. Early decision applicants are also less likely than their regular decision peers to self-identify as Latino or Black. What this mean is that students who tend to be wealthy and white have an advantage over their peers that has nothing to do with merit — instead, it’s tied to insider knowledge of the college system and ability to pay. 

Where do we go from here? It depends on who you are. 

The federal government could end this absurd system by prohibiting early decision as a condition of receiving federal aid. Virtually every college in the country accepts federal financial aid through Title IV. It makes no sense for the taxpayers to subsidize a broken educational marketplace. 

At the state level, if your state has public universities with early decision (such as the University of Virginia), pressure legislators to eliminate it. State institutions are supported by state tax dollars, and we shouldn’t incentivize our institutions to increase the cost of education. 

Parents, if you’re paying for college, talk to your kid about the importance of seeing a range of options before making a choice. Create incentives that reward a choice based on comparative value rather than the all-or-nothing proposition offered by early decision. 

Students, there are roughly 4,000 colleges and universities in the country. Many of them are excellent. Unless you have a trust fund, no college is worth the price of early decision. Apply regular decision to a range of schools and require them to make competitive offers before you accept. 

Justin P. McBrayer is a professor of philosophy at Fort Lewis College. Learn more about his work at justinmcbrayer.com.