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In applying to schools that do not offer EA, when should you submit? Does it help your chances to apply earlier rather than later? No schools seem to have a date which they start accepting transfer applications, so I was just curious.

Here's the thing: Grades take a while, and usually people don't decide to submit apps until they have their spring grades back. Really good spring grades can give you a shot at better schools, and really bad spring grades (relative to your fall grades) can destroy your transfer chances, even if they leave you in the top quarter of your class or better.

Stanford's deadline is June 15. Some schools do not get all spring grades back to their students by then, so if you're applying to Stanford, you have to have everything together and submitted to them by then. Just send what spring grades you do have, and update them once the rest are in. But you basically have to wait until as close to June 15 as possible so that you can submit as many grades as you can get.

Many schools have a deadline on or after July 1. For these schools, it makes sense to wait until you have all spring grades in; people who are trying to be early will get their application in as soon as they have their spring grades, while others will take their time and apply closer to the deadline.

Based on what I can tell, there's little real advantage to applying "early". If you apply before you have all your grades in, they'll wait for the rest of your grades. By the time you get all your grades it will be sometime in June; you're really only gaining a couple weeks, at most, on other applicants. Also, there isn't any kind of rolling admissions process; a school will wait and make offers for all of its transfer seats at once, usually over a single day or a period of a few days, and only make additional offers if some of those applicants decline and open seats up.

So no, I don't think it significantly affects your chances if you apply early.