{"id":732,"date":"2011-03-01T09:35:09","date_gmt":"2011-03-01T14:35:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www3.law.harvard.edu\/journals\/hlpr\/?p=732"},"modified":"2015-10-02T15:58:05","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T15:58:05","slug":"early-admissions-makes-a-comeback-at-harvard-princeton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/2011\/03\/01\/early-admissions-makes-a-comeback-at-harvard-princeton\/","title":{"rendered":"Early Admissions Makes a Comeback at Harvard, Princeton"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jay Willis<\/em><\/p>\n

Harvard and Princeton\u00a0made news<\/a>\u00a0this week when each school\u2019s administrations announced a reinstating of an accelerated application process for incoming freshmen. Accelerated application programs can include binding early decision (ED) programs, like\u00a0Columbia<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Penn\u2019s<\/a>, which allow applicants to apply earlier in the application cycle on the conditions that they do not apply ED to any other school and that they attend the school if admitted. \u00a0Other schools, such as\u00a0Stanford<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Yale<\/a>, use a similar procedure called non-binding early action (EA). \u00a0This program does not require students to attend if admitted, but also limits students\u2019 ability to apply early to other schools (Stanford\u2019s ban is total, while Yale\u2019s allows for a few exceptions).<\/p>\n

Schools have argued that early application procedures gave students that are confident of their first-choice school a chance to make their intentions known and to dispose with much of the stress of the college application process.\u00a0 However, many commentators, most notably\u00a0James Fallows in a 2001 Atlantic Monthly article<\/a>\u00a0, contended that such processes disadvantage financial needy students who might be averse to committing to a school without being able to compare financial aid offers from other schools. \u00a0As a corollary, critics argue that early applications assist wealthier students for whom maximizing financial aid is less important than attending their first-choice school. \u00a0Finally, early application programs increase the likelihood of acceptance; the benefit of applying early, in a study cited by Fallows, was equivalent to about 100 SAT points. \u00a0In sum: wealthier students are beneficiaries of a system that also made admission easier.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/span>Largely in response to these criticisms,\u00a0Harvard abolished its ED program in 2006<\/a>.\u00a0 Princeton and the University of Virginia quickly followed suit.\u00a0 Virginia, however,\u00a0reinstated<\/a>\u00a0an EA program last November, and Harvard and Princeton announced last week that they also would again install early application programs. \u00a0William Fitzsimmons, Dean of Admission at Harvard,\u00a0explained<\/a>\u00a0that Harvard found that it was \u201cmissing out\u201d on some of the \u201cbest-prepared low-income and underrepresented minority students\u201d that were accepting early admission offers elsewhere. \u00a0In other words, abolition missed entirely the very groups of people it was intended to help.\u00a0 Hoping this time around to avoid the same criticisms leveled at the old programs, both Harvard and Princeton have already taken an important step by announcing that they will institute only non-binding EA systems, not return to ED. Disadvantaged students will no longer have to fear missing out on financial aid elsewhere if they receive an early offer.<\/p>\n

Going a step further, schools should also heavily publicize their new EA programs in disadvantaged schools to ensure that qualified students of all backgrounds are aware of them as they navigate the college admission process.\u00a0 Admissions through the program must also be need-blind, and colleges should commit to matching the financial aid offers that students receive from peer schools during the regular application process. Finally, until schools are sure that disadvantaged or minority students are not significantly underrepresented in the EA pool, schools must rigorously uphold academic standards for early applicants. \u00a0Admissions officers should err on the side of viewing the applicant pool as a whole, and should defer all borderline applicants, regardless of socioeconomic status, to the regular admissions deadline. \u00a0If schools are committed to using more equitable early action programs, it is critical that they learn from past experiences and design them to allow disadvantaged applicants the same chance to benefit from the early admissions process.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jay Willis Harvard and Princeton\u00a0made news\u00a0this week when each school\u2019s administrations announced a reinstating of an accelerated application process for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZQka-bO","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/lpr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}