If I want to apply early decision to a private university can I also apply early action to another college.

Answered

The short answer is yes.

Here is the explanation of your responsibility at Columbia University as an example.

"While Columbia does not necessarily encourage the filing of both Early Decision (binding) and Early Action (non-binding) applications, we do not prohibit candidates from doing so. However, candidates should be aware that Columbia's Early Decision program is a binding agreement and a candidate will be expected to enroll, regardless of any pending applications (early or otherwise)."

So the main thing to be clear about is that if you apply to Columbia U early, for example , you can not apply to Harvard Early Action because

"Restrictive Early Action is a non-binding early program, meaning that if you are admitted you are not obligated to enroll, and have until May 1 to decide. If you apply to Harvard under our Restrictive Early Action program, you may also apply early to non-binding public or foreign colleges/universities (no Early Decision programs), but you may not apply early (in any form) to U.S. private colleges/universities."

This would also apply to Stanford, Yale, Princeton, Georgetown's SCREA, and the University of Notre Dame. However, you could apply EA to public universities like UVA, University of Colorado, University of Georgia, University of Illinois, University of Maryland, and also Foreign schools like Oxford University, Cambridge University, University of Melbourne.

So if you apply to Columbia and UVA and Imperial College in London and get accepted, you must attend Columbia University and withdraw your applications to UVA and Imperial College. This is a non-negotiable. So let's say hypothetically that your Net Price to attend Columbia is $50,000 because they give you $30,000 in Financial aid and the net price to attend UVA is $40,000 because they gave you $30,000 in FinAid and the Net Price to attend Imperial college is $35,000, you can't go back to Columbia and say, "Hey guys, I can go to Imperial for $35,000 I'm only going to pay $35,000, not $50,000."

Why? Because you already signed an ED agreement stating that you'd withdraw any other applications if you got admitted. What you can do if you feel that the award should have been better is to appeal the financial aid package based on some forensic accounting you did beforehand like using the Net Price Calculator based on your parent's income and assets. If the NPC says Columbia should be $35,000, then you have a reason to appeal the award. If nothing has materially changed with your parent's income or assets, they will listen to the appeal. If you can't come to an agreement, you can always tell them that you can't attend for $50K but if they come down to $35K you can attend. If there is no meeting of the minds, you can walk away from the offer and pursue other applications without being blacklisted from Columbia because you went through their appeals process and tried your best to prove your position and case.

So if you apply to Brown ED and CWRU EA, you will be obligated to attend Brown if you get in and withdraw from CWRU. If you don't get into Brown, and get into CWRU EA, you have the option but not the obligation to attend. If you get deferred by Brown, your application gets rolled over in RD. If you get rejected, you can't apply RD, you're basically done with Brown.

Hope this is useful and helpful to you and anyone else thinking about doing the same thing.