Great news to share. My daughter got accepted early decision into Northwestern. Yay and phew. She's a pressure cooker and I would not have wanted her to have to go through another 4 months of this. I was the opposite pressure wise when I was a kid. And she also works hard to get the most out of her intelligence whereas I did the bare minimum. Anyway, I'm digressing. I had applied to Brown early decision back in 1984. We lived in Providence and my prep school fed a lot of kids into Brown. I had the best grades and highest SAT's of the applicants yet I got deferred (no legacy, no sports and Jewish--Brown definitely had a quota in that regard even then). My father made me apply to Michigan then as a safety (my other apps were U Penn and Stanford). Michigan called me a few weeks later, I had thought to schedule an interview, but no they called to accept me and offer me a spot in their honors program. I told my parents I would take a year off if i didn't get into Brown, Stanford or Penn. Oh what I put my mother through for the next 4 months of worry. I ended up at Penn, the last of the envelopes to arrive. Envelopes, lol, today they release emails in batches.