The End of Early Admissions?

Harvard College in September 2006 announced the end of early admissions, the practice of allowing hundreds of high school seniors to apply in October and hear in December whether they were admitted. The decision will not take effect until the 2007-2008 admissions cycle but the news startled the American higher education community.

Derek Bok, interim president of Harvard, announced the decision but the final recommendation came from Dean William Fitzsimmons and colleagues in the Harvard College admissions office. The major question for parents, college counselors and others will be “How many other selective colleges and universities will come to the same conclusion and end the practice of early admission decisions?”

America has twenty five hundred four year colleges, two thirds of them state colleges or universities and 800 of them private or “independent”. As half of them take almost all applicants, early admissions is not always an issue. Some colleges engage in “rolling admissions” where a student applies at any time and learns of a decision, often positive, a month or two later. That practice will not change. State universities often apply an admissions formula tied to a certain high school grade point average and a minimum test score on the SAT or ACT, the latter test used by many in the mid-West and far West. So the early admissions issue pertains mostly to the highly selective colleges and universities where as many as ten or twenty thousand applicants pursue one thousand seats in the freshmen class. From thirty to fifty percent were admitted “early”.

Criticism of early admissions had been growing in recent years. Many of those admitted early were from high octane college preparatory schools, wealthy suburbs, or were the children of alumni, called “legacies” who traditionally get extra attention from independent college admissions administrators. Also, colleges with football, hockey or basketball teams try to “sign up” their best prospects before their competitors.

Higher education admissions began to resemble a two tiered system wherein the wealthiest or best counseled students got in early, while the working class applicant stood in line for the traditional April decision.

Most colleges offered “early decision” which requires a student to sign an agreement saying “If accepted early, I agree to attend X college.” Harvard and a few other colleges offered “early action”, wherein a student could still apply to other colleges but would know before Christmas whether Harvard said “yes” or was deferring the decision until the end of March. However, other highly competitive colleges asked applicants whether their college was the number one choice or simply a backup alternative.

One source of pressure is the ranking systems such as US News and World Report
that each year publishes information on which colleges admit the fewest percentages and can boast of the highest “yield” of accepting students, e.g. 80% of admitted students actually enrolling. Boosting a college admissions “yield” from 40% to 50% helps a college move up from number twenty to the top ten in a geographical region or type of college. Campus presidents publicly denounce the ranking wars and methodologies, but usually inform trustees and applicants when their college advances up the rankings in US News or other publications.

Actually the University of Delaware was the first university to drop early admissions. But Harvard’s decision will be widely studied by other universities, Presidents of Yale and Tufts Universities had voiced criticism of early admissions, but none of the old and wealthy colleges had stepped forward. Derek Bok was quoted in the Boston Globe as saying “Somebody has got to take the lead. We are certainly in a strong position to take whatever risks are involved.” Other colleges or universities will now study Harvard’s announcement, and as many as ten or twenty others may take similar action after a few months of discussion by staff and trustees.

Harvard could take the risk, not because of its great wealth ($27 billion in endowment), but because of the deep pool of strong applicants. Of 20,000 applicants as many as 4,000 would be excellent students but fewer than 2,000 are admitted each year. Harvard may lose a few, or a few dozen students, but it is unlikely that a few hundred will succumb to another campus early admissions decision. If this is not the case, Harvard will revisit their decision in 2009 or 2010.

The Education Conservancy is a group favoring the reform of admissions. Lloyd Thacker, the founder, said of Harvard’s decision: “It is a real demonstration of education leadership. Early decision locks in special interest groups like full paying students, legacies and football players. It distorts the playing field.”

The quiet opponents of change may well include college coaches and development officers who have grown content with early admissions as an athlete recruitment and fund raising tool. There will be resistance at those colleges who feel early admissions helps them compete for smart students with special talents (musical, theatrical, artistic or other) who know exactly their first choice school. Also, some admissions officers will complain that the fall “early” applicant review workload will now be added to the January-March agenda and might even require more seasonal workers.

One impact on higher education decisionmaking in 2007 will be confusion, when twenty or more colleges abolish the early admissions option and a hundred others continue for at least one more year. On the whole, the very selective colleges will be moving towards the old level playing field where everyone applies in late December and hears at the end of March and has until May first to make a deposit.