Harvard ends EA -- Says Program Hurts Disadvantaged

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
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<ol>
<li>"harvard college needs many times more money to fund faculty salaries, financial aid, facility construction and maintenance, and the like. for this reason, endowment per student is commonly compiled (e.g. by COHE)"</li>
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<p>My point, which you don't seem to be getting, is that each of these has value only as an entity in itself, not entity per student. The library with 15 million volumes has value as a library, not as a number of books per student. A physical facility is valuable as an entity in itself, not as a number of bricks per student. If Harvard can afford a $100 million science building for 1000 students ($0.1 million per student), that is better than Princeton getting a $50 million science building for 200 students ($0.25 million per student). Calculated expense per student does not tell whether the student can find the rare book he wants in the library or whether the science building is better equipped.</p>

<p>My second point was that the ratios were all bogus because you were dividing by the number of graduate plus undergraduate students. You did not address that.</p>

<ol>
<li>"not necessarily. all of harvard's peers are also spending "large sums of money" improving themselves. and they're not all running budget deficits like harvard."</li>
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<p>Harvard is running a deficit, or Faculty of Arts and Sciences is rather, BECAUSE it's spending money building and building. You make it sound like Harvard is throwing it all away and don't have enough to invest in infrastructure.</p>

<ol>
<li> "why is princeton the only school, five years after its initial announcement, that can eliminate all loans so that its students can and do graduate debt-free? if harvard has a bigger endowment, why can't it still match princeton?"</li>
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<p>They are just different approaches. It's not at all clear to me that Princeton's package would be equal or better than Harvard's, especially with the new policy. When I applied at least, Harvard's package was better than everyone else's, including Princeton's.</p>

<ol>
<li> "harvard's average faculty salaray is not $15,000 more than princeton's, unless of course you include harvard's higher-paid professional school faculty (bus, law, med)".</li>
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<p>Do you have the figures for non-professional faculty salaries for each school to back this up? Maybe Princeton would be an exception, but others that also have professional schools, it should be quite comparable. </p>

<p>According to American Association of University Professors, the salaries were:</p>

<p>Harvard 168,700
Princeton 156,800
Stanford 156,200
Yale 151,200
Penn 149,900
Caltech 147,800
MIT 140,300
Cornell 137,000
Dartmouth 132,400
Brown 129,200</p>

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<p>I’d like to see Penn or Columbia give up their ED programs…. Now THAT would be a story…..</p>

<p>Also, I don’t buy that this is going to help minorities. I’d think that having ED/EA programs in place would be more beneficial to minorities than not.</p>

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<p>Scottie: </p>

<p>Princeton is a damn good school but my respect would increase dramatically if they like Harvard also eliminate ED. I am sure they can compete with Harvard in an open competition without ED. In an open competition without being shielded by ED, the yield will give a better ranking then given by the current scenario. Princeton could prove everyone wrong that it does not need ED to shy away from the competitions.</p>

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<p>i completely agree, stock. i have actually been very critical on these boards of princeton's continued reliance on ED. a switch to SCEA would be win-win for the university, giving its early applicants additional time and choices, and improving its competitive standing by increasing the number and diversity of applicants. a complete abolition of early admissions a la harvard might temporarily hurt its competitive standing, but it would be good for public relations. i think harvard realized this, and that's why they took their decision to the new york times before they took it to their peer institutions, so that they could have all the glory. if they really, and selflessly, wanted to bring down a system they thought unfair, they would have built the necessary coalition before going public. but instead of persuading their peers behind the scenes, they opted to grab the glory themselves and "shame" their peers in the press.</p>

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<p>Excuse me, Scottie, but how do you have a clue about what went on "behind the scenes?"</p>

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<p>Scottie you may have a point. Now the ball is in Princeton court and they need to show what they are made of. How they can compete and take the second lead in proving everyone wrong that they do not need ED to shy away from competition. But if they do not, there would be an egg on the Princeton’s face for claiming being number one in US or any other ranking. They need to abolish ED.</p>

<p>Let us also see wht happens so called UPenn who wanna be in the same category of HYPMS.</p>

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<p>I would like to see Poster X answer the specific informational questions I asked him in a thread he opened </p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=166836%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=166836&lt;/a> </p>

<p>in this Harvard Forum. I don't think he should be able to run away from the weak evidence for his assertion that Harvard College is not as "selective" as Yale for undergraduate studies. They are manifestly both highly selective undergraduate colleges, and I'm happy to acknowledge that a high school student should be delighted to be admitted to either college, but I think the best weight of evidence supports the assertion that Harvard is the most selective college in the world.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Harvard's yield rate will drop 10% as a result of this.

