Annabelle de St. MauriceYale University and Stanford University recently announced that they are ending their binding early-decision programs. These programs benefit schools more than students, and Washington University should end its program as well.
Binding early decision benefits colleges by allowing them to admit a number of students who are excited about going to that particular school and are not contemplating the merits of multiple universities. Students who apply early decision in the fall of their senior year of high school are obligated to attend that university if accepted.
It is unethical for the university to endorse a program which favors prospective students who come from backgrounds where parents and guidance counselors actively funnel them into early decision programs to increase their chances of admission. These students get an unfair advantage over other students who have to worry more about how much financial aid they will be receiving than their likelihood of getting in their first choice.
Nanette Tarbouni, WU director of admissions, said that WU stands by its early decision program. Most of the applications now sitting in South Brookings are from high school seniors who applied Early Decision I to WU. They will be notified of their admitted, wait-listed, or rejected status by Dec. 15. Often, students who apply early to their first choice, but are not admitted, use the Early Decision II option at WU. This option is also binding, but the deadline is January 1 for a Jan. 15 notification of admitted status. WU should end both Early Decision I and II programs.
As it stands now, the early-decision program is especially advantageous for a school such as WU, which suffers from a lower than desirable yield. (The “yield” is the percent of accepted students who matriculate.) Many of the students who apply to WU also apply to Ivy League universities, and when accepted, they go to New Haven or Providence instead of St. Louis.
According to a James Fallows of The Atlantic Monthly, WU is an example of a smaller private school-such as Brandeis, Connecticut College, Emory, Tufts, and Wesleyan-that uses the early decision option to “lock up their freshman class.”
Furthermore, a study done at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government found that applying early decision at a sample of 14 prestigious universities was equivalent to adding 100 points to one’s SAT score.
WU has many strategies for increasing the number of admitted students that choose to attend. Scholarship programs in all five undergraduate colleges lure high-achieving high school seniors. Binding early-decision programs do so, too. When WU accepts someone through the early-decision program, it can rest assured that its most recently admitted student is not going to run off to Harvard or Princeton.
Schools like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, which now offer non-binding early-admission programs, have much less incentive to offer a binding program. After all, these schools do not suffer from low yield. Harvard’s yield of admitted students that matriculate is 79 percent, leaps and bounds ahead of every other school in the nation, including WU.
Last December, Yale President Richard Levin sparked a national controversy when he decried the institution of early-decision. He can afford to put his money where his mouth is when criticizing binding early-decision programs. Yale does not need to worry about losing too many of its early-admitted students.
Can WU afford to end its early-decision programs? Regard-less of the potential drop in yield that could accompany abandoning binding early-decision, one thing remains clear: the program gives an unfair advantage to those students with more monetary resources. Only these students can apply to their top choice without worrying about the high cost of attending college.
Frequently, students choose not to apply early to college because they want to wait to hear from many schools so that they can weigh different financial aid packages. Students who apply early do not have that advantage. Though they can appeal for more aid, students admitted early too often have to take whatever financial package is given to them in December.
At WU and other universities, students admitted through early decision have peace of mind by winter break of their senior years. Those universities, too, have peace of mind because they knew that they have a large number of intelligent, motivated students as part of the next freshman class. Finally, the administrators have peace of mind because they know the early-decision programs make WU’s yield higher and raise WU in the national rankings.
Students without the resources to make an early-decision application practically are left waiting while privileged students know their status by December. WU must drop early-decision programs, which favor some students over others.