The University of Rhode Island implemented an early decision option for prospective students of the graduating class of 2029.
The admissions office tracked opportunities for students nationally, according to Becky Muholland, the director of first-year admission and operations for the undergraduate admission office. Prospective students were interested about early decision at URI, so the office decided to launch the opportunity for the upcoming first-year class.
The number of students applying to URI was strong when the office introduced the option for early decision, according to Muholland. The office decided this would be a great year for them to move forward to admitting prospective students as it allowed for a select group of students the opportunity to be considered for early decision to have exactly what the students were looking for.
The difference between early decision and early action is that there is a binding situation, according to Muholland. Early action is non-binding while early decision is binding. Incoming students who apply for early decision are given guidelines on the common application and the student’s guidance counselor is required to say the student is aware of them.
The deadline for early decision was Nov. 1, according to Muholland. Incoming students had to indicate early decision is what they’re selecting for their round. There were other applicants who applied in the same time frame but they were interested in the two other rounds: early action and regular decision.
This year, URI received a record number of applications compared to previous years with 27,000 applications, according to the URI Office of Institutional Research.The last time URI had a big increase was 18,311 applicants in 2017. This jump was before the early decision option was put into place.
“We’ve had an incredibly robust year for first year applications,” Muholland said. “So we will not know the full impact [until] we wrap up the entirety of this cycle.”
This year’s increase could be a factor to the increase of incoming students, according to Muholland. Out of the 27,000 applicants, 201 applied for early decision. However, there will be a need for an analysis after all rounds to fully see the change in applications.
“We want students to be familiar with what early decision entails before applying,” Muholland said.
There are caveats to applying for early decision, according to Muholland. One of the cautions is applying to other schools. Students must be aware that if they are admitted into URI and their finances line up, they need to withdraw applications from other schools.
If a student is not admitted into their first choice major as part of the early decision agreement, they will be released, according to the undergraduate admission guidelines. The student’s application will then be put into the regular decision group and results will arrive by the end of March.
“We decided this [opportunity] would be a great year for us to sort of move forward [with incoming students who want to apply to URI,” Muholland said.
For more information about early decision, you can go to the Undergraduate Admissions website.
