Want to Boost Your College Admission Odds? Apply Early — Here’s Why It Works
Kessler: Many college applicants make a major mistake — failing to apply early or wasting their early application on a school too far out of reach.
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Sometime over the next four months, nearly 2 million high school seniors will apply to college. Most will make a major mistake: either failing to apply early or wasting their high-value early application on a school that is far out of reach.
Stakes are high. that attending an elite college confers big benefits in lifetime income. For example, students who attend an Ivy league school per year than those attending less selective private schools.
As a result, the country’s best schools regularly receive tens of thousands of applications a year and have acceptance rates in the low-to-mid single digits.
To optimize their chances of being one of the select few, students spend years setting themselves up to have strong college applications. They work diligently to get good grades, cram for standardized tests, labor over college essays and participate in myriad extracurricular activities to show that they are well rounded (or quadruple-down on one to show that they are ).
Given how hard students work to hone their résumés and applications, it’s striking how many ignore the strategy at play in how to apply. But students make these mistakes — the equivalent of a fumble on the one-yard line — because the market for allocating college slots isn’t well-understood.
In , I discuss “hidden markets” where allocations are not just based on price and where rules that govern outcomes — and the strategies to maximize success — can be frustratingly opaque. This is true for many markets: everything from markets for hard-to-snag restaurant reservations and live-event tickets to labor markets and dating markets.
And it is true in the market for college admission. Nearly half of students on this market fail to take advantage of applying early to a highly selective college: the easiest way to dramatically increase one’s chance of admission.
of the most popular colleges and universities offer some form of early admissions, allowing students to apply a few months before the regular admission deadline (e.g., on November 1 rather than January 1). “Early decision” comes with a binding commitment: You must agree to matriculate if you are admitted. “Early action” allows you to apply to other schools at the regular admission deadline but often restricts you from applying to any other school early.
Colleges like admitting students who are very likely to matriculate — or have already committed to doing so — since it improves their yield, the fraction of admitted students who eventually enroll. This rate once entered the calculus of the U.S. News and World Report rankings of colleges and universities. While it’s no longer used that way, it’s still a matter of pride and reputation. People perceive the best schools as the best in part because very few people turn down their offers of admission.
So, schools reward early applicants with a higher chance of admission — often substantially higher. For the incoming class of 2029, Brown University of early decision applicants versus of those who applied at the regular decision deadline. Research has estimated that applying early increases acceptance rates as much as a . Top colleges routinely give away to early applicants.
But while the benefits are large, many applicants do not avail themselves of the opportunity. Analysis conducted by the Common App found that of the 1.5 million students who applied using their application — which serves — did not apply early anywhere. They also found that lower-income students and students from neighborhoods with lower education levels were less likely to take advantage of the chance to apply early.
Some that lower-income applicants are less likely to apply early because they need to compare financial aid packages before committing to a school. But early action does not require commitment and still gives students an admissions advantage, meaning that even students who are financially constrained can avail themselves of that option. As a result, failing to apply early somewhere is a strategic mistake.
But even the students who do apply early may still fail to do so strategically. Since students who apply early can often only do so to one school, they must be very thoughtful about where to send that application. Many waste it on a dream school that’s unreasonably out of reach.
For many students, that dream school is my employer, the University of Pennsylvania, one of the most selective schools that uses early decision. In a recent year we admitted fewer than 16% of students early and only 6.5% of applicants overall. But while rates of admission are higher if you apply early, doing so will only actually increase your chances if you are close to the admissions cutoff. If a candidate falls well below the school’s high standards, it does not matter whether they apply early: They have no chance of admission either way.
These students should consider applying to a less prestigious school early — one where they are close enough to the admissions threshold that applying early might actually help them get in.
This strategy, which I call “settling for silver,” may seem counterintuitive, since it requires aiming for something less desirable (e.g., a less-prestigious school that is your second or third choice rather than the dream school you like most). But while counterintuitive, it can be effective when the chance of securing your true first choice is vanishing low.
Students who have a college they’d be thrilled to get into that might not be their pie-in-the-sky reach school should consider applying early, even if it means foregoing the very long-shot chance at a dream come true. Better to maximize your odds on a silver than to go for gold and end up failing to make the podium.
How can they tell the difference? They can research how their test scores compare to a school’s most recent incoming class, information that is often. They can also ask their guidance counselors or graduates from their high school who were admitted in prior years about their GPAs and test scores.
Thinking strategically is a necessity in markets where you are competing for scarce resources. That’s a lesson students must learn: better for them if they learn it in the next few weeks before early applications are due.
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Judd Kessler is the Howard Marks Endowed Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the author of the new book “Lucky by Design: The Hidden Economics You Need to Get More of What You Want” which was released Oct. 14 by Little, Brown Spark.
