Dates and Deadlines

Types of Deadlines:

Early Action (EA): A deadline that occurs between October 15th and December 1st. It allows students to receive an admission decision early and be considered for scholarships, honors colleges, and other programs. This is non-binding.

Early Decision (ED): A deadline that occurs between October 15th and December 1st. It allows students to receive an admission decision early and be considered for scholarships, honors colleges, and other programs. This is binding! This means that you intend to enroll at the school if you are accepted. You can NOT apply early decision to more than one college. If you apply ED to a school you will have to sign an agreement stating that you understand that you must attend the college if you are accepted.

Regular Decision: A deadline that occurs between January 1st and March 1st. This is when most students apply to college. This is great for students who want to wait to apply until they have an updated GPA from the fall semester or until they have a chance to retake ACT and/or SAT.

Rolling Admissions: This is a type of application that has no hard cut-off in terms of deadlines. Students are admitted shortly after an application is submitted to the college. The earlier you submit, the better your changes are of acceptance. Colleges will make acceptances up until their incoming class is filled.

Scroll to the right to see the deadlines for each school in North Carolina!

Community Colleges are open enrollment and thus have rolling admissions. This means that you can apply to them at any point throughout the year. The latest you would want to apply is the end of June of the year you plan to enroll. This will give you time to apply for financial aid and complete other enrollment steps.

Out-of-State Colleges will have deadlines similar to those of in-state colleges. The main dates to keep an eye out for are October 15th, November 1st and 15th, December 1st and 15th, January 1st and 15th, February 1st, and March 1st. I recommend that you go to the websites of the colleges you're interested in to see when their applications are due!