BOSTON (AP) -- In a change certainto shake up college admissions, Harvard University will ditch its ''early action'' round of applications on the grounds that it favors wealthier students over minorities and the poor. It called on other universities to follow suit.
Starting next year, Harvard will eliminate its early round of admissions that allows high school students to apply by Nov. 1 of their senior year and .receive a decision -- accept, reject or defer -- by Dec. 15
Applicants hoping to enter in the fall of 2008 will face a common application due date of Jan. 1.
''The college admissions process has become too pressured, too complex, and too vulnerable to public cynicism,'' said Harvard interim President Derek Bok. ''We hope that doing away with early admission will improve the process and make it simpler and fairer.''
Early-action applicants must agree not to apply early to other schools but can apply elsewhere in the spring and weigh all offers before picking a college by May. More commonly, colleges allow students to apply early-decision, which requires them to commit to attending if accepted.
Early admissions programs were designed to let students get the process out of the way once they had selected a college. Such programs also help schools like Harvard identify particularly enthusiastic applicants.
Acknowledging what many critics have long contended, Harvard said early admissions has become a strategic tactic for students trying to game the system to boost their admissions chances.
Other prestigious universities have tinkered with their early admissions policies but Harvard is the first to drop it outright.
''Early admission programs tend to advantage the advantaged,'' Bok said in a statement issued by the university. ''Students from more sophisticated backgrounds and affluent high schools often apply early to increase their chances of admission, while minority students and students from rural areas, other countries, and high schools with fewer resources miss out.
''Students needing financial aid are disadvantaged by binding early-decision programs that prevent them from comparing aid packages,'' he said. ''Others who apply early and gain admission to the college of their choice have less reason to work hard at their studies during their final year of high school.''
Colleges typically take a higher percentage of early applicants, though the applicant pool is usually stronger, too. Last year, Harvard offered admission to about 21 percent of its early-action applicants, according to university figures. But its overall acceptance rate was just 9.3 percent.
Harvard's statement said the university would wait one year to implement the change in part to give other universities an opportunity also to drop their early programs. If other prominent schools follow, it could significantly change the admissions calendar and strategizing for high-achieving students.
William Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions at HarvardCollege, said the university would reconsider the decision after a few years if applicant quality suffered.
Harvard Ends Early Admission
·Harvard University, breaking with a major trend in college admissions, says it will eliminate its early admissions program next year, with university officials arguing that such programs put low-income and minority applicants at a distinct disadvantage in the competition to get into selective universities.
Harvard will be the first of the nation’s prestigious universities to do away completely with early admissions, in which high school seniors try to bolster their chances at competitive schools by applying in the fall and learning whether they have been admitted in December, months before other students.
Some universities now admit as much as half of their freshman class this way, and many, though not Harvard, require an ironclad commitment from students that they will attend in return for the early acceptance.
Harvard’s decision — to be announced today — is likely to put pressure on other colleges, which acknowledge the same concerns but have been reluctant to take any step that could put them at a disadvantage in the heated competition for the top students.
“We think this will produce a fairer process, because the existing process has been shown to advantage those who are already advantaged,’’ Derek Bok, the interim president of Harvard, said yesterday in an interview.
Mr. Bok said students who were more affluent and sophisticated were the ones most likely to apply for early admission. More than a third of Harvard’s students are accepted through early admission. In addition, he said many early admissions programs require students to lock in without being able to compare financial aid offerings from various colleges.
Mr. Bok also spoke about reducing the frenzy surrounding admissions. “I think it will improve the climate in high schools,” he said, “so that students don’t start getting preoccupied in their junior year about which college to go to.’’
Many admissions deans and high school guidance counselors greeted Harvard’s decision — which is to go into effect for applicants in the fall of 2007 — with astonishment and delight.
“Wow, it’s incredible,’’ said Marilee Jones, the dean of admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , which has a nonbinding early admissions program.
Ms. Jones has spoken widely about reducing the pressure and stress of admissions. “It has the capacity to change a lot of things in this business,’’ she said. “It’s bold enough for other schools to really reconsider what they’re doing. I wish them so much luck in this.’’
Lloyd Thacker, the executive director of the Education Conservancy, a nonprofit group created to lobby for an overhaul in admissions procedures, said his eyes had teared up when he heard the news. “I’m so glad,” Mr.Thacker said. “I can’t believe it.’’
“The most powerful institution in the country is saying, singularly, yes, something is wrong with this and we’re going to try to act in the public interest,’’ he added.
For three decades Harvard has offered a particular form of early admissions, in which students who are accepted early still have the freedom to go elsewhere. Various forms of early admissions are offered by hundreds of colleges and universities, with many requiring applicants to commit upfront to attending the university if offered early admission.
The popularity of the procedure grew significantly in the 1990’s, as colleges tried to increase their competitive advantage by locking in strong candidates early. It also gave an edge to students willing to commit early to an institution. In some cases admissions rates are two or three times higher for students who apply early.
But at Harvard and many other universities officials have grown concerned that early admissions present a major obstacle to low-income and working-class students. Such students have also been hurt by steep tuition increases and competition with students from wealthy families who pour thousands of dollars into college consultants and tutoring.
