This is the question where I slow my voice down. The two names sound like siblings. They are not.
Last fall, a mom sat with me over a cup of coffee, glowing. Her daughter was set on Early Decision at her top choice. "It shows commitment, right? Better odds?"
I asked the question nobody had asked her yet: "If their aid offer comes in $15,000 short, what's your plan?"
The glow flickered, because there wasn't one. This email is here so your family has that conversation before November, not after.
Early Decision is binding.
Your teen applies early. If admitted, they have agreed to attend, and to withdraw every other application. Which means you will never see the competing offers. The single strongest money move in this whole process, putting two award letters side by side, is gone before it starts.
Early Action is the one most families should love.
It has an early deadline and an early answer, usually by winter break, and it asks for no commitment at all. Your teen can apply Early Action to several schools, collect the answers early, and still compare everything until May 1. Early answers, full leverage.
Now here is why families still reach for the binding one.
The University of Virginia is one of the most applied-to universities in the country, and it is one of the few that publishes its offer rate for all three rounds. For the Class of 2029, it received 64,463 applications. Look at what the picture says. At this one school, applying in the binding round roughly doubled the offer rate compared with waiting for regular decision.
That gap is real. It is the reason Early Decision is tempting, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
Here is the part the picture cannot show you.
Nobody in that tallest bar got to see a second offer. They agreed to attend before a single competing award letter existed. So the honest way to read this chart is that you are looking at the price of a better chance, and the price is your ability to compare. One school, one year, and the pattern holds at most schools that offer a binding round.
When each round makes sense.
Choose Early Decision when three things are true at the same time. You have already run that school's net price calculator, which is the free tool on every college's website that estimates what your family would actually pay. The number it gave you is a number your family can pay four years in a row. And your teen would still pick that school over any offer from anywhere. All three, not two.
Choose Early Action everywhere it is offered. Look at the middle bars again. Early Action still beats regular decision at this school, and it asks for nothing in return.
Use Regular Decision, which is the ordinary winter deadline, for the rest of the list. It is not the consolation round. It is simply where you trade the early answer for more time.
This weekend:
If Early Decision is on your teen's mind, sit down and run that school's net price calculator together. Every college is required to have one. Then say the number out loud to each other. The conversation after the number is the real answer.
"The early bar is higher, I see that. Before we chase it, can we run the calculator and see whether we could say yes to that number four years in a row?"
One more thing, since you are about to start writing numbers down.
My planner is the teaching side. It walks your family through what to do and when, and the sample tables show you how to organize what you find, so your teen is never staring at a blank chart wondering what a good answer looks like. It is the guide.
What it is not is the place to write your daily life. Your teen still needs one book that holds the homework assignments, the practices and the games, the work schedule, and every college date and deadline in the same place. Even if the school hands out a planner, that one usually stops at the school calendar and leaves no room for the college side. This is the one my own kids write in, and it goes with them to college.
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you.
P.S. The side-by-side award-letter comparison is the exact move Early Decision takes away. My planner has those comparison pages, plus every deadline in this email mapped by month. The High School College Planner, Grades 9–12