<p>Just to round out the Y in HP S - Yale will keep its early action program.</p>
<p>Here is an interesting excerpt from the Q&A with Rick Levin article that appeared in the Yale alumni magazine to answer "Why Yale is Keeping Early Admissions":</p>
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Y: In 2002, you told the alumni magazine you would like to see early admissions eliminated everywhere.</p>
<p>L: I emphasized that every school would have to eliminate early admissions to achieve the desired result. But this is very unlikely to happen. If Yale were to eliminate early admissions now, it is most likely that we would end up with a system where the top three or five schools had no early program, and just about everybody else did. That wouldn't solve many problems and would create some new ones.</p>
<p>"What Harvard has done by eliminating early action gives applicants fewer options."</p>
<p>And I have learned some things since 2002. When we sent our admissions officers out recruiting this year, we said, "Find out what placement counselors and school principals think we should do about early action." Opinions were divided, but a great many thought Yale should keep its early action program and not follow Harvard and Princeton.</p>
<p>Why did these counselors and principals think this? For many reasons, but here's one. Let's say you are a counselor in a high school with a lot of outstanding, well-prepared students. If none of the top schools had an early admissions program, the very best students would likely apply to three or four of the top schools each, and possibly to one or two others in the next tier of schools. They would tend to collect multiple offers, causing students who ranked slightly lower to be placed on waiting lists or rejected -- not just at the top schools, but even at schools in the next tier down. This wouldn't be a very desirable outcome.</p>
<p>A more fundamental lesson is this: changing deadlines and decision dates will rearrange the stresses associated with the admissions processes, but it won't eliminate them.</p>
<p>Finally, by contrast to their divided opinion on eliminating early action, the same counselors and principals were in '02-'03 virtually unanimous in their support of Yale eliminating binding early decision. Our switch to non-binding early action gave applicants more options. What Harvard has done by eliminating early action gives applicants fewer options.
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