Pay close attention to early admission deadlines at colleges of interest to your teen. Some early college admission deadlines for fall 2014 began October 15 of this year. Many college early admission deadlines are November 1, November 15 and December 1.

 

These early deadlines should be of great interest to parents because they coincide with priority awarding of merit money.  Students, who are less aware of the financial incentive, may be inclined to apply later. But that could cost you.

 

November 1 is the most frequent deadline used for early admission. Check your teen's college list to determine which colleges of interest have a deadline that is only 2 weeks away. College applications should not be left to the last day for filing for several reasons. The first is that hasty applications are more likely to have errors. The second reason is that websites can be overloaded and delays can cause students to miss deadlines for technical reasons.