Many colleges are extending their early application deadlines because of the storm on the East Coast. If your family has been affected, check your schools’ websites to see if the deadline has changed. And if you’re without power and just can’t get that information, talk to your counselor as soon as you can—he or she might be able to share your circumstances with your schools. I’ve never met a college admissions officer who wouldn’t make an allowance for a student whose family had been affected by an event like this.
But if you haven’t been affected, 1) count your blessings, and 2) ignore the extension.
If you live nowhere near the storm, why not leave your deadline unchanged? Don’t call the school and ask if the extension will be granted to everyone. Even if it will, you’ll just be announcing that you procrastinated and are hoping to benefit from a deadline adjustment that was never intended for you.
The work to complete applications has a tendency to expand to fill all of the allotted time before a deadline. It’s important to resist that trend. If you’d planned to submit your applications by November 1 and haven’t experienced any weather-related delays, keep your old deadline and put your apps behind you.