<p>BB, I am happy to agree to disagree with you! </p>
<p>It should be obvious that Harvard adopts policies that benefit its admissions. Do you know many schools that have a different agenda? </p>
<p>There is, however, a pretty important distinction from other schools. Harvard pretty much CAN afford to do what it wants in terms of admissions and its decisions always have a profound impact on their peers as well as schools that are shaken by the domino effect. If you want an illustration, take a look at the huge waitlists that were used at schools such as Duke when Harvard went RD only. Take a look at schools that had to rely MORE than ever on the combination of ED and waitlist crutches to maintain their enrollment yields in the ballpark. And, fwiw, take a look at the changes in yield among H’s direct competitors! </p>
<p>Fwiw, I believe that you are missing the mark on the “losses” of development admits at Harvard. A development case who needs to wait for a admission decision at the same time than common mortals do … really need to spend a few bucks on a competent advisor. </p>
<p>Harvard is not for everyone, but is there any doubt that they could fill their freshman class several times over, especially with full pay and “lower” developmental admits. The same with recruited athletes! The same with minorities!</p>
<p>Harvard will continue to adopt the admission policies that serve it the best. And why should Harvard do anything different? That is the prerogative of the absolute leader.</p>
<p>xiggi, I agree and that’s exactly what I have been saying. It is in Harvard’s interest to offer EA. (And it was in their interest to drop EA four years ago. But IMO, that ‘interest’ was pure politics/spin – remember the Congressional calls for an investigation of H’s endowment?( Dropping EA had nothing to do with low income and/or minority students – there was no statistical basis for it. And you even acknowledge that H could fill its class several times over with all the students that it wants, including minorities. </p>
<p>Where we might disagree is on the benefits that Harvard gains by going back to EA.</p>
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<p>I have trouble following the logic that H dropped EA because it disadvantaged the URMs that it wanted and now is going back to EA because H is losing the URMs that it wants. Can’t be both, unless the multi-verse is true. :)</p>
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<p>Not meant to be. Fill free to add P & UVa to the discussion. At least, UVa admitted their folly, er mistake. (After dropping ED, the number of poor kids who matriculated to Charlottesville increased by a total of eight (8) students.)</p>
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<li><p>That may be true of “early action” programs as opposed to “early decision” programs. I believe there is a ton of data on how ED (which is far more common) disadvantages less affluent applicants. Not that I have it at my fingertips. And if you recall, Princeton and UVa had ED programs, not EA, when they decided to shut down their early admissions programs in 2006. There may not have been any data on the pernicious effect of Harvard’s SCEA program then, but Harvard/Princeton/UVa were trying to get everyone to shut down early admissions, not just EA colleges.</p></li>
<li><p>But, really, it’s obviously not true of Harvard’s SCEA program, either. There may be no public data, but Harvard itself no doubt has all the data it wants about its admissions programs. If Harvard said that its old SCEA program drew disproportionately white and affluent applicants, it almost certainly had the data to back that up.</p></li>
<li><p>I know that the University of Chicago looked at its EA program after Harvard and Princeton did what they did in 2006. At the time, Michael Behnke, the Dean of College Enrollment, said their EA applicant pool and EA admittee pool were both slightly less affluent and slightly less white than their RD pool. Presumably other colleges could tell the same thing, most importantly Yale and Stanford. Since both of us thought Harvard was going off half-cocked in 2006, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if within a few years the data would show that EA (as opposed to ED) didn’t discourage minority or economically disadvantaged applicants.</p></li>
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<p>So then, why did Harvard drop SCEA four years ago? What were they seeing and thinking at the time?
(since they were saying something that makes no sense if what they are saying about not having it is true…)</p>
<p>I commented on this a few days ago. The reality is that there is very little “data” on this subject. Except for the research by Avery (at Harvard) and a few others such as Hoxvy or Levin, what you find is mostly speculation and a faulty “common sense.” </p>
<p>Another reality is that the truly disavantaged could find plenty of benefits in early admissions. With the addition of the nebulous language in the Common Application, the ED has become a toothless and rather benign proposal. Students with low EFC do not need to fear the ED process. With the advent of far reaching financial aid policies, the stack of ammunition used by ED-haters imploded like a deck of card. </p>
<p>Where is the discrimination when early policies are supposed to be for students with lower qualifications? In the end, the biggest discrimination stems from BAD ADVICE or lack of accurate advice, including the ad nauseam repetition that ED hurts the poor.</p>
<p>As far as differences between EA and ED, take a closer look at the policies of MIT versus Princeton versus Stanford. Add Chicago and Georgetown to the mix. Best of luck in finding that EA schools are more generous than SCEA or ED schools!</p>
<p>To emphasize: The person who was president of Harvard that year had just written a book about how awful early admissions programs were. With the former president of Princeton. And Princeton had an ED program that almost certainly was bad from this standpoint. And everyone admits that there was a lot of confusion (and there still is) about EA vs. ED, so it’s possible, likely even, that both (a) Harvard’s data showed that its EA program advantaged affluent whites, and (b) the advantage was evanescent, and could be addressed by better marketing to non-white, non-affluent students.</p>
<p>I’m not the world’s biggest Harvard fan or anything. I just hate the conspiracy-theory strain on CC whereby everything a college does is part of some plot to increase its yield 0.3%. Especially as applied to Harvard, that’s just silly. Ending SCEA in 2006 may well have been wrongheaded – I thought it was – but the decision was thoroughly and believably explained at the time. Lots of times, when large institutions do things, it’s for the reasons they say.</p>
<p>And even if it were true that they want to increase their yield, I don’t see anything wrong there either as long as there is no data to proof that it would hurt any particular group.</p>
