Regular Decision Deadlines 2027: January 1 to January 5 Dates at Nine Top Colleges

Harvard College lists a Regular Decision deadline of January 1, which is Friday, Jan. 1, 2027, and eight other colleges list dates from Jan. 2 to Jan. 5, according to each college’s own admissions page on Oct. 31, 2026. The table below puts all nine in date order with the weekday, and a printable checklist follows the same order. Early rounds are covered in our early decision deadlines story.

Regular Decision deadlines at nine colleges, in date order

Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Brown and Notre Dame do not name the admissions cycle on the pages we read, so their dates are given as listed on the page on Oct. 31, 2026. Penn names 2027 in its own sentence, and Duke and Johns Hopkins label the 2026-27 cycle.

Date (2027)	College	What the college’s page says	Time
Fri., Jan. 1	Harvard	“Regular Decision candidates apply by January 1”	Not stated on the page we used
Sat., Jan. 2	Yale	“Application Deadline: January 2”	Not stated on the page we used
Sat., Jan. 2	Cornell	January 2 for the application, fee and portfolio; January 19 for other materials	Not stated on the page we used
Sat., Jan. 2	Johns Hopkins	“January 2, 2027” (2026-2027 cycle)	Not stated on the page we used
Mon., Jan. 4	Duke	“Regular Decision applications are due January 4” (2026-27 cycle)	Not stated on the page we used
Mon., Jan. 4	Notre Dame	“January 4 for Regular Decision” (international applicant page)	Not stated on the page we used
Tue., Jan. 5	Stanford	“Regular Decision, which has a deadline of January 5”	Not stated on the page we used
Tue., Jan. 5	Penn	“Our Regular Decision application deadline is January 5, 2027”	Not stated on the page we used
Tue., Jan. 5	Brown	“requires applying by January 5”	11:59 p.m., applicant’s local time

Which Regular Decision deadlines fall on a holiday or a weekend?

Harvard’s date is New Year’s Day. Three deadlines, Yale, Cornell and Johns Hopkins, land on Saturday, Jan. 2. Duke and Notre Dame fall on Monday, Jan. 4, and Stanford, Penn and Brown on Tuesday, Jan. 5.

Mark the dates on a January 2027 printable calendar or print the checklist below. If a student also tracks school breaks, the printable school calendar shows them in one place.

What is Cornell’s January 19 date?

Cornell’s first-year applicant page lists January 2 for the application, the fee and the portfolio. It lists January 19 for other materials, which is a Tuesday in 2027. Check the Cornell page for which items count as other materials before relying on the later date.

What does Brown’s 11:59 p.m. local time mean?

Brown says Regular Decision “requires applying by January 5 (11:59 p.m. applicant’s local time).” The other eight pages we used do not state a time, so confirm it with the college.

Where can you check colleges not on this list?

Princeton, Columbia, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Dartmouth, the University of Virginia and others are not listed here because we could not confirm them on the college’s own page. The Common App requirements grid, “2026-27 First-year deadlines, fees and requirements” (updated Sept. 25, 2026), lists the deadlines of every member college. Financial aid has its own dates, covered in our Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) 2027-28 story.

Deadlines can change, so open the college’s page before you submit. The calendar view of New Year’s Day itself is in our New Year’s countdown story.

Print the nine deadlines

The one-page checklist groups the colleges as Jan. 1 and 2, then Jan. 4 and 5, with a tick box for each. It carries the weekday for each date and the sources above.