<p>I’ve posted this in other threads, but the discussion on this thread seems relevant: I think any form of early policy (ED or EA) should be abolished. (Of the two, EA looks like the lesser evil, but they’re both policies that adversely impact applicants.)</p>
<p>That article is from 10 years ago, but, as general inequity has really only increased of late, I’d be surprised if the issues noted in the article haven’t just grown over the past decade.</p>
<p>Yes, as much as they say ED candidates will get a fair financial aid package, there are still so many hidden costs in attending college that this may not matter. If you come from Georgia and can go to Georgia tech for free, there is already much less of an incentive to go out of state so ED would be very risky. Also, people in very poor urban and rural settings do not have access to the same kind of post high school guidance as wealthier applicants, thus they are less likely to apply ED. A ton of the ED admits are from well known prep schools. This is a way for Penn to get around being need blind. Private school admits are not more qualified than the public school admits but they are more likely to be full pay. Also, affirmative action does not make much sense in this case as it should apply to minorities who are from middle class or poor families (the purpose is to provide equal opportunity to those who have been disadvantaged, not to benefit people who have grown up privileged).
In the end it is not about how many spaces are still left, the socioeconomic distribution at Penn is already incredibly skewed as it is. When the total cost of attendance is higher than the median income of the average US family, I think there is something very wrong with the system.</p>
<p>Poeme has it correct. Going over 40% is too much. Penn can just defer more ED applicants and maintain legacy preference during RD for those who applied early and were deferred. Many families don’t want to sign an ED agreement for any institution.</p>
<p>But what you folks are raising are really systemic issues, and not Penn-specific. Unless most selective schools are willing to end their early admissions programs, it would be foolhardy for one of those schools (such as Penn) to unilaterally end its own early program. We saw what happened when Harvard–with the world’s largest endowment and perhaps the highest RD admissions yield in the country–eliminated its early admissions program along with Princeton and UVA: needless to say, their early admissions programs are back, and bigger than ever (although Princeton now uses EA in lieu of ED). In fact, Harvard now accepts 60% of its target class number through EA, and that’s WITH an overall admissions yield of close to 80% (the EA yield is undoubtedly even higher).</p>
<p>And this is not to make excuses for Penn’s ED program (not that I think it necessarily needs them) by pointing out that everyone else is doing it. But I think it’s unreasonable to expect Penn to unilaterally end or limit its ED program given the programs of its peers. And the question of whether 40%, 48%, or 54% of the entering class is admitted through ED is a bit irrelevant, in my opinion. More relevant are the percentages of enrolled students who are on financial aid and/or come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and those percentages have been steadily and significantly increasing (thanks in no small part to being a major priority of Amy Gutmann’s Penn Compact, and of fundraising efforts such as the Making History campaign).</p>
<p>All that being said, I think you guys DO raise valid points, and this is a healthy discussion to have. :)</p>
<p>The five Ivy ED schools and Duke should get together and talk about limits to ED. Ultimately, it’s beneficial to both the students and the institutions to cap ED. Penn was the first major institution to break the 50% of the entering class barrier. Duke and Columbia may decide to go over 50% next year as well.</p>
<p>^ Dartmouth is also relatively close to 50% (somewhere around the mid-40s, as I recall), and has one of the largest differences between its ED and RD acceptance rates.</p>
<p>I completely agree that this issue is systemic, and certainly not Penn-specific. What’s disappointing is that, over the past decade, many schools have grown even MORE reliant on ED, while I imagine the scholarship would show that the inequities inherent in this process have not decreased (and have probably only increased). Moreover, the very top schools (Harvard et al.) use restrictive Early Action, which is basically like ED at this point.</p>
<p>Broadly speaking, there are only about a dozen universities that are extremely selective (with an acceptance rate of ~10%) that tend to compete a lot with each other for students. These are: the 8 Ivy League colleges, Stanford, the University of Chicago, MIT, and Duke. I imagine if these 12 schools eliminated any early programs, the practice would soon end. For the short term, I don’t think schools very close to these 12 in selectivity (e.g. Northwestern, Wash U, Vandy) would benefit enough to threaten anything, and there’d be enough pressure on them (given the unfair nature of ED) to stop the practice as well. </p>
<p>A key step (and something I’ve been proclaiming on many threads) is to acknowledge the negative impact of ED, as has been shown by many studies, articles, etc. Some people tend to pooh-pooh it, and they shouldn’t.</p>