<p>Harvard is dropping early admissions beginning with the class of 2012. One wonders if other schools including Chicago will follow, and if not the affect this will have on the Chicago EA applicant pool.</p>
<p>Why would it affect the EA pool? The EA kids are still going to be the kids who want peace of mind and regard U of C pretty highly.</p>
<p>When Harvard and the others went single-choice early action, we thought that it caused a dip in our EA pool. Now that they're not doing single-choice early action, we could see a little rise.</p>
<p>Does anyone else not think Harvard's idea is a good one? It seems to me that Harvard's switch will increase competition among colleges, even though they claim it will reduce the craziness, as it said in the NYT. With so many kids getting accepted EA or ED, they reduce competition at other schools that they might not want to go to very much. As for low-income kids, EA in the place of ED seems to have taken care of the problem of comparing FA packages. They say that it still discourages these kids because they don't understand how the process works. I think they'd do better to work on getting that kind of info out to those kids.</p>
<p>I'd have to say that I also disagree with the motives that Harvard used to justify its action. I cannot see how the erradication of Early Admission helps lower income students in any way. In fact, I just think it puts them at a disadvantage. It is certainly very easy to see how programs like Early Decision significantly impact applicants of lower income, since in ED the option to compare FinAid packages is nonexistent. Therefore, the ED option is out of the question for these students. However, I think that early action simply rewards students who have been diliigent about sending in their materials to the college of their choice, and serves as an effective tool to combat anxiety. Further, it is useful for college admission departments since it gives them the chance to somewhat spread out their applicant pool. </p>
<p>Getting rid of EA basically means one thing for everyone: More applications and more applications fees. Basically, if every kind of early admission is done away with, pretty much every kid that got in ED and several who got in EA or SCEA at a lot of schools will, from this day forth, be forced to apply to all the schools in his list. Given that about 20% of of admits accross universities are admitted EA, we're talking about all of these kids applying to 12 schools... instead of that 1. So, now that we have more of these applications, we have another problem: plummeting yields. Suddenly, schools that could preserve their yield through ED will no longer be able to do so, and now we are in a situation in which admission rates HAVE to skyrocket, since every student now becomes a liability, since you have very little guarantee that he'll attend your institution. Thus, waiting lists grow huge, and the aggony for thousands of HS seniors just intensifies. Which brings me to the point about this move actually hurting underprivileged students. With everyone going RD, every kid will be forced to apply to many more schools, since he 1) doesn't have the option to applying to a couple to see how it turns out, and 2) so much will now be left up to waiting lists, and predicting your admission at a given school will be even harder. Moral of the story? Everyone will have to spend more money filling out apps and devoting time to endless applications.</p>
<p>I second you^^^. I am not exactly underprivileged, but my parents would kill me after paying the app fees that I'd have if it were all RD. I'd be applying to probably 10+ schools. As of now, I'm hoping for UChicago EA admittance + decent fin. aid to eliminate most if not all of those other schools I'd be hitting up if the early game didn't exist.</p>
<p>It would hurt middle class a lot more than the less priveleged, because of application fee waivers. I do agree with you, though, that this would make things a lot more stressful.</p>
<p>My guess is that a couple of things occasioned this action. One, even with SCEA nearly 80% of those accepted choose Harvard, so the make up of the demographic pool for SCEA may have been different than RD, thus limiting the spots for students of the demographic they would like to include. Middle class students may be helped with this at approach at Harvard. And two, the time to make decisions is much shorter for EA than RD. As the number of early applicants rise, the burden on the staff, and the difficulty in making good decisions amy increase. Over time, if other peer schools go to RD only, selectivity will fall, especially without ED enrollment, except at Harvard. Harvard will separate itself from the others in terms of selectivity and yield. As I recall reading one Harvard administrator saying, "...for every 4 students admitted to both Yale and Harvard, 3 choose Harvard."</p>
<p>If others do not follow suit, the numbers applying to other SCEA and EA schools will likely increase, with the numbers apply ED will likely remain the same.</p>
<p>Fillipe:</p>
<p>The thing that lowers admissions rates isn't neccessarily how many schools people are applying to. Population growth and more people applying to elite colleges every year lowers acceptance rates, not how many schools each kid is applying to. Think about how the population doubled over the last 40 years in America, yet the amount of 200 year old highly prestigous Universities hasn't. It is really just a problem of suuply and demand and can be broken down pretty easily. If everyone doubled the amont of schools they applied too, yields would theoretically be cut in half and the admissions rates would change negligibly, now of course this is only theoretical. I agree with the poster who said the only negative thing this action does is hurt middle class students. Then again, fee waivers are an option and are most often granted. I don't see how this action can really help kids applying to Harvard as harvard is free to everyone with a household income of less than $60,000 a year, but I do believe that is cuts down on the amount of cut throat antics that take place in college admissions. If Harvard and others wanted to truly revolutionize higher educaiton, they would distribute a couple billion dollars of their ridiculous endowment to smaller liberal arts schools.</p>