For some high school seniors the only thing they are certain of is of what they don’t know. Nicole Niblo was one of those students. She didn’t know what she wanted to do or even where she wanted to apply to college. Her attempts at looking through college review books were futile. She would say, “All these schools look the same. How do I really know which one is right for me from looking at a few paragraphs in a guidebook or even looking on the websites?” Point taken.
The summer before her senior year Nicole traveled throughout the Northeast touring dozens of colleges and universities. Schools that Nicole thought she’d love, she ended up rejecting. Through a process of trial and error Nicole was able to figure out what qualities she liked or disliked in a school. She wanted a small, liberal arts college, in a rural area. She wanted to go to St. Lawrence University in upstate New York.
But, Nicole has commitment phobia. She knew that St. Lawrence was the right school, but she couldn’t bring herself to sign the early decision agreement. The deadline passed and Nicole thought she was doomed. She thought, “Early Decision was my best chance of getting in and I missed it.”
Fortunately Nicole wasn’t as doomed as she thought she was. St. Lawrence is one of many schools across the nation that offers Early Decision II. Early Decision II is basically identical to Early Decision I; both programs are binding. The only difference is that you get an extra two months to look at schools. If students are deferred or rejected from a school they applied to Early Decision I, they can quickly regroup and apply to their second choice Early Decision II.
Nicole was nervous. She wondered whether it was a mistake to apply Early Decision II, not Early Decision I. She was convinced that she was going to be rejected. But Nicole got in! Even though deciding whether to apply Early Decision was the most stressful part of her college process, Nicole was glad that she took the time to make sure that she loved St. Lawrence and applied Early Decision II.