“Early decision serves the needs of colleges and universities a hell of a lot more than it serves students,” Clearly, colleges are the winners in this round of the admissions game. Yes, ED provides certainty for students. But the practice largely benefits colleges because early applicants never find out whether they would have been accepted to another top-choice school or if a different college might have offered more financial aid. Unless you really know where you want to go to college and don’t care about financial aid, applying early takes your attention away from seeing the forest of the college search for the one tree of ED.