Somewhere in the Common App, before an Early Decision application can be submitted, there is a form with three signature lines. Most students sign it in about the time it takes to read this sentence. It is worth reading slowly, because it is the only document in the admissions process that commits you to something.
Here is what it actually does, what it doesn't, and the three things to settle before your name goes on it.
Three signatures
The agreement is signed by the student, a parent or guardian, and the school counselor. Baylor's own 2025–26 Common Data Set describes its early decision plan in those exact terms — a contract signed by student, parent, and counselor stating that the student will deposit and enroll on acceptance. The wording is the university's, and it is typical.
The counselor's signature is the one people underestimate. It means your high school is a party to the promise. If you are admitted and try to keep other applications alive, the schools involved will usually find out through the counselor, not through some database. The enforcement mechanism is reputational: yours, and your high school's, with every college its students apply to after you.
What "binding" means in practice
The agreement says that if you are admitted, you will enroll, submit a deposit, and withdraw all applications to other colleges. It does not say you cannot apply anywhere else in the meantime. You can — and should — have Regular Decision applications in progress while an ED decision is pending. What you cannot do is hold a second binding application at another school at the same time, or keep applications open after an ED acceptance.
Two outcomes free you completely. A denial ends the agreement. A deferral converts your application to Regular Decision, and the binding commitment lapses with it — a deferred ED applicant is under no obligation to enroll if admitted in the spring, and may apply Early Decision II elsewhere if the calendar allows.
There is no legal remedy in the agreement. No school sues a seventeen-year-old for tuition. The commitment is enforced by the fact that colleges talk to each other and to high schools, and that admissions offices have long memories about counselors whose students walk away.
The one exit: financial aid
Every ED agreement carries a release: if the financial aid award does not make attendance possible, the student may decline the offer and be released from the commitment. Schools honor this. It is not a loophole; it is the mechanism that makes a binding promise ethical to ask for in the first place.
But read what it lets you do and what it doesn't. You decide in December, with one offer in hand and no others, because you have promised not to have others. The release lets you walk away from an award that does not work. It does not let you say "another school offered more." There is no other school in this picture. If comparing aid packages is part of how your family needs to make this decision, the agreement takes that away — and no clause gives it back.
This is why the published net price for your family's income band matters so much more for an ED applicant than for anyone else. It is the only comparison you get, and you have to make it before you sign.
What to settle before the signatures
Is the school inside your range, and is the round worth it there? The early round's advantage is real at some schools and absent at others; the school's own filing reports both figures. And it describes the round, not you — a file below the school's admitted range does not inherit the early pool's rate.
Does the published price for your income band work, four times over? Not the sticker and not the average net price. The band figure, from federal reporting.
Is the application actually finished? ED deadlines are mostly November 1. A binding application submitted with a rushed personal statement and a test score you were planning to improve is a poor use of the one application that can't be redone. If the file will be meaningfully stronger in January, some schools offer a second binding round then, and Regular Decision always exists.
A note to parents
The parent signature is not a formality. It affirms that the family understands the financial commitment and that the student's decision is the family's decision. If the money question has not been talked through in specific numbers — for your income band, at this school — the honest thing is to have that conversation before the form, not after the December email.
Where this comes from
The description of the agreement's parties and terms follows the Common Application's Early Decision Agreement, which participating colleges use with minor variations, and Baylor University's own description of its plan in its 2025–26 Common Data Set. Early Decision counts and admitted score ranges referenced elsewhere on this site come from each school's Common Data Set and the federal College Scorecard, cycle labeled.
Before you sign, see what each school on your list published about its early round and where your score sits against it — free, no account, in a couple of minutes. The call itself, which school and why, is $49, once. Check your list first.