<p>*The problems with ending early admissions *
September 27, 2006
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer</p>
<p>Christopher Hooker-Haring</p>
<p>is dean of admission and financial aid at Muhlenberg College in Allentown</p>
<p>In conversations about college admissions, it is popular to reduce complex issues to simple answers. Such is certainly the case with early-admissions programs. Harvard and Princeton have spoken, the popular media have spoken, and now all of higher education is supposed to follow.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, what is lost in the rush for "reform" is this fact: Early-admissions programs are a student's one chance to communicate clearly and credibly his or her first-choice interest to a particular college. It's a direct communication duplicated nowhere else in the admissions process.</p>
<p>That might not matter to Harvard or Princeton. They may simply assume first-choice interest on the part of applicants - and they will be right most of the time. However, most of the rest of higher education enjoys neither Ivy League fame nor fortunes. In that other world, student interest is important, especially at a time when students are often applying regular decision to 12 or more colleges. For us, trying to judge yield on offers of admission has less to do with rankings and ratings than with institutional health and viability.</p>
<p>But what if all colleges dropped early programs? Who would benefit most? Harvard, Princeton and other institutions that could rely on the old prestige game as a primary driver of student decision-making. So in addition to the "public good" we are hearing so much about, institutional positioning is also at work here.</p>
<p>How would students fare in a "no-early" environment? If they couldn't signal a first choice, the system would become clogged with even more applications as students applied to multiple places, in many cases with minimal interest in actually attending those schools. As a result, many students truly interested in a certain college would be knocked out of the box. In other words, the admissions process would become less efficient, without making applicants less insecure. The biggest change would be moving all admissions decisions - and the accompanying anxiety attacks - to late spring.</p>
<p>In other words, the push to make things better for students could actually make things much worse. It would strip students of a voice regarding first choice, put off all admissions decisions until late in senior year, keep all students in the dark until late in the process, and clog the application pipeline with increasing numbers of low-interest applicants.</p>
<p>Early-admissions programs aren't perfect. No part of the admissions process is. But early programs can be responsive to student needs.</p>
<p>At Muhlenberg College, we've pushed early deadlines back to give students more time to think about the big first-choice decision, guaranteed that students will not be disadvantaged in financial aid if they go early, provided early financial-aid reads to families so they know before a deposit is required what kind of aid to expect, and actually counseled students to wait when an early decision seems inappropriate for them.</p>
<p>Perhaps ending early-admissions programs is the right thing for the most elite institutions. For the majority of schools, however, early admissions is an opportunity to balance multiple, often competing, priorities in a thoughtful, responsible way.</p>
<p>Contact Christopher Hooker-Haring at <a href="mailto:hookerh@muhlenberg.edu">hookerh@muhlenberg.edu</a></p>