Harvard University, the great bastion of higher learning and constant source of residual bitterness among Tufts students, has one-upped us once again.
Harvard recently announced that, as of next year, it would discontinue its early admissions program, moving all of its applicants to the same pool. The decision was made after administration officials agreed that the early admissions system favored the affluent and advantaged applicants (a segment of the population that the Ivies have historically discouraged from attending, to no avail).
The hope is that the selection of students from one large group of applicants will increase fairness and do away with much of the cynicism that has plagued all early admissions programs since their inception.
Harvard's move has set off a flurry of activity as other top universities-like, for example, Tufts-have publicly deliberated as to whether or not they should make a similar move.
Historically, Tufts took a reasonably large portion of its students from Early Decision ("the other ED") applicants; in fact, it is likely that over a third of the readers of this newspaper were sure of their college plans by December of their senior year.
However, the percentage of the freshman class garnered from the ED program has been decreasing rapidly in the last few years even as the number of applications has skyrocketed. The positive aspects to discontinuation are twofold: 1) We could be more like Harvard, and 2) We could actually choose students by merit and remove some of the built-in inequality in the application process. Both of these points are goals that Tufts should aspire to, but this may not, alas, be the best way to accomplish them.
The problem, unfortunately, boils down to money. Harvard is an extremely wealthy institution: The Princeton Review states that Harvard dorm rooms are "like palaces," buildings are immense and ornate, and the admissions process is need-blind (a feat that Tufts cannot yet accomplish).
For Harvard, the Early Action program functions in a similar way to Tufts' Early Decision, simply because it is unlikely that an applicant who is selected early for Harvard will choose to go elsewhere (unless, of course, Yale makes an offer).
The removal of Early Action will not affect Harvard's attendance to a large degree, because those who apply Regular Decision are almost equally as likely as Early Action applicants to attend.
For Tufts, however, this is not the case. We at the University of Peace and Light must necessarily compete with a larger group of top universities for students, and the enrollment rate has typically been much lower than at Harvard. Early Decision at Tufts has served to ensure that all (or at least most) spaces will eventually be filled by excellent candidates. However, it also tends to perpetuate the stereotype that Tufts students are either Ivy League rejects or ED applicants.
The Harvard decision is a step in the right direction-for Harvard. It would be wonderful if Tufts had the resources to ensure a higher enrollment rate, because universities should select students at the same time and from the same group so that everyone is given a fair shake.
Until that is standard, there will always be cynicism surrounding the applications process, and rightly so. Early application is an extremely convoluted and misunderstood concept, and nobody but an admissions officer can really know the effect that an early application has on a student's chances.
Is Harvard's decision a step in the right direction? Absolutely.
Should Tufts do the same thing? Not yet.
It is a shame, but our university simply does not have the resources to be as competitive as we need to be without a certain amount of early acceptances.
Instead of suddenly doing away with early applications altogether, we should be focused on gradually decreasing the number of early acceptances until we can join Harvard as a school that selects its students based purely on merit-and nothing else.
