When are Early Decision Results Released?

You sent out your ED applications a month (or more) ago, and have been waiting patiently (or perhaps not so patiently) ever since for the results to be revealed. This can be a nerve wracking wait, especially as the regular decision deadline looms ever closer on the horizon, and you have so many other applications to do, which may or may not even be necessary. 

This, of course, leads to the all important question: when will colleges release their Early Decision results (and perhaps equally importantly, their Early Action results)? This will determine how you should approach your regular decision strategies, and how you spend your time. Let’s look at when these results come out, and how you should prepare for them. 

Early Decision Release Dates for 2024-25

Each college releases their ED results on their own schedule. This makes sense; but is still irritating to students; your friends may know a full week ahead of you if they’ve gotten into college or not. Of course, each college receives a different number of ED applications, has a different method for reviewing these applications, and has a different number of staff for doing so, so these differences do make sense; they’re just irritating for students to deal with. 

To help you out, here is a table of when you can expect to hear back from various top schools who you may have applied to early decision. Note that these are only viable dates for the 2024-25 application season; they change every year based on any number of factors. 

Note that the dates listed are for Early Decision I, some of these schools also offer ED II; these results are released later on, generally in February. This is earlier than RD results are released, but not the focus of this article. 

Also note that certain schools offer a version of restricted or single-choice early action. You can learn more about that in our article on Early Decision vs Early Action, but for now, we have placed them in the EA column. These schools are indicated with an *.

Only a small number of schools offer both ED and EA, those that do have a date in each column. Schools which have not committed to a firm date have a general benchmark given, but most have a firm date by this point. 

Finally, Wake Forest announces and reviews their ED applications on a rolling basis. This means that they review applications as they come in, and respond as soon as a decision is made. This makes it advantageous to apply as soon as possible once their application opens, both so that you hear back sooner, and because the earlier you apply, the less competition you face. They are not the only school to handle applications this way, and if you applied to certain public universities, you may have already heard back.

Things to Know About Early Decision Release Dates

First, you will note that these dates are all in December, generally in the middle of the month. There are two reasons for this, based on the two competing pulls on admissions officers: 

1. They need to get ED results out long enough before regular decision applications are due to let students know whether or not they still need to worry about applying, and to know internally how many spaces are left in their class. 
2. Admissions officers are people, and they can only work for so many hours in a day before going insane. Thus there is always going to need to be some time between when applications are received and when decisions go out.

The month and a half between ED applications being due and results going out is the minimum time needed for admissions officers to review the mountain of applications they receive each year. This is the fastest they can get these results out, which may be disappointing to some students, but no worries, the results are coming. 

This is also why early action results are often sent out much later. While it would be nice for students to know they got in before sending out even more applications, colleges do not feel the same pressure, because you are not obligated to attend if you are admitted EA. The schools which do the soft-ED of single-choice EA release their results in the same ballpark as ED results, but those schools with nonrestrictive EA release their results later, not feeling nearly as pressured to get them out quickly. 

Note that early round results must be done by colleges before they can begin making decisions about their regular decision applications (this includes ED II applicants). This is because there are a set number of seats available at each school, and the more that get filled with ED students, the less there are for other applicants. Colleges hold all the cards here, and release their ED results on a schedule that suits them. 

Options for Early Decision Results

When you hear back from colleges about your early applications, there are a number of different things they may decide. Specifically, these are:

• Admitted. This is obviously the best choice scenario, when admissions officers decide you’re a great fit for their school.
• Rejected. This is not ideal, but is the most common response, where admissions officers decide you aren’t quite what they’re looking for.
• Deferred. They may like your application, but want to compare you to a broader applicant pool to be sure you’re a good fit for their class. In these cases, admissions officers will defer your application to the regular round, where it will be read and evaluated again.
• Waitlisted. You may be placed directly on the waitlist after applying early. This means you are qualified for admission, but the school does not think they will have space for you. If you still wish to be considered by this school, see our article on what to do if you’ve been waitlisted. 

What result you get determines what comes next; if you’re admitted to a school early decision then you don’t really need to worry about your other applications anymore, whereas if you’re rejected, then you may need to start considering what other options are available to you. 

Applying to Schools in December

Maybe you were waitlisted, maybe you were deferred, or maybe the school you applied to early action didn’t give you the kind of financial aid you were looking for. In all of these cases, you’re going to end up applying to schools in December. This has its own unique quirks, the most notable being just how close the deadlines are, and just how fast you need to get the applications in. To help you out, here are our top tips for applying to colleges in December. 

Start early (if possible). We realize this may come too late, but if you’re a junior reading this (or even younger), then heed this advice: keep working on your college applications even once you submit ED or EA. This might not be the most fun, but not having to panic and scramble at the last minute is much better, and we heavily recommend it for that reason. 

Reuse work wherever you can. A lot of colleges ask for similar (or even identical) essays. Don’t rewrite one when you don’t have to; adapting essays from one college to another is one of the most important techniques we teach our students. For a guide to the most common questions asked by colleges, see our article here. 

Finally, work on time management. The end of the year is hectic, with midterms in high school, the whirlwind of the holidays, and then the added pressures of college applications. Being able to plan out and structure your time is key to making sure you are able to get everything necessary done without getting overwhelmed or burning out. 

We advise making a plan for what essays you will do, and in what order, based on how you will be able to reuse and cross-apply them. Writing longer essays first is a significant time investment, but we find it much easier to cut down a longer essay than to lengthen a short one; the latter often leads to a feeling of dragging or unnecessary details added in just to fill space. 

Final Thoughts

December is always a busy and exciting time, with the winds of winter whipping through, the holiday season in the air, and college deadlines looming large. Early decision results are released in the middle of all of this, and add to the atmosphere of tempest. 

We hope that this article has given you a sense of when you can expect these results, and what to do when you get them. If your results were not what you were hoping, and you want some guidance on how to rework your applications for the regular decision deadline, then schedule a free consultation with us today. We have a long experience helping students apply to colleges, no matter when or where they’re starting, and we’re always happy to hear from you.