Anonymous
12/18/2025 20:39
Subject: SCEA/REA and ED mistake
Not disagreeing with concept but as you know, REA literally stands for restrictive early action. Maybe the colleges who do this should agree on one name for it. Or, be fair to your applicants and stop doing it altogether.
Anonymous
12/17/2025 18:49
Subject: SCEA/REA and ED mistake
Anonymous wrote:“You are wrong -- what you are describing is SINGLE CHOICE early action (HYPS). Restricted Early Action just means that you cannot apply anywhere with a binding (ED) application.”
Nope. I definitely am not wrong. This is explained on Harvard’s website and in Common App. It’s extremely clear and direct.
I am looking directly at Harvard’s admissions page right now. It says REA means you may NOT apply early action to any other private college, restrictive or not. It is VERY clear. You may apply Early Action to a public or international college.
https://college.harvard.edu/resources/faq
Those are the early rules for Harvard. For Georgetown, MIT, and Notre Dame, students can apply early to any other school so long as they do not apply binding early decision, including private universities.
College counselors refer to the Harvard / HYPS rules as 'single choice early action' and the more flexible rules of MIT, ND, and Georgetown as 'Restrictive Early Action'.
Anonymous
12/17/2025 16:04
Subject: SCEA/REA and ED mistake
Anonymous wrote:Only MIT EA is possible. Many EA MIT ED Penn. Penn is binding so have to give up on MIT if accepted by both. Public school, counselor does not have a clue where kids are applying to.
There are lots of EA schools where you can also apply ED. But the question isn't about EA and ED. That's allowed and common The question is about REA/SCEA which doesn't allow you to also apply ED.
Anonymous
12/17/2025 15:55
Subject: Re:SCEA/REA and ED mistake
Anonymous wrote:I thought you just can't apply ED to a private school with REA so ED to a school like UVA would be ok
No, you can only apply EA to public schools, and not at all to private.
Anonymous
12/17/2025 15:07
Subject: SCEA/REA and ED mistake
Anonymous wrote:For any student with the grades / scores / package to apply to a REA school, they know what they are doing.
They have been tracking this for at least a year as they figure out strategy. It is not an accident.
Agree!
On each college’s CommonApp page, the first page explains different application pools and you pick one. You are told on the site to be sure you know what you are choosing.
REA means restricted early action which means you cannot also ED somewhere else, public or private. I agree this is confusing and in my ideal world ED in any form would not exist. But here we are. College-bound students need to be able to read and follow different sets of instructions.
So yeah. Confusing. But also, not impossible to decipher if you want to.
Anonymous
12/17/2025 13:26
Subject: SCEA/REA and ED mistake
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:“You are wrong -- what you are describing is SINGLE CHOICE early action (HYPS). Restricted Early Action just means that you cannot apply anywhere with a binding (ED) application.”
Nope. I definitely am not wrong. This is explained on Harvard’s website and in Common App. It’s extremely clear and direct.
I am looking directly at Harvard’s admissions page right now. It says REA means you may NOT apply early action to any other private college, restrictive or not. It is VERY clear. You may apply Early Action to a public or international college.
https://college.harvard.edu/resources/faq
You’ve both just given a perfect illustration of why the whole thing is confusing, and students need to read each school’s definitions and requirements carefully.
OP is talking about Georgetown. They make it clear that although they use the term Early Action, students may not apply early decision anywhere else, but they MAY apply early action to other schools. Georgetown’s EA essentially functions as an ED.
+1
It doesn't matter what the college calls it, the schools are VERY CLEAR about the rules. Georgetown's policy is not confusing at all. The website is not confusing at all. I am not saying the kid clearly did it deliberately. He may have been in a mad rush and not read the policy. That is still on him and he he needs to come clean ASAP.
Anonymous
12/17/2025 13:18
Subject: SCEA/REA and ED mistake
In large public school, it’s totally possible that counselor didn’t catch it. But they should within draw one of them, either REA or ED, as soon as they realized. The later, the worse.
Anonymous
12/17/2025 12:48
Subject: SCEA/REA and ED mistake
Georgetown isn’t common app until next year (class of 2027).