Continuing a trend of recent years, 77% of the Class of ‘25 applied early to colleges they hope to attend next fall.
According to the administration, 65% of the Class of ‘23 and 72% of the Class of ‘24 self-reported having an early application deadline. The Class of ‘25 has a record number of seniors applying early.
Deadlines for the early application cycle depend on the college, with most schools having a deadline of Nov. 1 and others having an earlier deadline of Oct. 15. The Classes of ‘23 and ‘24 had only 9% and 11% students, respectively, identifying an Oct. 15 deadline, while 30% of the Class of ‘25 had the earlier deadline.
“The most significant change with the Class of ‘25 early applicants is the number of students whose first deadline was Oct. 15,” guidance counselor Brian Safine said. “The biggest reason for the increase was the University of Texas moving their early application deadline to Oct. 15.”
The University of Texas is not the only college to move up its deadlines. The University of Chicago now offers an “Early Notification” option for students who have attended their summer programs, with a submission window from Sept. 1 to Oct. 15 and decisions coming out in three weeks after the deadline.
Aside from application-specific changes, some students have specific ideas on why an increasing number of seniors are applying early.
“I think it’s ambition,” senior Dylan Wilson said. “If you see other people doing it, you’re think, ‘Oh, maybe I should apply early too.’”
Although Wilson finds ambition and peer pressure to be a major influencer of early applications, he also believes there are tangible benefits in applying early.
“I would personally tell people younger than me to apply early because, first of all, the percentage of acceptance is usually higher for early applications,” Wilson said. “You can also just get it done before December when all the finals are.”
Senior Langdon Huynh cited organizational and results-based reasons for his decision to apply early.
“I wanted to stay on track and make sure all my applications are submitted on time,” Huynh said. “And also a lot of schools give priority to early applicants, especially if you apply early decision, [where acceptance is binding].”
Although this way of thinking may not apply to every single senior, Safine has noticed a general effect of applying early on acceptance rates and organizational improvement.
“In very general terms, there is a statistical benefit for students who apply early,” Safine said. “Additionally, students who apply early tend to begin their organization process earlier and, subsequently, finish their applications earlier.”
Yet, for some students who are busy during the fall, choosing to apply early comes with drawbacks.
“The deadline came up really fast,” senior volleyball player Emerson Pak said. “Since I was a fall athlete, and I had tournaments to go to, there wasn’t a lot of time on weekends [to work on applications]. Overall, I’d say it was really stressful.”
Despite this potential stress and time crunch caused by early application deadlines, the trend of increasing early applicants continues to persist, not just in the school, but in general as more and more colleges move their deadlines earlier.
College and Career Center adviser Sierra Ward has also noticed drastic changes in how applications are being handled by seniors this year.
“My prior two years here were fairly normal, consistent with my 15 years on the high school side before Saratoga. But this year […] two huge new groups seemed to emerge,” Ward said. “The first was the seniors who appeared to be much more anxious to get things in earlier than I’ve been accustomed to, as much as three or four weeks before deadlines.”
Many members of this group, according to Ward, submitted essays that were haphazard, barely answering the prompts or in some cases even skipping some of the questions. Despite it being several weeks before the deadline, this group tended to rush their applications, causing Ward to do unnecessary work even after the applications were submitted.
“The second group, which was markedly larger than in prior years, waited until the last second,” Ward said. ”Their process was greatly slowed down because of marching band, their fall sport, senior quad day, the fall play, robotics, etc.”
This, in turn, led to many seniors in this group submitting their early applications on the day of the deadline, without giving Ward enough time to look at drafts or provide any useful feedback on their writing.
Though Ward doesn’t fully attribute the cause of this change to the Oct. 15 deadline and isn’t sure about the specific causes of this issue, she still emphasizes the significance of such a shift in the Class of ‘25’s college admissions process.
“As a result of how the [early application] process was going, I began to create a huge rubric or structural approach that I’ve now been dropping into the documents of the seniors I’m working with, in order to help them better organize both their content and schedule,” Ward said.
In the future, she plans on implementing an improved version of this approach for the Class of ‘26, hoping to avoid a similar hectic early application process.
Looking ahead, Safine believes that the root causes of this early-application trend won’t die down anytime soon, based on his understanding of both students and colleges.
“The number of colleges allowing for early applications will continue to stay high or even increase further,” Safine said. “Universities can use the early-decision process to offer admissions to students who are distinctly interested in their campus. Additionally, college admissions readers have more time to evaluate large volumes of applicants when they lengthen their application period.”
Still, there is a notable challenge with the large volume of seniors applying early: It puts a burden on staff members such as guidance counselors and teachers. With more requests, they are hard pressed to meet deadlines for accompanying supporting documents such as letters of recommendation and transcript requests .
“Many staff members need to work nights and weekends to complete the recommendation materials required by private and out-of-state universities,” Safine said. “There are simply not enough hours in the work day to thoughtfully complete the heavy volume of forms and letters our students need for university admission.”
Ultimately, the increase in early applications has made this year’s early admissions process especially challenging from previous years, marking a major shift in how college applications are handled by both students and the administration, Ward said.
“The timeline was out of wack this year with the majority of the seniors I was working with,” she said. “This fall seemed unlike any other for me.”
