The Four Biggest Questions about #UVA Early Decision Deadline Day

I'm still trying to decide what my reading season soundtrack* will be, but here we are on a decision day. There are several recent posts about Early Decision, but there's always room for one more, right? There are four big questions I get a lot about Early Decision.

1. Will Early Decision Be Easier?

I wrote a whole blog post about this. Some people seem to have read this or the articles I reference in the post that contain quotes from Dean Reports. They still think there's got to be a different answer. Bottom line: there's no "easier" time to apply to UVA. There's definitely a better time for you to give us an application, though. You need to submit when you can present your best application.

2. How Many People will be Admitted?

We have no way to predict the number of students we'll admit during Early Decision since we have no data about the applicant pool. It's been over a decade since we had an ED process. We got about 2,400 applications during the last ED round. The deadline was November 1st and we released decisions on December 1st. There were 16,000 total applications that year. With over 40,000 applications coming to us these days, it's safe to say we'll get a few more ED apps than we did back in 2006, but we won't know how many more until our processing team ushers your applications to "complete" status.

3. When is the Actual Deadline

You have all day on October 15th to submit an application. I always caution students about waitin until the last minute, though. The Common App has people up into the wee hours to provide support, but you have to imagine that there will be a jump in requests for support as the deadline approaches and their response time might increase. Submit early so you have time to get help if something goes wrong.

4. What Results are Possible During Early Decision?

 During Early Decision (and Early Action, for that matter), we may admit, deny, or defer an applicant. Deferral means the file is moved to the Regular Decision round and we revisit it once the mid-year report arrives from the school counselor. Some students have asked if we will defer Early Decision applications to the Early Action process, but that wouldn't happen. There wouldn't be any new information to consider since those processes overlap.

As always, I'm happy to answer your questions in the comments.


*I once had a roommate who listened to Dave Matthews & Tim Reynolds playing The Christmas Song on repeat the entire time she wrote her doctoral thesis. It was not the holiday season. Needless to say, that song is not in any playlist of mine.