<p>Add Northwestern and the University of Chicago to the list of HE institutions that have formally announced they will keep their early decision programs for now.</p>
<p>Here is a link and excerpts from an article in "The Harvard Crimson" entitled "Playing Catch-Up" on the end of early decision at Harvard and the current admissions frenzy that features Sally Rubenstine from CC, as well as L. Thacker of the EC.:</p>
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IS ENDING EARLY ACTION ENOUGH?</p>
<p>Students confused by the announcement pointed out that Early Action (EA) is non-binding, which means students from low-income backgrounds can still compare financial aid packages at the end of the process. Some see EA as the lesser evil to Early Decision: a win-win situation that alleviates pressure early in the process for the well-prepared, without disadvantaging the less-privileged.</p>
<p>That is, if it’s assumed that the less-privileged participate at all. Perhaps the most important message that Harvard is sending is that there are many students who don’t even have the wherewithal to enter a game that starts earlier and earlier.</p>
<p>The growing information gap is the most compelling consequence of this admission process. Fitzsimmons cites disparities in college counseling to illustrate this point.</p>
<p>“Nationally, the average ratio of counselees to counselors is about 500 to one,” he says. “In poor communities, because of budget cutbacks there are no longer any counselors at all. In affluent communities, the ratio is as low as 40 or 50 to one. Many students have private counselors ”</p>
<p>A recent poll by The Chronicle of Higher Education showed that 94 percent of pollees believed that “every high-school student who wants a four-year college degree should have the opportunity to earn one.” Another 52 percent agreed that a college degree was “essential for success in our society.”</p>
<p>The need for higher education no longer has the fuzzy haloed status of an American dream: it’s a necessary reality. And Fitzsimmons and other opponents of Early Action claim that equalizing the process will benefit an increasing number of disadvantaged students.</p>
<p>“This isn’t just a nice thing to do,” says Fitzsimmons. “If America doesn’t take advantage of all the talents of all the members now, it will be a less significant factor in the world in one, two or three generations.”...</p>
<p>‘STUDENT-HOOD HAS BEEN VIOLATED’</p>
<p>While the current college application certainly requires a lot of work on the parent’s part, it’s usually the pressure involved at the student’s end that has become a lightning rod for criticism.</p>
<p>“There aren’t enough hours in the day for me to tell you what is wrong with the current admissions process,” says Sally F. Rubenstine, Senior Counselor and Editor at CollegeConfidential.com. “All the anxiety that it brings our children that doesn’t need to be there!”</p>
<p>This anxiety manifests itself daily on the CollegeConfidential.com discussion forums, which claims to be the “most popular on the web.”</p>
<p>The question “What are my chances?” litters the discussions groups. They feature students who post their statistics online for others to evaluate. In one Harvard thread, a student who boasted a 2350 on the SAT I, triple 800s on the SAT IIs, and runs a “self-started computer business,” wonded whether he might get into Harvard Early Action.</p>
<p>Forget about professional counseling. Many high school students today are attempting to learn on their own what it takes to get in. The same movement that drives the multi-million dollar test-prep takes a more personal form in websites like CollegeConfidential.com. For these students, CollegeConfidential.com is not only a source for information, but a forum for therapy...</p>
<p>STUDENTS OR VICTIMS?</p>
<p>“Students have been victims. They’ve been reduced to consumers!” says Lloyd Thacker, the founder the Education Conservancy, a nonprofit that wants to right what’s wrong with the college application process. Thacker believes that today’s process is run on a consumer model in which colleges attract students with gimmicks like high SAT averages, competitive rankings, and preferential and early programs.</p>
<p>“Student-hood has been violated,” says Thacker.</p>
<p>Student-what? “Student-hood is a concept that students make learning happen,” says Thacker, “It’s curiosity, hard work, risk-taking. Those things are not celebrated by current admission offices.”</p>
<p>Harvard and other colleges are paying attention. Thacker recalls dashing off a “one-sentence abstract” for a book on college admissions.</p>
<p>“‘The commercialization of college admissions has created a crisis by undermining educational values.’ I wrote it and sent it off to 12 deans of admissions and college presidents—I put it through spell-check first, of course—e-mailed it, and within three days, 10 out of the 12 responded.”</p>
<p>The book, “College Unranked: Ending the College Admissions Frenzy,” was at first self-published because “the publishers wanted to make it into a how-to-beat the system book, and it was a how not-to book,” says Thacker. His book is now published by Harvard University Press.</p>
<p>ON THE HORIZON</p>
<p>The Early Action deadline was Nov. 1, and though the admissions office doesn’t promise a decision until Dec. 15, the applicants have trouble focusing on anything else.</p>
<p>“I’m trying not to think about the application: something I should have done or should have left out. We try not to talk about it too much,” says Nehamas. He was contacted for an interview, but he didn’t practice for it. Part of it might be because he’s too busy: his work on the school newspaper means that he often comes home after eleven at night. Another part is his personal philosophy.</p>
<p>“Preparing for an interview is always a bad idea. I’m just trying to come off as an interesting person. One of my friends got one of those books ‘College Trade Secrets’ or something, but I really just want to be myself, I’m just going to act normally,” Nehamas says.</p>
<p>On the other side of the country, Zambrano is worried. He’s received his SAT scores from October; he scored a 1990. He had hoped to break 2000.</p>
<p>The emphasis on SAT scores also draws ample criticism from those who think such numbers handicap disadvantaged students.</p>
<p>“I’m not even talking about knowing about the EA or ED: it’s something as simple as meeting basic requirements,” says Jolene A. Lane, executive director of LEDA. “Philosophically, anyone can participate in the college process. But in reality people don’t have the information to apply. There are counselors who’ve never heard of SAT IIs. Students are eliminated from the candidate pool because of a lack of information about and emphasis on tests.”</p>
<p>Fitzsimmons points out, though, that the relationship between socioeconomic levels and test scores is part of why the admissions office looks at students holistically, taking students’ backgrounds into account .</p>
<p>That’s good news for Zambrano, who is hoping for “a little bit of slack on the SAT scores.” Perhaps they’ll put more weight on other parts of his applications, like his essays, which he sees as the strongest part of his application: “It’s not numbers and letters,” he says. “It’s the closest they can get to actually knowing me as a person rather than from a computer screen or numbers.”</p>
<p>Appropriately, Harvard is going through the same process; like applicants, they are attempting to define their own purpose and value.</p>
<p>“It seems to be very important to a lot of people, and it’s good that higher education is important,” Susan D. Glimcher, Nehamas’ mother, says, “I sometimes wonder about the reasons, like you need to have a good education to make a lot of money. For me it goes without saying that education goes well beyond that. It’s very good that education’s become very important, you sometimes wonder why people are valuing it.”</p>
<p>It’s a given today that higher education is important, but the reasons as to why are still being debated. The outcomes of the debate are what has and what will guide the changes college application process...
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