There’s a mom in your group chat right now who just announced that her family isn’t doing early, they’re just doing regular decision. And everybody agreed, because it sounded like the calm, sensible choice.
Here’s the problem. There are six types of college application deadlines, and most families only know two of them. So when a mom says “we’re just doing regular,” she usually isn’t choosing regular. She’s defaulting to it, because nobody laid out the other five.
Four of those five are non-binding. They cost your family nothing. And one of them is where a real chunk of early scholarship money quietly lives.
This is the whiteboard I used to draw for parents. Save it, and go through it with your kid’s list open.
The six types of college application deadlines at a glance
| Lane | Binding? | Typical deadline | You hear back |
|---|---|---|---|
| Early Decision | Yes | Nov 1 | December |
| Early Decision II | Yes | Jan 1 to Jan 15 | Mid-February |
| Restrictive / Single-Choice Early Action | No | Nov 1 | Mid-December |
| Early Action | No | Oct 15, Nov 1 or Nov 15 | December |
| Rolling | No | No fixed date | A few weeks after applying |
| Regular Decision | No | Jan 1 or Jan 15 | March |
Dates vary by school. Always check the school’s own admissions page, because there are exceptions everywhere.
1. Early Decision (binding)
Your kid commits. If they’re admitted, they attend, they withdraw every other application, and they put down a deposit well before May 1. You sign that agreement too, as the parent.
The real cost isn’t the signature. It’s that Early Decision turns off your ability to compare financial aid offers, and comparing offers is how most families find money.
I wrote a whole piece on what that agreement actually says, including the one documented way out and the three things I want to be true before a family does this. Read that one here.
Worth knowing this cycle: the University of Michigan added a binding Early Decision plan. Apply by November 1, decision by the end of December, and admitted students withdraw everything else. That’s a school a lot of families apply to without registering that this option is now binding.
2. Early Decision II (binding, but later)
Same commitment, later calendar. Deadlines usually fall between January 1 and January 15, with decisions in mid-February. More than a hundred selective schools run one now, including Vanderbilt, Boston College, Tufts, the University of Chicago, and NYU.
This is the option almost nobody explains to parents, and it solves two very common problems.
Your kid wasn’t ready in October. The essay wasn’t there. The list was still mush. First quarter grades hadn’t landed. Signing something binding in November would have been a guess. By January it isn’t.
Your kid got deferred in December and figured out what they actually want. That happens constantly. December clarifies people.
Early Decision II isn’t for everyone. It’s still binding, so every gate that applies to Early Decision applies here too. But it can absolutely be the right call for some families, and a family that doesn’t know it exists can’t choose it.
3. Restrictive or Single-Choice Early Action (non-binding, with rules)
Worst name in college admissions, and that’s a competitive category.
A handful of the most selective schools use this, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and Notre Dame. It’s non-binding. If your kid gets in, they don’t have to go, and they have until May 1 like everyone else.
The restriction is that your kid generally can’t apply early anywhere else private. But the carve-outs matter, and this is where families get confused. Yale lists four exceptions right on its site. Your kid can still apply to:
- a non-binding rolling admission school
- a non-binding early program at a public university
- any early program that notifies after January 1, which includes Early Decision II
- schools outside the United States
So even in the most restrictive lane, your kid can still have an acceptance in hand by December.
One more thing, straight from Harvard: applying early there gives no admissions advantage. They say it out loud. So this lane should be about getting an answer in December, not about a strategy hack.
4. Early Action (non-binding, and free)
Apply by November 1 or 15, hear back in December, and apply to as many Early Action schools as your kid wants.
That’s the whole thing. No commitment, no signature, no giving up your ability to compare offers. Just answers, earlier.
This is the lane most families should be living in. By winter break you’re having a completely different conversation at your kitchen table than the families still waiting on everything in March.
If your kid is applying to twelve schools and not one of them is Early Action, somebody built that list without thinking about the calendar.
I send a free weekly email that explains this kind of thing the way I’d explain it to a friend at my kitchen table. You can grab it here.
5. Rolling admission (the most underused lane there is)
No single deadline. The school reads applications as they arrive and answers within a few weeks, until the class fills.
I will die on this hill, and here’s why.
A kid applies to a rolling school in September. By early October there’s an acceptance in their email. Not a maybe. Not a deferral. A yes.
I’ve watched what that does to a seventeen year old. It motivates them to keep going. Their shoulders come down. They say, out loud, “someone wants me.”
That is not a small thing in October of senior year. That’s the difference between a kid who keeps writing supplements and a kid who shuts down for six weeks.
There’s often money in this lane too. At many rolling schools, merit scholarships and housing get awarded as students are admitted. Two kids with identical grades and identical scores can get very different offers because one of them applied while there was still money in the bucket.
Every family should have at least one rolling school on the list.
6. Regular Decision (a choice, not a leftover)
Non-binding, usually January 1 or 15, and everyone hears in March. Regular Decision is completely fine, and it’s the right lane for plenty of schools and plenty of kids.
It just shouldn’t be what’s left over after nobody decided anything.
Here’s what makes it a real choice. At a lot of selective schools, a large share of the class is already committed before a Regular Decision file is ever opened. Yale has filled roughly half its class through early action, and Penn has filled roughly half through Early Decision. Those are two schools, not a national statistic, and the numbers move depending on who’s counting.
But the direction is real. The early rounds keep growing. So “we’ll just do regular” isn’t the neutral, wait-and-see option it feels like. It’s a decision to compete for what’s left.
Nobody said pick one
Look back at those six lanes.
Your kid can apply Early Action to four schools, rolling to one, Regular Decision to three, and keep Early Decision II in their back pocket for January. All in the same season. That’s not a loophole. That’s just how it works.
Most families never find that out, because they think the question is “are we doing early or not.”
The real question is: what lane is each school on this list, and did anybody pick it on purpose?
The deadline behind the deadline
Now the part I watch families get wrong every single year.
They treat the application deadline like the finish line. They wait until the night before, hit submit, and exhale. And they miss the scholarship money entirely.
At a lot of schools, the merit scholarship deadline is not the same as the admission deadline. Sometimes it’s earlier. Sometimes there’s a separate scholarship application. Sometimes there’s a priority date, and applying by that date is the only thing that puts your kid in the merit pool at all.
Miss it by a week and your kid can be admitted, celebrated, thrilled, and considered for exactly nothing.
Nobody emails you a reminder about that. It’s sitting on a financial aid page, in a different tab than the one your kid is looking at.
Your twenty minute assignment
- Pull up your kid’s college list. On paper or on a screen, doesn’t matter.
- Next to every school, write the lane: ED, ED II, REA, EA, Rolling, or RD.
- Go to each school’s admissions page and write the application deadline.
- While you’re there, find the scholarship or priority deadline. It’s often a different date on a different page. Write it down too.
- Look at what you’ve got.
If nothing on the list is Early Action, you’ve left free information on the table. If nothing is rolling, your kid has no path to an early yes and no shot at early merit money. If every school says Regular Decision, your kid isn’t playing it safe. They’re just going last.
You don’t have to change anything. Just look at it on purpose.
There’s a version of this fall where your kid submits everything the last week of December, gets every answer in March, and you spend five months knowing nothing. And there’s a version where they have an acceptance in October, a few more in December, some merit money attached, and by the time the last decisions land it feels like choosing instead of waiting.
Same kid. Same grades. Same essays. Different lanes. 
