<p>Mr. Pink, in theory you are right; EA doesn't give advantages to anyone. But the numbers are telling a different story that Harvard decided it just couldn't overlook any longer.</p>
<p>My thinking is that students from less advantageous socioeconomic backgrounds don't have the knowledge of applying to colleges that the more privileged students with educated parents do. Even completing all of the SATs and SAT IIs may take a longer time because they may have a hypothetical part-time job to support the family.</p>
<p>On the news they were sayong that they think that other colleges will follow Harvard and take away ED so in the end, it wont affect Harvard as far as applicants, but possibly acceptance rate?</p>
<p>odyssey</p>
<p>You are exactly correct. If Harvard wants to continue to be competitive in intercollegiate athletics, they will have to increase the number of likely letters they provide. My guess is that the number of likely letters will closely approximate the number of recruited athletes who have gained admission early each year. Very few recruited athletes will wait until April to find out if they are going to be admitted. It doesn't matter if it is Harvard. </p>
<p>In addition we shouldn't be that naive to think that significant legacies are going to have to wait until April either. This appears to me to be all for show.</p>
<p>This is tragic because, if Harvard ends their Early Admission Process, then many other prestigious schools will start to follow. Also, the entire notion that early decision hurts minorities/poor applicants sounds ridiculous to me because these students always had the option of applying EA. Anyone--rich, poor, white, or black--could have applied EA. I'm just glad that I'm already in a great college, and that this won't affect me.</p>
<p>Vtoodler, it sounds ridiculous to you because you have no idea what it is like to be a poor applicant. These students certainly had the option of applying EA--but it's harder for them to find out about it. Harvard isn't dropping EA on a whim--clearly there is some truth to the statement that EA is more available to richer, more well-informed students. Even some of my own friends in decent public schools don't know the difference between EA and ED--and they need to apply to such programs in less than 2 months! Imagine kids at poor schools...</p>
<p>Actually, I am poor, so I know what it's like. (My mom makes less than 35K, my dad is dead, and I have four other siblings) And I applied to Harvard while in High School. I didn't apply EA for unrelated reasons, but I surely knew about EA all along. </p>
<p>All anyone needs to do to find out about Early Action is simply go to Harvard's website for Undergraduate Admission. To me, visiting a website doesn't sound very complicated or sophiscated. If a student doesn't have enough sense to know that they should visit the website of the school they're planning on attending months ahead, then maybe they don't belong at Harvard. I hate to be rude, but this is simply ridiculous. I don't think that it's about helping the poor. I think that it's about rankings. Here's why:</p>
<p>Doesn't anyone find it interesting that Harvard implemented this policy just weeks after discovering that they lost their number one slot to Princeton in USNEWS? Maybe this has something to do with Harvard wanting to reclaim their number one status. </p>
<p>Just my insight, but others may respectfully disagree.</p>
<p>Harvard wins all the cross admit battles - against every school, students admitted to H and another school choose H. So take a kid who was admitted to H SCEA - he typically would not apply anywhere else so H got a +1 and no school got turned down.</p>
<p>Now eliminate SCEA at H. Now the kid applies to 10 of the elite schools, gets into H and accepts. H gets a +1 and NINE of H's competitors get a -1.</p>
<p>vtoodler, I think you are on to something. I had been wondering why Harvard is just now doing this, when all of the disadvantages to the early application process have been known and discussed for a long time. </p>
<p>It seems to me circular reasoning. Harvard is changing the policy because the rich kids know enough to take advantage of the early application process and poor or unsophisticated kids do not. But Harvard is the one accepting all of the privileged/hooked kids in the early round, and apparently not saving enough space for the others it would like to take in the RD round. Why can't Harvard choose to defer more EA applicants and reserve more RD spaces than it has previously?</p>
<p>The problem with SCEA is you only get 1 financial aid offer, with nothing else with which to compare it. And it's the same (or worse) for ED. Although I'm not particularly fond of Harvard, I think it's a great move on their part to eliminate EA. It makes the playing field quite a bit closer to level. Although I think that if they wanted to do more to level the playing field they could eliminate legacies and affirmative action (even though many claim it doesn't exist any more) and other such things, and just evaluate applicants on quality. I think it will probably be a very long time before that happens, though.</p>
<p>Thats stupid, great. No i have to apple to Yale for EA</p>
<p>It's amazing that there are people who think the U.S. News rankings actually mean something..... and even more amazing that they think HARVARD would give a crap.</p>
<p>Harvard is making the change now because it has a new President, Derek Bok, who is convinced that early action benefits kids from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. And it's true because the early action pool does have a higher family income and the early action pool does get in at a higher rate. These are indisputable facts.</p>
<p>Students from poorer families perhaps don't have the luxury of spending all their free time surfing the web (maybe they don't even have internet access at home) and talking to their friends about going to expensive private colleges (maybe most of their friends don't even plan to go to college, maybe they don't think their family can afford a private college so they don't even think about Harvard, maybe they have to work after school.)</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>
