Early Action decisions should be released sooner than January

Checking your decision on college portals.

The early January release date of early action schools conflicts with the due date for regular decision applications, leading to unnecessary stress.

College applications include three main options: early decision (ED), early action (EA) and regular decision (RD). Both EA and ED are ways to expedite the college application process, as applications are due usually by Nov. 1 and decisions come out mid-December to late January, according to the CollegeBoard.

Many EA decisions are released in January for colleges like Purdue, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and University of Wisconsin-Madison. That may seem plenty early, but the timing has the unfortunate effect of denying seniors the chance to know which EA colleges they’ve been admitted to and adjust their applications, if any, to RD schools.

After all, why even bother applying to most of your RD colleges if you already got an acceptance letter from an EA college that’s your top choice?

Additionally, a large majority of EA schools are publics, which would make life easier for those who can’t afford to keep spending as much money on application fees as others. With each college application costing around $80, knowing you’re already admitted to a top-choice college can easily save you and your parents hundreds of dollars.

And, as ED is binding — meaning students must commit to that one school — students have no negotiation power for financial aid or merit award packages. However, those who applied to EA schools are able to choose whichever college has given them the best financial aid package.

Earlier admission release dates would also provide a better opportunity for students to stay less stressed and more focused on school if they were accepted. If students don’t get into their EA or ED schools, it would also allow for a shift toward applying to schools more suitable to them in the RD cycle.

Moving the release date to an earlier time might encumber the admission officers from processing the applications and finish reviewing before Jan. 1. However, it seems that if admissions officers can release early decisions in December, so can early action schools.

Cornell University had 9,555 early decision applicants in the 2022-23 school year and still managed to get a decision out by Dec. 15. A school like University of Illinois Urbana Champaign received around 9,000 applications in its early action cycle, but its release date is still Jan. 26. To get those decisions out a month earlier might mean hiring more admission officers, but the results would be greatly beneficial to already stressed out, overburdened seniors.