“I think there are lots of very talented students out there from poor and moderate-income backgrounds who have been discouraged by this whole hocus-pocus of early admissions by many of the nation’s top colleges,’’ said William R. Fitzsimmons, Harvard College’s dean of admissions and financial aid.
Harvard Ends Early Admission
·Mr. Thacker and other critics said that under binding early admission programs, students have to commit to a college long before they know how much aid they will be offered. Students who apply for admission in the regular cycle are able to compare financial-aid offerings from various colleges before making up their minds in April.
Under Harvard’s early admissions program, which is known as early action, students do not have to decide until May 1 whether to accept an admission offer. Even so, many potential applicants did not understand the distinction between Harvard’s program and those that require an upfront commitment and were discouraged from applying, Mr. Bok said.
“We think the more schools abandon this process, the healthier the admissions process will be,’’ he said.
Of the 2,124 students admitted by Harvard last year, 813 were granted early admission, or 38 percent, Mr. Fitzsimmons said.
Under Lawrence H. Summers, the Harvard president who left office in June, the university took a number of steps to make itself more accessible to poor and working-class students. Among other things, families with incomes below $60,000 a year are no longer required to pay for a students’ education.
The idea of abandoning early admission was developed after Mr. Bok became interim president in July, said John Longbrake, a Harvard spokesman. Early admission will remain in effect in the current academic year, which is already under way.
Several educators said only a university with Harvard’s reputation could take the risk involved with eliminating early admission because it will continue to be the first choice for so many top students.
“The one thing that always seemed commonly agreed was that no college could give up its early application program if the others didn’t, too,” said Christopher Avery, a Harvard professor and a co-author of “The Early Admissions Game: Joining the Elite” (Harvard University Press, 2003). “This seems to move to do just that.’’
Bruce Hunter, director of college counseling at the Rowland Hall-St. Mark’s School, a private school in Salt Lake City, said he hoped other universities would follow Harvard’s lead, but he was not confident they would.
“I think that Harvard has calculated that they will not suffer any competitive disadvantage in the process,’’ Mr. Hunter said. “I’m not sure that there are more than a handful of other places that could make the same claim.’’
Janet Lavin Rapelye, dean of admission at Princeton University , applauded Harvard’s decision, but said she could not predict how Princeton might respond. Princeton has binding early admission, and Ms. Rapelye said there had been questions about whether early admissions limited diversity.
“All of us who sit in these seats have always worried about that,’’ she said. “Yet we have worked very hard to broaden and deepen our applicant pool at every step in the process.’’
Harvard’s End to Early Admissions Intrigues Others
·Published: September 13, 2006
Officials at many elite colleges and universities said yesterday that they would carefully consider how to respond to Harvard University’s decision to eliminate early admissions, though none were yet ready to follow Harvard’s lead.
“This will be a big topic of discussion on all these college campuses,” said Richard L. Nesbitt, director of admission at WilliamsCollege. “It is something we will consider. Will we change? I don’t know.”
Harvard will be the first of the nation’s prestigious universities to do away with early admissions, beginning with students who apply after the current academic year. Officials of the university say such programs, under which students apply early in the fall and learn before Christmas whether they have been accepted, put low-income and minority applicants at a disadvantage.
James S. Miller, dean of admission at Brown University, said Harvard’s decision, which was formally announced yesterday, had surprised and intrigued many people in higher education. “It clearly is a significant change in the admissions landscape,” Mr. Miller said. “We will look at our programs. We don’t anticipate making a change at this point.”
At Williams, Brown, Dartmouth, Cornell and many other highly selective institutions, students who apply early must, in return for early acceptance, give an ironclad commitment to attend. Critics argue that this forces low-income students to commit before being able to compare financial aid offerings from that college and others.
Under the program Harvard is now abandoning, no such commitment was required. Still, the university says, many students were not aware of the distinction and so felt discouraged from applying.
Other universities will watch closely to see what effect Harvard’s decision has on intense competition for students, admissions deans said. “For the moment, our plan would be to stick with early admissions but keep a close eye on how this might affect the admissions market,” said Karl M. Furstenberg, dean of admissions at Dartmouth. “A lot of places are going to think about what this means for their own programs.”
Mr. Furstenberg was among the admissions officials who said that through substantial recruiting and outreach, their colleges had been able to attract low-income and minority students to apply through early admissions. “I’m not as convinced that early admissions programs are as big a barrier to kids as Harvard thinks,” he said.
Yale’s president, Richard C. Levin, said it was not clear that eliminating early admissions would result in the admission of more low-income students. Dr. Levin said Yale would continue trying to attract minority and low-income students by offering substantial financial aid. He also noted that since 2002, the university had not required students accepted early to commit to the university upfront.
Lee Stetson, dean of admissions at the University of Pennsylvania, said it had no plans “at present” to change its early admissions policy.
At Cornell, Carolyn Martin, the provost, said officials there had been discussing for quite a while their concerns that early admissions might deter some low-income students from applying and pressure other students to commit too quickly.
“I don’t know where we will end up,” Dr. Martin said. “It’s been fairly widely recognized, certainly at Cornell, that it does put students in a disadvantaged position.”
Stops Its Early Admissions, Joining
Movement to Make Process Fairer September 19, 2006
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Drop 'Early Action' Admissions 
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