<p>That is somehat true. What Bok and Bowen were forced to admit is that the early admissions DID offer advantages over regular admissions. They did it by acknowledging the research of AFZ. They also hightlighted that less advantaged students suffered from a lack of knowledge about the BENEFITS of the early programs, and were discouraged by well-meaning but incompetent counselors who focused on the financial aid pitfalls … mostly in error. </p>
<p>Looking back at the Kerry-esque flip-flopping by HP on early admissions, one ought to wonder about the REAL sources of “discomfort.” The real question should not be to adopt SCEA versus RD, but to address the systemic issues that prompt certain SES group to forego an application at schools such as Harvard. The format of the application should not be as important as the marketing associated with the entire process, including admitting that early admissions are indeed beneficial to almost everyone. </p>
<p>Without dedicated efforts, does anyone truly believe that the poorest would fare better in RD than in EA/ED? Is it really easier to emerge from a pool of over 30,000 than from one several times smaller? And one that HAS lower qualifications! </p>
<p>The conclusion that should jump at anyone who makes an effort to ignore the white noise is that early admissions should be beneficial to all groups, provided the information about the programs is presented universally and that until this happens specific efforts would be made to bury the false and alarmist voices of misinformation.</p>
<p>Abandoning EA was not a solution; it only appeared to be one. The real problem was not addressed by dropping EA.</p>
<p>I get confused when we talk about the “poor.” I don’t know if we’re really talking about the poor, or if we are using a codeword for URMs. In either case, I’m not fully convinced that there are plenty of kids in those categories with the kind of stats Harvard would prefer to have in its incoming class. Harvard wants diversity, but it will only sacrifice stats a certain amount to get it. Really high-stats URMs (and probably truly poor kids who are high-stats of any race) are thin enough on the ground that top colleges compete to get them. Not having early admissions while your direct competitors have it may well put a school at a disadvantage in this competition.</p>
<p>There are probably more than an insignificant number of URM recruited athletes who, (like many non-URM-athletes) do not “get” the likely letter admissions process, and would much prefer to have an acceptance in hand in December rather than wait for that letter in April when all of their colleagues signed an NLI months before, and other college’s teams are already filled.</p>
<p>I’m not surprised ED at Brown went up. In our neck of the woods, every year more and more kids are applying early. It’s up to more than half in many schools. I think it was about 1/3 at ours a few years ago. The head GC always explains it and encourages thinking about using EA or ED in his big talk to junior parents about college admissions.</p>
<p>I have a memory trace of when the whole decision went down by H and P to drop SCEA. The rhetoric from both schools, as I pretty vividly recall, was that it was felt that the whole early process disadvantaged disadvantaged kids who were less likely to be in high schools with the types of guidance counselors who would give them the support in putting together early applications. They also said it was unlikely these kids were in families where the parents would have the time and know how to dig into the details of the various early flavors (EA, SCEA, ED). The thinking was that it was a knowledge gap, not just for the kids but for their families and schools.</p>
<p>These schools truly do take their social responsibility seriously, at least in the area of admissions.</p>
<p>I’m glad they put it back. In time for my DD to use.</p>
<p>“the whole early process disadvantaged disadvantaged kids who were less likely to be in high schools with the types of guidance counselors who would give them the support in putting together early applications. They also said it was unlikely these kids were in families where the parents would have the time and know how to dig into the details of the various early flavors (EA, SCEA, ED). The thinking was that it was a knowledge gap, not just for the kids but for their families and schools.”</p>
<p>that’s exactly as I remember it as well- DS was applying to college when those changes occurred.</p>
<p>Well, what about all the hoopla these days about how ED contracts can be easily broken after comparing FA packages??? Is this a new trend or not? If so, are the teeth being taken out of ED? Or is this a good way to broaden participation in ED?</p>
<p>It is intriguing to wonder if the size of the endowments and the Federal funding are issues that the Ivies worry about and try to mollify with their admissions and FA policies, trying to truly attract a diverse student body with an “equal opportunity” approach.</p>
<p>I also wonder how much an in-roads Questbridge has made percentage-wise in the Early numbers…</p>
<p>"Well, what about all the hoopla these days about how ED contracts can be easily broken after comparing FA packages??? "
I think that hoopla is one of the reasons that colleges are now required to have FA calculators on their webpages- so students and families aren’t guessing or are left in the dark until a ED acceptance and FA package actually arrives, and only then they realize they cant afford that college. Breaking ED agreements does no one any good, and colleges finally realized that. Better for all to have an accurate idea of the “bottom line” before applying ED.</p>
<p>Isn’t UChicago ranked 5th this year and why would your fellow parents in that ethnic group think that lower ranked Ivies are better? Perhaps they don’t pay attention to rankings.</p>
<p>Unless I have missed something, ED packages cannot "“easily be broken after comparing financial aid packages”. They can be broken easily BEFORE comparing financial aid packages. Basically, when kids get accepted ED they generally have 3-4 weeks in which to accept the “binding” offer of admission. As a practical matter, kids can decline the offer for any reason at all, but it is explicit that they can decline it because they are not satisfied with the financial aid offer. (And I think it’s clear that no one is going to question a family’s judgment that the financial aid offered is not adequate.)</p>
<p>What you CAN’T do, however, is hold onto the ED acceptance and keep other applications alive, waiting for further acceptances and financial aid offers. Students may have gotten rolling admissions acceptances and financial aid offers before the ED acceptance, and I suppose one could come during the 3-4 week window. And acceptees can always try to negotiate a better offer from the college. But the basic deal with ED is that you can’t wait the months necessary to compare financial aid offers fully, and if you turn the offer down you can’t revive it later if other financial aid offers are also disappointing. And most ED applicants have done enough homework in advance so that the number who decline ED offers is truly minimal. It turns out that people generally aren’t willing to say goodbye to a dream school in the hand because of potential financial aid in the bush.</p>