<p>Also keep in mind..</p>
<p>*Black Students Are Beginning to Seize the Early Admission Advantage *</p>
<p>just an excerpt.. read entire article</p>
<p>At the nation's highest-ranked colleges and universities, the percentage of college-bound blacks who apply for early decision has always been far below the black percentage of the total applicant pool. The reason that college-bound blacks generally shun the binding commitments of the early admissions process is that their acceptance commitment cuts them off from the process of negotiating a favorable financial aid package from competing universities.
But JBHE statistics show that black students are now beginning to apply for early admission in much larger numbers. </p>
<p>In past years college-bound blacks have been much less likely than whites to seek early admission to the nation's highest-ranked colleges and universities. African Americans have avoided making the binding commitment to enroll if accepted because the rules of early decision eliminate their chances to "play the field" and consider a wide range of financial offers from competing universities. As a result, blacks have not been able to take advantage of the fact that early decision applicants generally achieve a much higher acceptance rate than applicants who choose to go the regular route. </p>
<p>For African Americans, the early decision process is assuming greater importance for the simple reason that early decision applications now make up a very large percentage of all admissions decisions. For example, this past winter Princeton University admitted 581 students under its binding early decision admissions program. This group is about one half of the freshman class that will enroll at Princeton this coming fall. </p>
<p>*Blacks Who Applied for Early Admission in 2004 *</p>
<p>JBHE has surveyed the nation's highest-ranked colleges and universities to determine how the controversial issue of early admissions actually affects black access to higher education, particularly admissions to our most selective institutions. JBHE asked each of the nation's 25 highest-ranked universities and the 25 highest-ranked liberal arts colleges for this year's early admissions data. Some of the nation's highest-ranked institutions such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Amherst, Williams, Stanford, Dartmouth, Duke, and Columbia declined to participate in our survey. </p>
<p>We believe that the reason for this reluctance has to do with the fact that at most highly ranked colleges and universities there is only a very small trickle of black early decision applicants. Publication of this shortfall tends to hurt a school's reputation for its commitment to racial diversity. It is likely, although by no means certain, that universities and colleges missing from our statistics have a low percentage of black early applicants.</p>