Big-name schools tell early birds to wait
Until this fall, students hoping to attend the University of North Carolina could take advantage of an open secret to successful college admissions: Applying early was largely seen as a way to sneak in before having to compete with the hordes of applicants who send essays and references in the spring.
In what many saw as a major gamble, UNC last year became the first prominent institution to announce it was dumping its "binding early decision" program - which legally bound early applicants to attend if they were accepted. Officials said the practice contributed to an admissions "frenzy" that favored wealthy white kids.
Early admissions has been a topic of discussion in higher-education circles for a number of years, and experts say that announcements from two elite schools last week suggest that a monumental shift is on the way.
Following their Nov. 1 deadline for early applications, both Yale University on the East Coast and Stanford University on the West Coast said that they, too, were ending their binding early-decision programs.
The decisions could make the system more egalitarian and temper the mania over who gets to go to which school.
"It's a very brave first step," says Seppy Basili, coauthor of "The Unofficial, Unbiased, Insider's Guide to the 320 Most Interesting Colleges." "The pressure now will be tremendous on Princeton and Brown, with Duke, Dartmouth, Columbia, and Penn also feeling tremendous pressure to follow suit."
Some students who'd had their hearts set on Yale or Stanford say that early-decision programs made sense - and gave them a slight advantage over those who applied in the last semester of their senior year.
But the programs also caused havoc for families who weren't sure they could afford their child's top choice. The result: By and large, it was the savviest, most financially secure students who applied early. Students who needed financial aid often waited for the regular admissions deadlines so they would have a chance to explore the aid packages at various schools.
Like many schools, UNC had been experimenting for over 20 years with the power of early admissions to attract applicants - ever since the baby boomers started graduating from college and leaving classrooms empty. But today, the "baby boomlets" are crushing into colleges, creating one of the most competitive admissions scenarios the country has ever seen.
The most recent program at UNC came into effect only four years ago, and attempted to address the major concerns about early-decision policies that were by then circulating in the admissions community. That program limited the total early enrollment to 20 percent of acceptances, made it easier for students to get out of the agreement for financial reasons, and ensured that admissions standards were the same for both early and regular applicants.
But last year, UNC admissions officials admitted that, overall, their pool of early applicants was not as qualified as the regular pool. That could mean only one thing: Students were using early admissions as a strategy to apply to "reach schools."
In addition, 82 percent of early applicants were upper-class whites, while only 62 percent of the regular applicant pool fit that description, says Jerry Lucido, the admissions director at UNC.
"We can certainly defend having an early-decision program, but, in the end, it's not helping us get a more talented, more diverse student body, and in the process we are contributing to a national frenzy about how to play the admissions game," Mr. Lucido says.
For colleges, the advantage of a binding early decision program is that it allows them to maximize "yield" - the percentage of accepted applicants who actually end up attending the school. At the same time, it helps round out the next freshman class seven months in advance, making for a less pressed admissions office come springtime.
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