Early Admission Policies Losing Steam

"Five years ago there was a big push for early decision," said Linda Klemmer, a guidance counselor at Chapel Hill High School.

She said that today, guidance counselors only question a student's decision to apply to a binding program when a student has strong feelings about a specific school.

Much of the decline in the early decision trend is due to financial uncertainty, Klemmer said.

UNC dropped its early decision program this fall but still retains an early action program, similar to the one at Harvard University.

Marlyn McGrath Lewis, director of admissions at Harvard University, said the university uses an early action policy that does not require admitted students to attend.

UNC officials found that early decision was "not in the interests of students or families, ultimately," said Jerry Lucido, director of undergraduate admissions.

He said the program did not benefit the University because it tended to attract financially able and less diverse applicants -- only 18 percent of applicants were nonwhite.

"I don't feel that a person who applies early decision can be withheld to applying anywhere else early action," Lucido said.

More and more schools across the nation are also re-evaluating the early decision process.

Yale University President Richard Charles Levin recently announced a need to examine the early decision processes in the Ivy League. Other institutions such as Georgetown and Stanford universities already abandoned their early decision programs.

Princeton and Brown universities operate only one early admittance policy -- one that is binding.

Harvard's policy is nonbinding. "We've had early action for 25 years," said Lewis.

The overall attitude of Harvard's faculty is that they are opposed to a binding program, she said.

"Some of the most promising students would be thwarted off without some type of early application," Lewis said.

"The assembly feels pressure from larger membership who have cried out for a well-defined and consistent practice for early decision," said Mark Cannon, deputy executive director of the National Association for College Admission Counseling. "Members' frustrations lay over the confusion with terms over the early decision processes."

But Lewis said the issue of eliminating binding early admissions programs should not be a pressing concern because the system will inevitably change.

She said, "Don't waste too many brain cells on this. ... It's like hitting a moving target."

The State & National Editor can be reached at stntdesk@unc.edu.