Is early admission unfair?

Some counselors see early admission as a useful tool that helps students find out their fate early. It also lets colleges – particularly those who use the more binding form of early decision – gauge a student's enthusiasm and make an offer they know will be accepted.

"I think it's to a student's advantage to know where they stand earlier in the admissions cycle," says Steven Roy Goodman, an educational consultant in Washington. "It gives them more time to pivot and move if they're not admitted."

But others say it might not be feasible for those who need to compare financial-aid offers. The process should have "access, equity, and transparency," says Lloyd Thacker, founder of the Education Conservancy, which advocates admissions reform. "Early admission violates all three of those."

He's hoping that Harvard's decision will push other schools to follow – either in scrapping early admission entirely, or in looking at other ways they can make admissions more equitable. They might reevaluate how they use standardized tests, for example, or consider how to disengage from the college-ranking systems that emphasize quantifiable data like admissions rates.

"I think this raises a larger issue that all of us need to be thinking about: Can we get this process to be less stressful?" says Louis Hirsh, director of admissions at the University of Delaware. His school was the first to take this step. It got rid of early decision last year, for many of the same reasons, and Mr. Hirsh says that despite the few downsides – a higher admittance rate and not having part of the class locked in – it's been a great decision.

But it's unclear how many more will follow Delaware's and Harvard's lead, despite all the adulation. Some schools – lower-tier Ivies like Cornell or Brown, for instance – might see this as an opportunity to take students who would prefer to attend Harvard but aren't sure they can get in, says Richard Zeckhauser, a political economy professor at Harvard and coauthor of "The Early Admissions Game."

"It will put Harvard at a slight moral superiority and a slight competitive disadvantage," says Professor Zeckhauser. He'd like to see students have a way to signal interest – a star system, perhaps, in which they put a star on their top-choice application – without locking themselves in.

A few schools have already moved to deemphasize early admissions, but say they're unsure if they can get rid of it completely, given how important it's become in shaping the next class.

"I think some places will follow, but it will be interesting to see who does and who can," says Lee Coffin, dean of undergraduate admissions at Tufts University, which has begun selecting a smaller percentage of its students early. "To go from where we are to where we might be is going to take a lot of caution and planning."

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