<p>The history of shifting admission policies at Princeton and at its peers is certainly convoluted.</p>
<p>JHS is correct in stating that Princeton never had a restrictive single choice early action (SCEA) program like Yale’s. Rather, it had had a completely open non-restrictive “early action” program prior to its later switch to early decision. In fact, Princeton has had, at various times in the past, early decision, early action and no early program at all. As most of you are aware, Princeton has switched now to single choice early action, a policy that will apply for the applicants to the class of 2016. Harvard, Princeton, Stanford and Yale will now have nearly identical admission policies (with the exception of Stanford’s athletic scholarships). I know from conversations with admission officers that Princeton did not want to make this move. The Dean of Admission had been very critical of early action programs and was happy to get rid of Princeton’s as soon as Harvard announced it was doing the same. However, once Harvard announced the move to SCEA, Princeton’s being left as the only school within this group of four that did not offer an early program seemed to be unsustainable so the switch was made. </p>
<p>There are both strong advocates and critics of early programs. College counselors from the more elite high schools and the students they represent tend to support the programs and it certainly can be satisfying to have finished the college application process in December. Academics who study higher education policies tend to oppose them. In the past, lower income students had been poorly represented in the early pools. In recent years that appears to have changed.</p>
<p>Harvard, Princeton and Yale have all reversed their positions. At Princeton, the former Dean of Admission, Fred Hargadon, was a strong advocate of restrictive early programs. He argued, with some justification, that restrictive early programs reduce the number of applications clogging the system and allowed students to indicate their first choices in an effective manner. </p>
<p>Yale’s President Levin took just the opposite view. At that time, Yale, like Princeton, had an early decision program and Levin railed against such programs in the national press, including a much-discussed New York Times story. Levin stated that he thought all schools should give up their restrictive early programs for the sake of a fairer system for all applicants but that Yale would not be able to go it alone and that there would need to be simultaneous common action among all of the more competitive schools. </p>
<p>Not long after that, Yale and Stanford moved part way in this direction by switching to SCEA. Princeton did not follow. When Princeton’s new Dean of Admission began discussions with the trustees regarding this issue, she took the same position as had Levin, that all restrictive early programs should go, but that Princeton would wait until there was agreement with others about dropping them simultaneously and entirely. When Harvard then announced four years ago that it would drop its early program, Princeton immediately followed suit (as did UVA). Strangely, Yale’s Levin, who had been an outspoken leader in criticizing early programs now became a defender of them, arguing that the SCEA program served Yale well and would be kept. There was a certain amount of snickering in the academic community over the hypocrisy associated with this sudden change of heart since retaining SCEA would give Yale and Stanford certain admission advantages over their peers, but Levin and Yale’s new Dean of Admission stuck with it. Editorialists in the Yale Daily News questioned Levin’s motives but their peers at the Stanford Daily came out strongly for restrictive early programs and belittled Harvard’s, Princeton’s and UVA’s moves.</p>
<p>When Princeton and Harvard dropped their early programs, they saw an immediate drop in their matriculation rates. Even Harvard, which, among universities, tends to be the most immune to changes such as this, saw its matriculation rate drop from the low 80% range to the mid to high 70% range. Princeton saw a larger drop of about 9% in its matriculation rate when it gave up binding ED. Since this change, it appears that matriculation rates at both schools may have stabilized. The second year after dropping the early programs, both schools saw an increase in their matriculation rate. The third year both saw a slight drop and this last year both once again saw an increase in yield. </p>
<p>It’s anyone’s guess what might happen next year now that all four of these institutions have similar policies. Here is mine. Princeton’s applicant pool will increase and its acceptance rate will decrease. There will be an equalization of yields with Princeton’s rising and Yale’s dropping so that the two of them are about the same. Harvard’s yield will increase and Stanford’s will drop. The significant number of athletic scholarships given by Stanford will still keep its yield higher than Princeton’s and Yale’s. </p>
<p>As JHS has pointed out, ED schools (including Princeton when it had that admission program) tend to matriculate about half their classes from the early pool. What is less well known is that this can be true of early action schools as well. Stanford has tended to accept fewer of its early applicants and deferred fewer as well. At Yale, on the other hand, the total percentage of each completed class that had originally applied early action is approximately 50%. This includes the students originally accepted through SCEA as well as those who are deferred and then later accepted in the regular pool. Perhaps not surprisingly, those who are deferred from the early pool have already shown a preference and are more likely to matriculate if accepted from the regular pool.</p>
<p>Among these four schools in particular, it’s a complicated dance, but regardless of the shifting admission policies they will undoubtedly all matriculate strong classes once again this year and on into the future.
</p>