Recent fea­tures from The New York Times and US News & World Report col­lege blogs reminded me of my own expe­ri­ence with the early deci­sion option. Early deci­sion typ­i­cally means that the stu­dent sub­mits the appli­ca­tion in early to mid-autumn and hears back around early Decem­ber. If admit­ted, the deci­sion is binding.

By the time I applied to col­lege, I had vis­ited about a dozen cam­puses and seri­ously researched around thirty schools. I was heav­ily immersed in the admis­sions process and prepar­ing to apply to sev­eral uni­ver­si­ties of vary­ing degrees of competitiveness.

Shortly before begin­ning my senior year, my par­ents and I vis­ited Barnard Col­lege and Vas­sar Col­lege. I loved both and knew that I would def­i­nitely apply to them as “reach” schools. Upon start­ing the school year, how­ever, I learned that my class­mates were sub­mit­ting early deci­sion appli­ca­tions in record num­bers. Some sort of group panic seemed to set in and I felt a huge amount of pres­sure to pick some­where for an early deci­sion application.

I decided to apply early to Vas­sar because I’d loved it so much on my visit and, being a highly com­pet­i­tive school, con­ven­tional wis­dom said that apply­ing early would increase my chances of being admit­ted. I threw myself into my early appli­ca­tion, inter­viewed with a local alumna, and worked half-heartedly on other appli­ca­tions while I sat on pins and nee­dles wait­ing for the response.

Look­ing back, there were def­i­nite clues that I wasn’t entirely com­fort­able with my deci­sion. A belated real­iza­tion that Pough­keep­sie is not par­tic­u­larly close to New York City changed my per­cep­tion of life at Vas­sar and I freaked out when I paid closer atten­tion to the math and sci­ence gen­eral edu­ca­tion requirements.

Nev­er­the­less, when the dreaded thin enve­lope arrived in the first week of Decem­ber, I was crushed. I cried, I lamented the loss of my “dream” school, and then….well, then I got over it. After about two days of obsess­ing over what could have been, I found myself feel­ing strangely lib­er­ated. I could go back to fin­ish­ing numer­ous appli­ca­tions instead of com­mit­ting myself to one school with­out know­ing if they wanted to com­mit to me—these appli­ca­tions felt excit­ing again instead of over­whelm­ing (most of the time).

This is not to say that Vas­sar isn’t an excel­lent col­lege or that it is not the right choice for many peo­ple. But I pushed myself into the early deci­sion option when it really was not the most log­i­cal path for me. The moments of doubt I felt while wait­ing for the deci­sion were very telling, as was the relief that devel­oped after my ini­tial frus­trat­ing at being rejected. Per­haps they saw some­thing in my appli­ca­tion that I could not see myself: hes­i­ta­tion, uncer­tainty, a lack of a clear under­stand­ing of how I would fit into the cam­pus. What­ever the rea­son may be, I can hon­estly say now that I am grate­ful for that early rejec­tion. Not only did it pre­pare me for a hand­ful more, it made me value the col­leges that did accept me ever more—and when I painstak­ingly decided between my two final choices, I knew that I was mak­ing a fully informed and thought­ful decision.

On my first day at Occi­den­tal Col­lege, I met a stu­dent who was trans­fer­ring from Vas­sar. The irony was not lost on me. The col­lege admis­sions process is very much about per­sonal choices and, in my expe­ri­ence, nobody has to make that choice early if he/she is not ready to do so.