[quote]
Actually, I am poor, so I know what it's like. (My mom makes less than 35K, my dad is dead, and I have four other siblings) And I applied to Harvard while in High School. I didn't apply EA for unrelated reasons, but I surely knew about EA all along.</p>
<p>All anyone needs to do to find out about Early Action is simply go to Harvard's website for Undergraduate Admission. To me, visiting a website doesn't sound very complicated or sophiscated. If a student doesn't have enough sense to know that they should visit the website of the school they're planning on attending months ahead, then maybe they don't belong at Harvard. I hate to be rude, but this is simply ridiculous. I don't think that it's about helping the poor. I think that it's about rankings. Here's why:</p>
<p>Doesn't anyone find it interesting that Harvard implemented this policy just weeks after discovering that they lost their number one slot to Princeton in USNEWS? Maybe this has something to do with Harvard wanting to reclaim their number one status.</p>
<p>Just my insight, but others may respectfully disagree.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Very well stated. My views exactly. Like, I can see why ED may be anti-competitive, but not EA or SCEA.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>On the contrary, Lower Yield -> Higher Acceptance Rate -> You don't have to apply to as many top colleges. One should never have to apply to 12 colleges if you are picking them wisely. Only a handful of colleges are so selective that you can never be sure if you would get in even if you had impeccable credentials. All you need are 2-3 reaches, 2-3 schools at your level, and 1-2 safeties.</p></li>
<li><p>Even if one has to apply to more colleges, poor students are allowed fee waivers so it doesn't matter.</p></li>
<li><p>Poor students definitely DO benefit because there are more slots open. Before, they were competing for only 50-60% of the total slots.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>It doesn't make sense to me either that SCEA hurts low-income students. If someone is talented enough to be Harvard material, then surely he or she has enough common sense to understand the decision plans offered at the schools to which he or she is applying. I think the trial basis for this change is a good idea. If it doesn't change things, then H can just revert back to the SCEA system. If it increases the % of enrollees from low-income families, then we can all be happy that the right decision was made.</p>
<p>"2. Even if one has to apply to more colleges, poor students are allowed fee waivers so it doesn't matter."</p>
<p>I'm confused about this... if applying to more colleges (keeping more track of essays, recs, DEADLINES) isn't a problem, why is a big argument against EA say that it's prejudicial because poorer kids aren't aware of this program?!?! It sure seems that if they had to apply to more skills there will be a lot more that they won't know about...</p>
<p>Regarding your first point, I think that your difference between 8 schools as opposed to my 12 is negligeble. Further, your 8 schools assume someone with impecable records... im sorry, but most kids from disadvantaged backgrounds don't really have the support behind them to get these impecable credentials...</p>
<p>"How many people do you personally know who got into Harvard or Yale SCEA early this past year who were not legacies, development cases whose families gave significant money, or athletes recruited to play on one of the sports teams. Unless from an elite feeder school to Harvard in Mass, or one in Connecticut, ie. Deefield or Choate for example, the number you personally know is probably small."</p>
<p>I know one - not a legacy, not an athlete, not a musician, not a development case, no private or feeder school, not a URM. It does happen.</p>
<p>12 is 150% of 8 so I think it's a significant difference. It translates into hundreds of dollars in application fees.</p>
<p>I wasn't arguing for affirmative action for poor students. All I'm saying that a poor student with an A average and real potential may not make it during the regular round at Harvard when only 5% is accepted (as opposed to 20% during early admission) but when there is only a single round, he/she may have a real chance. You have to concede that the competition is stiffer during the regular round. </p>
<p>As I said, poor students may not have the benefit of having their parents urging them on about college admissions or having their friends continuously talk about Ivy League school admissions. But by the time they are seniors, everyone will know that they have to apply to colleges. It has nothing to do with their organizational skills or being able to handle multiple applications. Again, I'm not advocating accepting dumb poor kids, but smart poor kids.</p>
<p>No, I cannot concede that. You can't equate percentage of acceptance to difficulty of acceptance. The University of Chicago is a classic case. Despite accepting more than 50% of its applicants, its entering class had a higher SAT average than half the ivy league schools who accepts less than half that many kids. Basically, difficulty of acceptance is a function of not only the number of applicants but also the quality of the applicant pool. SCEA admission at harvard was/is no harder than RD admission... the difference in percentage just reveals the difference in strength of applicants in either pool. Kids who applied early, on average, are more on the ball when it comes to colleges. Despite going to a pretty competitive school, I was surprised at how many kids missed deadlines... and I must say that these kinda lined-up with how good students were... so, the higher acceptance in EA just meant that pool is stronger... like it is at virtually every school.</p>