Yale, Stanford alter Early Decision policies

In separate announcements last week, Yale and Stanford said they would switch from binding Early Decision polities to non-binding Early Action policies. The decisions surprised the academic world and have renewed the long-standing debate over early admission programs.

"Early decision programs help colleges more than applicants," Yale University President Richard Levin said in a press release. "It is our hope to take pressure off students in the early cycle and restore a measure of reasoned choice to college admissions. Our new early action program will allow students who are very confident of their preference to receive early word from Yale while still allowing ample time for further investigation and the thoughtful weighing of options."

Stanford's new policy intends to relieve pressure from high school students, who increasingly feel they must choose their first-choice school during their junior year. Both schools have adopted programs that allow students to only apply to one school early, but allow applicants to make their final choice in May after they may have been admitted to other schools through the regular admissions cycle.

However, the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) ruled that students could apply to more than one Early Action program over two years ago. This past summer, the NACAC said that students could apply to an Early Decision program and an Early Action programs at the same time. While Yale and Stanford ask their applicants to only apply to their Early Action programs, Princeton and Brown say their Early Decision applicants cannot apply to any other Early Action programs.

Stanford came to its decision after students, parents and guidance counselors complained about the pressures "students were experiencing in making the commitment to enroll in a school by the beginning of their senior year," Stanford admissions officer Marcella Mu?±iz said. They wanted to keep a way for students to express their interest in Stanford, while decreasing the pressure of making their final college choice in the fall of their junior year.

But Mu?±iz doesn't think that the switch from Early Decision to Early Action is a national trend. "Each school will have to consider its applicant pool and the institution that they are serving to consider whether or not [a switch] is such a choice is good for them," she said. "There is a lot of discussion about Early Decision and early admission programs in general and each school is going to have to make their own decision on their admissions program."

Yale and Stanford now join Harvard, MIT, Georgetown, the University of Chicago and Notre Dame in offering an Early Action programs. Harvard President Lawrence Summers applauded Yale and Stanford's decisions. He called the decision "good news for college-bound seniors and makes the college process less pressured, more open and fairer for students."

In a Monday editorial, TheNew York Times praised Yale and Stanford's switch, but called for an end to early admissions altogether. While Early Action relieves the pressure of choosing one school, the editorial said, students still worry about college admission early in their senior year, or earlier.

If students learn of their admission early in the year, they often treat the rest of their senior year as a "joke." "The nation's secondary schools need to devise programs to make the last semester [of high school] meaningful. But in the long run, it might be healthier for everyone if there were no early applications at all," the editorial said.

Tufts uses binding Early Decision, in two separate rounds, to let students know of their admission or rejection before the usual April date. Early Decision is intended to reward high-achieving students with admission to their first-choice college early in the year. Universities also know they are admitting a student who is guaranteed to matriculate.

Despite Yale and Stanford's announcements, Dean of Admissions David Cuttino doesn't see Tufts ending its Early Decision program. "[Early Decision] has been a part of the University for... 30 or 40 years at least," he said.

Under Early Decision's second round, students apply by the Regular Decision January due date, but indicate that Tufts is their first choice. They receive their decisions before the regular April date, and are required to attend Tufts if they are accepted.

Ann Wright, Vice-President of Enrollment Services at Rice University, said Early Decision's popularity picked up after the U.S. News & World Report began releasing its College Rankings. Before then, Early Decision was used by a small minority of students who were absolutely sure of their first choice school. Since the U.S. News rankings account for schools' yields _ the number of students admitted who actually attend _ colleges have stressed the advantages of Early Decision, she said.

"I think it's gotten too big," Wright said. She said Princeton's adoption of an Early Decision program encouraged the rest of the Ivies to follow, which brought more publicity to Early Decision. She said early programs encourage students to choose their first-choice school in their junior year _ when their choices may change dramatically from week to week.

Tufts currently admits about 40 percent of incoming students through Early Decision. As the average class size is 1,200, this leaves about 720 spots open for over 12,000 regular decision applicants. Cuttino said that Tufts uses Early Decision as an "option for those students who have clearly done their research and have gotten to the point to say, 'This is where I want to be.'"

Many students use Early Decision as an admissions strategy, thinking it improves their chances of getting admitted to their first-choice school "We worry about students who tell us they're applying Early Decision but they don't know where yet," Cuttino said. He said he was concerned "about students who are doing it for the wrong reasons _ regular decision is where they should be; that's where the majority of the decisions are made."

Even though 40 percent of a class is admitted early, only 15 percent of the University's offers of admission are made early. More students are offered admission in the spring because they are not guaranteed to attend, as in early decision. Cuttino said that on average, students choose between four schools. Admissions must accept enough students to yield the target class size in the fall.

He said that while Tufts has received a larger number of early applications in recent years, the admissions department is "still focusing on [making] a good match." He pointed out that every school has their own motives for offering Early Decision, Early Action, or no early program at all.

Some are deterred from applying Early Decision, because they cannot compare financial aid packages. Those who cannot afford the price of a college education without help fear that if they apply Early Decision, they will be stuck with a financial aid package that does not match their needs. Most schools, however, will allow students out of the Early Decision contract if the financial aid package does not meet their needs, Cuttino said.

Rice offers two early admission options _ the traditional Early Decision and Interim Decision, which works like Early Action. Wright said Rice chose this option because a large number of their Early Decision applicants come from within Texas, but the non-binding Interim Decision program encourages students from other areas of the country to apply and increases the geographic diversity of the admitted class.

Wright said that the different options allowed "work to be spread out pretty evenly," for the admissions officers. Rice admits about 20 percent of its class under Early Decision, and the rest is "pretty evenly split" between Interim and Regular Decision.

Countering the recent trend towards more flexible early admissions programs, Brown University switched from Early Action to Early Decision last year. According to Brown's website, early applications doubled after the NACAC allowed students to apply to more than one Early Action program. "No longer was Early Action at Brown a policy that matched the right student with the right college; the revised Early Action policy became an early testing of the waters."

While the resources of Brown's admissions department remained the same, the switch to Early Decision allowed them to cut down on the workload. Early applications dropped from 5,521 under Early Action to 1,919 in Early Decision's first year.