The Applications Due Before Your Early Decision Answer Arrives

Most first-round Early Decision answers arrive in mid-December. Some of your other deadlines don't wait that long. If your list includes a University of California campus, the University of Washington, UT Austin or a handful of others, you'll submit those applications before you know whether you need them.

Whether to write them comes down mostly to one published number: how often your Early Decision school's early round says yes.

What's due before mid-December

• November 15: the University of Washington.
• November 30: all nine University of California undergraduate campuses, on one UC application filed between October 1 and November 30. The fee is $80 per campus, or $95 for international applicants. The UC application is separate from the Common App and asks its own questions (how it differs).
• December 1: UT Austin, Texas A&M, the University of South Carolina, Florida State, Loyola University Chicago and Benedictine College.
• December 15 and 16: Olin College of Engineering, then the University of South Florida.

Any Early Action applications you're sending close before then too, in October or November.

How often the early round says yes

At the first twelve colleges in the table, at least seven in ten early applicants were not admitted in the early round. At Johns Hopkins and Rice, close to nine in ten weren't. None of that is a reason to skip Early Decision: those rounds are still more generous than the regular rounds at the same colleges. It is the reason the applications due before the answer are worth finishing.

A California example

Take a student in California applying Early Decision to Northwestern, with UCLA, UC San Diego and UC Berkeley on the list. Northwestern's early round admitted 20.4 percent of its applicants, three and a half times the rate for everyone else. That is a real edge, and the same filing says that most early applicants still didn't get a December yes.

The UC application is due November 30. Northwestern's answer comes in December. If the student waits, the UC campuses are gone for the year; if the student files, the worst case is a withdrawn application and $240 in fees. The asymmetry decides it.

Now move the same student's Early Decision to Villanova, where six in ten early applicants were admitted. The argument for filing the UC application is weaker, though not gone, and it turns on the score and price checks below.

When to write them anyway

Write the pre-December applications if any of these is true:

• Your Early Decision school's early round admits fewer than half its applicants. That's every college above Villanova in the table.
• Your score is below the school's published range. The early rate describes the whole pool, and a file below the range isn't in the middle of that pool.
• The price for your family's income band at your Early Decision school is a stretch. If you might turn down an offer on aid grounds in December, you'll want something already submitted.

When it's closer

The case for writing them is weakest when your Early Decision school's early round admits most of its applicants, your score is inside or above its range, and its price for your family is one you would pay. Then a November application is insurance against the less likely outcome, paid for mostly in time. Even then, the UC application is cheap insurance: one set of answers covers every campus you select.

If the answer is yes

An Early Decision admit has to withdraw every other application (what the agreement requires). A November application withdrawn in December cost you its fee and some evenings, and nothing else.

If it isn't

A deferral or a denial in mid-December leaves about two weeks before the January 1–5 deadlines many selective colleges use, and a month before January 15, the busiest deadline day of all (every regular date). The applications you finished in November are the ones you won't be writing over the holidays. The other half of the plan is the second binding round: 102 colleges take Early Decision II, nearly all of them between January 1 and January 15.

Where this comes from

Regular deadlines are from the Common App's 2026–27 requirements grid, as updated on September 25, 2026, or the college's own site. The UC filing period and fees are from the University of California's admissions site. Early Decision rates are from each college's most recent Common Data Set (sections C21 and C1).

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.