Eureka!
Dating is like early decision. Normally you have a bunch of friends you subscribe to and give equal time and effort to. Of course there are those few you like more than the others, so you work a little harder for them and occasionally give them priority over the friends you don't really care if you lose.
So when you're dating someone, you choose just one friend and create a binding agreement to commit to them and only them above all your other friends.
Yup. Dating is like early decision.
Only sometimes you can do ED2 and submit that application at the same time as your other ones for your other schools. I guess that would be friends-with-benefits. The idea that you could potentially be exclusive and binding, but you get to bide your time a little more and screw around with other people..err, colleges.
But the plus side of early decision is that you find out right then and there whether or not it's going to happen, no more waiting around. Then it's done. You know where you'll be in your life.
Unless you're deferred. Being deferred really sucks. Because then you have to keep working on your other apps because now you don't know where the hell you'll end up so you don't want to ruin anything for anywhere else, and in the meantime you have to sit around waiting for months until you FINALLY hear back from that one person...err, school you really cared about, and then what? You might not even get in at all. After all that wondering and worrying, you don't even get in. And what if you do get in? All you think about in the back of your head is how much they actually want you, since they didn't accept you with the first round of applicants.
Dating is stupid and ridiculous and pointless and hurtful....err, I mean college. College is bad.