Jessie Yu at Dartmouth has written one of the most powerful arguments against Early Decision, that it’s a “gamble only the wealthy can afford.”  No matter where you land on this issue, Yu’s article offers some sage guidance about how Early Decision works in practice.

Early Decision seeks to legally bind students to a college in exchange for expedited acceptance.  The relief of finalizing the decision early is a huge incentive, especially when you have a clear top choice. But, as more schools go to Early Decision in a hyper-competitive environment, they can virtually fill out their entire class this way.  Thus, if you want in at a high-ED school, they can bind you to them without allowing students room to have schools compete for you. 

For families that make under $250,000 a year (meaning, who need virtually no financial aid), they can take that risk.  But if you need a financial aid package, Early Decision severely restricts your ability to shop yourself on the semi-open market of college admissions, no matter how attractive a candidate you may be.  Sure, schools might release you later for financial reasons, but if competitive schools have collectively moved towards ED, then your choices are much, much more restricted. 

Worse, the National Association of College Admission Counseling changed its official policy to allow incentives, such as first choice housing, for Early Decision.  This has only exacerbated the problem, and it also points up just how “binding” this whole system is:  Some schools were already “violating” the policy before NACAC changed its stance because NACAC isn’t a legal body. 

The legal body that has threatened action on Early Decision is the United States Department of Justice, on anti-trust grounds.  Basically, what they found is that over 30 highly competitive schools shared information about students’ Early Decision actions:  In other words, they ratted out students to their competitor schools, acting like a cartel (which, by the way, the Supreme Court already struck down in the context of college athletics and the NCAA). 

So, if your question about Early Decision was, “What is a college going to do if a student reneges on an Early Decision acceptance, sue them?”, the answer is no, they are going to act like a cartel, violate anti-trust law, and put the word out amongst college admissions professionals that if students violate their Early Decision acceptances even for legitimate reasons, they will act punitively against them in the competitive college marketplace. 



For that reason and many others, the entire system of “binding” Early Decision is simply unworkable, and if allowed to continue down its current path, will greatly exacerbate inequalities within the system.