College Application Deadlines 2026-27: Every Key Date

When Are College Application Deadlines for Fall 2027?

Most college application deadlines for the 2026-27 cycle fall on two dates: November 1 and November 15, 2026 for Early Decision and Early Action, then January 1 to January 15, 2027 for Regular Decision. Rolling admission schools have no fixed date at all. The details, and the real per-school dates, are below.

Last reviewed 2026-09-20 by Olivier. Editorial policy.

If you have a senior at home, the next six weeks decide the shape of their entire application season. This guide covers every deadline type, actual dates pulled from each college's own Common Data Set filing, and what to do if a date has already slipped past you.

What Is the Difference Between ED, EA, REA, and Rolling?

Early Decision is binding: your student commits to enroll if admitted. Early Action is non-binding with the same fall deadline. Restrictive Early Action is non-binding but limits applying early elsewhere. Regular Decision is the standard January round, and rolling admission reviews applications as they arrive until the class fills.

Plan	Typical deadline	Binding?	Decision arrives
Early Decision (ED)	Nov 1 or Nov 15	Yes	Mid-December
Early Action (EA)	Nov 1 or Nov 15	No	December to February
Restrictive EA (REA)	Nov 1	No, with limits	Mid-December
Early Decision II	Jan 1 to Jan 15	Yes	Mid-February
Regular Decision (RD)	Jan 1 to Jan 15	No	March to April
Rolling	None fixed	No	Weeks after applying

Choosing between these plans is its own decision, and it is the one place where the calendar and strategy meet. We cover that choice in depth, including when a binding commitment makes sense, in our guide to Early Action vs Early Decision.

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Real ED and EA Deadlines by School, From Their Common Data Sets

This September, while verifying the last of the 459 Common Data Set filings in Solyo's college database, I kept seeing the same two dates repeat. Across the 302 parseable early deadlines in those filings, 87 percent land on exactly November 1 or November 15. The outliers are the ones that catch families off guard.

The table below shows what each college reported in its own most recent verified Common Data Set (2025-26 or 2024-25 filing, section C21). A dash means the school did not report that field.

School	Plan	Deadline	Decision by	ED II deadline
MIT	EA	Nov 1	-	-
Harvard	REA	Nov 1	-	-
Stanford	REA	Nov 1	-	-
Yale	REA	Nov 1	-	-
Princeton	REA	Nov 1	-	-
Georgetown	REA	Nov 1	-	-
Notre Dame	REA	Nov 1	-	-
University of Michigan	EA	Nov 1	-	-
Brown	ED	Nov 1	Dec 15	-
Duke	ED	Nov 1	Dec 15	-
Johns Hopkins	ED	Nov 1	Dec 10	Jan 3
NYU	ED	Nov 1	Dec 15	Jan 1
Vanderbilt	ED	Nov 1	Dec 15	Jan 1
Rice	ED	Nov 1	Dec 15	Jan 4
Boston College	ED	Nov 1	Dec 15	Jan 2
Tufts	ED	Nov 4	Dec 15	Jan 6
Amherst	ED	Nov 7	-	-
Williams	ED	Nov 15	Dec 15	-
Bowdoin	ED	Nov 15	Dec 15	Jan 5
Wake Forest	EA and ED	Nov 15	-	Jan 1

Notice the quirks: Tufts closes ED on November 4, Amherst on November 7, and Johns Hopkins tells ED applicants by December 10, five days before most peers. A calendar built on "everything is November 1" misses exactly these.

The 2026-27 Application Calendar at a Glance

Here is the whole cycle on one screen. For the week-by-week version with the family logistics built in, use our senior year fall checklist.

Date	What happens
By Oct 1, 2026	The 2027-28 FAFSA opens to everyone
Oct 15, 2026	Earliest EA deadlines at a handful of schools
Nov 1, 2026	The main ED, EA, and REA wave
Nov 15, 2026	The second ED and EA wave
Nov 1-30, 2026	University of California filing window (all campuses)
Dec 10-15, 2026	Most ED and REA decisions arrive
Jan 1-15, 2027	Regular Decision and ED II deadlines cluster
Mid-Feb 2027	Most ED II decisions arrive

The University of California runs its own calendar: the application opened August 1 and must be submitted inside the November 1-30 filing period, for every UC campus at once.

What time of day is the cutoff? The University of Michigan states its rule plainly: applications are due by 11:59 p.m. in the applicant's local time zone. Most application platforms work the same way, but this is exactly the kind of detail worth confirming per school rather than assuming.

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Which Colleges Have Rolling Admissions?

Rolling admission colleges review applications as they arrive and keep admitting until the class fills, so there is no single due date. Many large public universities work this way. The catch: applying late in a rolling cycle means competing for fewer remaining seats, and scholarship priority dates still pass on the calendar.

The University of Pittsburgh operates on a rolling admission policy, which means that for our first-year students and undergraduate programs, there's no set deadline for applying to Pitt.

University of Pittsburgh, Office of Admissions

Even at Pitt, students who submit everything by December 1 are automatically considered for academic scholarships. Arizona State posts a November 1 priority date and a February 1 regular date. Penn State's Early Action deadline is November 1, with a recommended submission date of December 1 for all applications.

So how does rolling admission compare with Regular Decision? Regular Decision holds every application to one date and answers everyone in the spring. Rolling reviews in the order received and answers within weeks. For a student with strong first-semester momentum, rolling schools can deliver an acceptance in hand before winter break, which changes the whole emotional weather of senior year.

What Happens If You Miss a College Application Deadline?

A missed deadline almost never ends a college search. Options that remain: rolling admission schools accept applications for months, some colleges reopen space through late spring, and ED II gives a second binding round in January. The right move is to shift the list, not to panic about the school that closed.

First, the feeling. Discovering a passed deadline at 10 p.m. lands like a verdict on you as a parent, and on your student's whole future. It is neither. It is one date at one school on a list that is still very much open. Take the evening off from the topic, then rebuild from what is true: hundreds of good colleges are still accepting applications this cycle.

• Check the school's own site for a later round. Note whether it offers ED II or Regular Decision, and put that new date on the family calendar before closing the tab.
• Add one or two rolling schools to the list. Submit to them this week while the rest of the plan stabilizes, and save the confirmation emails.
• Call the admissions office if the miss was hours, not weeks. Ask whether they will still accept the submission, write down the name of the person you spoke with, and follow their instructions exactly.

Financial Aid Deadlines Are a Separate Calendar

Admission deadlines and aid deadlines run on parallel tracks, and the aid track starts earlier than most families expect. The U.S. Department of Education confirms the 2027-28 FAFSA form will launch by October 1, 2026, with a beta already open. Many colleges also set their own priority aid dates that land with or before their admission deadlines.

We keep two dedicated guides current on this: the FAFSA 2027-28 parent prep guide for the federal form, and the fall scholarship deadlines guide for the awards whose applications close this semester.

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Keep Every Deadline on One Timeline

Every date in this post lives in a different place: a Common Data Set PDF, an admissions page, a FAFSA announcement. That scatter is the real reason deadlines get missed. Solyo's admission planner pulls the verified Common Data Set deadlines for the schools on your student's list onto one timeline, alongside their actual grades and tasks.

And if the list itself is still forming, the free college chances calculator is a grounded place to start building it.