What is " Early Decision" ?

In the college admissions process, most offer regular decision, early action, and early decision. Regular is when most people apply. Early decision is applying usually about 2 months before regualr decision, and you have to have all your application materials in early. Most colleges offer this; some don't. You would get your admission decision back earlier than normal, and sometimes get your scholarship amount back earlier than people applying under regular decision. The catch is that you can only apply to one college under the early decision plan. It is a binding agreement with the college, meaning that you sign a paper that says "If I get in, I WILL attend this college for sure and will withdraw ALL OTHER applications to other colleges that I applied to for regular decision." You must make sure that it's where you would want to go if you choose to apply to a college under this plan. Also be aware that you are required to attend that college if you get in, and sometimes, you can't even get out of that agreement even if you wouldn't get the financial aid you need. Make sure that you think you could pay for that school before you apply somewhere under this plan. If not, and/or if you don't have a 1st choice college you want to apply to as early decision, then just apply everywhere regular decision like most people. Under early decision, since there's less people applying to any particular college, you usually have a better chance of getting in, but just be aware of that binding contract that you have to sign. There is also another plan- early action, which is also early just like early decision, but it doesn't have that binding agreement that you have to go to that college if you get in and also can apply to more than one college under that plan.

Early decision basically means that you submit your application earlier than the regular date, and you sign a binding contract saying that if you get into that school, you are not permitted to go or apply anywhere else.

That means that if you do get into that school, you have no choice but to go there, even if you were going to get a better scholarship or something at another college.

Early action (some schools have this instead) is non-binding, so you just send in your application earlier and find out sooner but can still choose to go somewhere else.

You can only apply to one school early decision, but (depending on the schools) can usually apply to many places early action.

Be careful if you do choose to do early decision, because there is no way of getting out of it once you submit your application.

Some times the school will set a certain amount of people that they will accept to the college at an early date preceding the year of attendance. You can apply to be accepted to these schools early and have a chance of being accepted early.