Students applying to college in the fall often use the Early Decision, Restrictive Early Action, or Early Action plans offered by top universities. These plans offer the advantage of receiving a decision early, typically in December or early January.
Some influencers claim that REA and ED plans don’t offer an advantage because so many spots are reserved for recruited athletes. Others claim that the “early” acceptance rate is much greater than the Regular Decision rate due to a smaller applicant pool, and therefore offers a clear leg up on the greater student population.
Our position is that, in short, it depends on the school in question. In fact, some schools’ “early” acceptance rates aren’t that different from their RD rates, some don’t release the information at all (so anyone making claims about that data is clearly fabricating), and others show a clear (+10%!) preference for early applicants. Take a look at the data from the top universities below.
| School (Ranked by US News) | Early Acceptance Rates (All data comes from each university’s 2022-23 Common Data Set – the only reliable source of information). | Regular Decision Acceptance Rates |
| 1. Princeton University | Restrictive Early Action: Information Withheld (but historically it’s around 15%) | 5.8% |
| 2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) | Early Action: 5.74% | 4.8% |
| 3. Harvard University | Restrictive Early Action Admit Rate: 7.56% | 3.41% |
| 4. Stanford University | Restrictive Early Action Admit Rate: Information Withheld, but Stanford historically admits 25% of its incoming class from its REA pool. Overall Admit Rate: 3.68% | 3.68% |
| 5. Yale University | Restrictive Early Action Admit Rate 2023: 10% | 4.35% |
| 6. University of Pennsylvania | ED Admit Rate: 15.5% | 6.5% |
| 7. California Institute of Technology | Information Withheld | 2.7% |
| 8. Duke University | ED Admit Rate: 16.5% | 6% |
| 9. Brown University | ED Admit Rate: 17% | 5.1% |
| 9. Johns Hopkins University | ED Admit Rate: 19.5% | 7.2% |
| 9. Northwestern University | ED Admit Rate: 24% | 9.1% |
| 12. Columbia University | ED Admit Rate: 11.9% | 3.9% |
| 12. Cornell University | ED Admit Rate: 19.16% | 7.2% |
| 12. University of Chicago | Information Withheld. | 5.44% |
| 15. University of California, Berkeley | No early application rounds | 11.6% |
| 15. University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) | No early application rounds | 8.8% |
| 17. Rice University | ED Admit Rate: 18.75% | 8.6% |
| 18. Dartmouth College | ED Admit Rate: 29% | 6.4% |
| 18. Vanderbilt University | ED Admit Rate: 18% | 7% |
| 20. University of Notre Dame | REA Admit Rates were withheld | 12.9% |
| 21. University of Michigan – Ann Arbor | EA Admit Rates were withheld | 18% |
| 22. Georgetown University | EA Admit Rates were withheld | 12.23% |
| 22. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) | EA Admit Rates were withheld | 16.84% |
| 24. Carnegie Mellon University | ED Admit Rate: 12.5% | 11.3% |
| 24. Emory University | ED Admit Rate: 26% | 11.35% |
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