Every acronym you will run into during application season, in plain language. No admissions-office jargon, no assumed knowledge. Written by a student going through it.
Apply early, hear back early, and you are not committed to attend.
Early Action lets you submit your application ahead of the regular deadline — usually in November — and get a decision in December or January. The key thing: it is not binding. If you are accepted, you can still compare financial aid offers and choose a different school. Because of that, there is very little downside to applying EA to a school you like, beyond having your materials ready sooner.
Apply early, and if accepted you are committed to attend.
Early Decision is a binding agreement. If the school accepts you, you are expected to withdraw applications elsewhere and enrol. Only apply ED to a school you would genuinely choose over every other option, and only if your family is comfortable with the financial aid picture, since you are agreeing before you can compare offers. Acceptance rates are often higher for ED applicants, but that partly reflects who applies rather than a pure advantage.
The same binding commitment as ED, but with a later deadline.
Early Decision II carries an identical commitment to ED, but the deadline usually falls in January, around the same time as Regular Decision. It exists for students whose first ED application did not work out, or who settled on a first choice later in the process. You can only have one active ED or ED2 application at a time.
Not binding, but it limits where else you can apply early.
Also called Single-Choice Early Action. You get an early answer without committing to attend, but the school restricts you from applying early elsewhere — the exact rules vary, and some allow exceptions for public universities or scholarship deadlines. Read each school's specific policy, because they genuinely differ.
The standard deadline and timeline, with no commitment attached.
Regular Decision deadlines typically fall in January, with decisions arriving in March or April. You can apply RD to as many schools as you like, compare every offer, and decide by the national reply date of May 1. Most applications are submitted this way.
Applications are reviewed as they arrive, not all at once.
Rather than waiting for a deadline and reviewing everything together, a school with rolling admission evaluates applications continuously and sends decisions within a few weeks. Applying earlier generally means both a faster answer and better odds, since more spots remain open at the start of the cycle.
Your early application was moved into the regular pool.
A deferral is neither an acceptance nor a rejection. The school has decided to reconsider your application alongside the Regular Decision pool, often to see mid-year grades or a larger applicant pool first. Many schools accept a letter of continued interest, updated grades, or a new achievement after a deferral.
You are held in reserve in case spots open up.
Being waitlisted means the school would take you if space allows, but cannot offer a place yet. Movement usually happens after May 1, once admitted students confirm. Waitlist acceptance rates vary enormously year to year, so the practical advice is to commit to a school you were admitted to and treat any waitlist offer as a bonus.
Having a parent or grandparent who attended the school.
Legacy status has historically given some applicants an advantage at certain private universities. The practice has come under significant scrutiny and a growing number of schools have dropped it entirely, so its relevance depends heavily on the specific institution and the current admissions cycle.
The whole application is considered, not just numbers.
Under holistic review, admissions officers weigh essays, activities, recommendations, context, and background alongside grades and test scores. It is why two applicants with near-identical statistics can receive different outcomes, and why the parts of an application you control — the essay especially — genuinely matter.
How visibly engaged you have been with a school.
Some schools track whether you visited campus, attended an information session, opened their emails, or interviewed, and factor that into admissions. Others explicitly ignore it. If a school tracks it, small actions like opening emails and attending a virtual session are low-effort ways to register interest.
One application platform accepted by over a thousand schools.
The Common Application lets you enter your core information, essay, and activities once, then send it to many schools, each of which may add its own supplemental questions. Most of the per-school work is in those supplements rather than the shared portion.
The form that determines federal financial aid eligibility.
The FAFSA is how you apply for federal grants, work-study, and loans, and many schools and states use it for their own aid too. It opens in the autumn before the year you would enrol. Filing early matters, because some aid is distributed until it runs out.
An additional aid form used by some private colleges.
Separate from the FAFSA and run by the College Board, the CSS Profile collects more detailed financial information and is used mainly by private institutions to award their own institutional aid. Not every school requires it — check each one's financial aid page.
The share of admitted students who actually enrol.
Yield is a statistic schools care about internally, and it explains some admissions behaviour — including why binding Early Decision is attractive to institutions, and why waitlists exist as a way to fill remaining spots precisely.
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