Admitted Early Decision: When 23 Colleges Want Your Answer, and How to Withdraw the Rest

A December yes starts two clocks. The college's clock is the date it wants your enrollment confirmed, which runs from ten days after the offer to February 1. The agreement's clock is shorter and has no date on it: you "must promptly withdraw the applications submitted to other colleges and universities." The Common App runs neither of them for you.

Here is when 23 colleges want an Early Decision admit's answer, and how withdrawing the rest actually works.

When each college wants your answer

Second-round admits answer in late February or early March, often with less time than the first round gets: Johns Hopkins wants an answer by February 26, 2027, two weeks after its February 12 release. Richmond's date is February 27, Vanderbilt's, WashU's and Emory's is March 1, and Chicago's is mid-March.

Where the amount is published, deposits range from nothing to $1,500. Penn, Columbia, Dartmouth and Duke ask for no deposit at all; Penn's page puts it simply: "There are no enrollment deposits at Penn." Wake Forest's is $1,500, due within two weeks. Emory's is $845, Boston College's enrollment confirmation fee is $500, and Northwestern's and Vanderbilt's are $400. Vanderbilt's "may be waived based on the student's financial need," and Northwestern confirms enrollment automatically when the deposit has been waived. Wake Forest, Northwestern, Boston University, WashU, Richmond and Chicago all call their deposits nonrefundable.

Withdrawing: there is no button

The Common App doesn't withdraw anything for you. Its help center says: "You must directly contact the colleges to which you have applied to inform them you have been accepted Early Decision at another school and therefore want to withdraw your application. Please contact the Admissions Office at each college and ask what method is best. Some might consider a phone call or e-mail sufficient, while others might request a written letter."

You can't take the college off your list either: "A college cannot be removed from your list once the application has been submitted." Each college gets its own note, sent the way it asks. Include the name you applied under and your Common App ID, and keep the confirmations.

What counts as another application

More than people expect. Brown's page spells out the scope for its own admits: "all pending applications—including those you may have already submitted to regular, rolling or (open) early action programs." An Early Action admission you already hold counts, and so does a rolling admission you were pleased about in October.

Applications outside the Common App count as well. The agreement says "make no additional applications to any other university in any country," and Chicago's version adds "domestic or international." The University of California application (due before your answer), a UK application, anything filed through a college's own portal: all of them.

If the yes comes in the second round, the list includes the application still under review at your first-round college. No college page we read discusses that case directly, but the agreement's wording leaves no exception for it.

The one reason to wait

The agreement has a single built-in delay, and it is about money. "If the student is an early decision candidate and is seeking financial aid, the student need not withdraw other applications until the student has received notification about financial aid from the admitting early decision institution." Chicago's and Boston University's own agreements say the same.

So a family that applied for aid and hasn't yet seen the offer can hold the other applications until it arrives. At most of these colleges the offer comes with the decision or within days, as long as the aid forms went in on time (the aid dates at 23 colleges). If it is still under review when the deposit is due, Vanderbilt says students "can request a matriculation deposit extension"; its extensions "are typically granted for one week at a time."

Wake Forest's calendar needs a question. Its first round is rolling: admits started hearing on September 30, and the deposit is due within two weeks of the offer. But first-round applicants who file for aid by December 1 "should receive an aid notification starting December 15." Wake's pages don't say how the two dates fit for a student admitted in October or November. If that's you, ask before the deposit is due.

How the colleges would know

Partly because they're allowed to tell each other. The Common App's agreement, which you sign, says: "I also understand that with an early decision offer of admissions, this institution may share my name and my early commitment with other institutions." Your counselor signed it too, attesting: "As the counselor, I have advised the student to abide by the early decision commitment outlined above."

If the offer doesn't work for your family financially, that's a separate question, with its own rules at each college.

Where this comes from

The Common App's 2026 Early Decision agreement and its help-center articles on withdrawing and removing colleges, and each college's own admissions and aid pages, read on October 9, 2026. Penn's no-deposit page still refers to the class of 2030; Duke's appears in its gap-year instructions. Several colleges give the exact date only in the admission letter, and that letter is the date that counts.

Start with the school you're leaning toward: what it published, and your estimate there, are free. The full answer for your whole list is the paid document.