[/quote]
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<p>I don't make the same prediction. It's unclear to me what exactly will happen if high school class of 2008, 2009, and possibly 2010 applies to Harvard under a single deadline system while other colleges (Yale? Stanford?) possibly keep SCEA in place in advance of the regular admission round. What number of applicants do you expect to each college? What figures do we have about a current cross-admit ratio for Yale early admittees who are admitted to Harvard in the regular round, or the same for Stanford?</p>

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<p>OK, I'm a low-middle income single parent and I know all about EA/ED and so does my kid. We cannot apply ED to any of the top schools because we need to know aid levels for decisions...yes I know w/ ED they give you an out on the aid issue, but it just seems like a lot to go through and then have to back out due to money..and start off with that whole big disappointment</p>

<p>But Harvard had SCEA...that's totally different from ED, and I agree with kk19: I fail to see how SCEA creates a disadvantage for an URM...and a case could be made that doing away with SCEA actually HURTS them. so i don't buy this whole line from harvard either.....there's more to this than meets the eye; they aren't in business to be philanthropic, and yes, it IS a business</p>

150

<p>Harvard wants to poach the most brilliant kids. Can They? No beacuse Yale, Standford and MIT are competing with SCEA or EA. If these schools can, Princeton and wharton can compete too. Yes it is business. But with rasing the parental income threshold to $80,000 (it has been told privately to kids who need aid) they have rasied the bar and allowed more middle class people to apply to Harvard.</p>

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<p>well, all the non-harvard admissions folks quoted in articles describe being blindsided, shocked, etc by harvard's decision, so i'm pretty sure harvard didn't go the coalition-building route, even though they whine about the need for such a coalition.</p>

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<p>The could easily gone that route with no difference in the public posturing of leaders like, say, Richard Levin.</p>

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<p>I'm sure it's been posted in the 11 pages, but how does EA at Harvard hurt disadvantaged applicants? Wouldn't it make some shine?</p>

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<p>That's what I want to know....</p>

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<p>The way it hurts disadvantaged applicants is that they may not know much about EA in the first place. They very likely attend large city or remote rural 3rd or 4th rate high schools where the GC vision doesn't extend much beyond the local community college and State U. Disadvantaged students are just that -- disadvantaged. And one of those disadvantages is not having the opportunity to be plugged-in to all the angles.</p>

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<p>To iterate a NY Times letter to the editor posted earlier, this explains it all:</p>

<p>To the Editor:</p>

<p>According to Derek Bok, the interim president of Harvard, many potential applicants did not understand the distinction between Harvard’s early admission program and those that require an upfront commitment and were discouraged from applying. </p>

<p>I’m sure that the differences between Harvard’s nonbinding early action and the binding programs used by other schools were clearly stated. </p>

<p>If potential applicants were incapable of grasping these differences, they should probably not have been considering applying to Harvard in the first place. And Harvard should probably not be considering them for admission. </p>

<p>Richard Zimmer</p>

<p>South Orange, N.J., Sept. 12, 2006</p>

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<p>okay, I heard a rumor that Stanford is also thinking about phasing out its Early Action program too...any affirmations?</p>

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<p>Is the money ordeal the truth? Or is there something behind the curtain.....</p>

<p>Maybe, the students accepted for EA have not proved to be as good choices as those in normal desicion where there is a bigger and more broad pool to chose from.</p>

<p>Just some food for thought.</p>

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<p>Yeah, that's the facile and very simplisitic answer. Real life is a lot more complicated.</p>

<p>To begin with, there is a big difference between being unable to grasp something and not being exposed to or aware of something in the first place. Harvard and many of the other high end schools work hard to find and admit very smart but very disadvantaged kids - witness the the $60K intitiative. And apparently they realized that EA was working at cross-purposes to that goal. </p>

<p>Several studies have shown that the kids admitted in early programs on average are significantly richer than those admitted RD. And one reason cited is that rich kids go to rich schools where they are more likely to have a large and savvy GC staff ready and willing to take kids by the hand and steer them into special opportunities. At poor schools no such luck. Rich kids are also a lot more likely to have college-educated parents who also are more plugged-n to the whole college admissssions game. Getting rid of EA just helps to even things out a little. It's still a lot better to be rich than poor, but every little bit helps.</p>

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<p>Hear, hear to what coureur says in post #159. Maybe a letter writer from New Jersey doesn't know this, but there are lots of smart young people all over the world (let's remember that Harvard admits from all over the world) who might find out about Harvard's availability and affordability by the hard deadline for applying for undergraduate admission, but who don't have parents or high school counselors who are both willing and able to help make an application by the early deadline possible. Putting every applicant to Harvard in the same batch for processing applications removes the applicant's ability to signal especially strong interest in Harvard, but puts all applicants in the same committee deliberations when Harvard crafts its class.</p>