Farewell, Early Decision

Stanford Admissions officers could tell that the pressure was getting worse.

“We’re out there on the road, and we hear a lot,” says Robin Mamlet, dean of undergraduate admission and financial aid. “So many students think that if they don’t apply early somewhere, they’re not going to get into college. So this is one good-faith move that we hope will calm things down a bit.”

Mamlet is referring to the University’s headline-making November decision to change its early-admission program. The new policy, which will take effect this fall, will give students more time to decide on their school of choice.

Under Stanford’s previous, binding early-decision program, prospective freshmen applied by November 1 and were notified of their status by mid-December. They could apply early only to Stanford, and they had to promise to attend the University if accepted. Under the new, nonbinding early-action program, students still will apply early—to Stanford only—and be notified of their acceptance early. But they will have until May 1 to commit to attend, and they may apply to any number of schools under regular-decision timelines.

“I think there are a fair number of talented 17-year-olds who know what their first choice is, but there are far more, who are every bit as bright, who don’t know,” Mamlet says. “And we’re worried about those who don’t know. We at Stanford need to take some responsibility for the effect of our admission policies on the lives of talented high school students nationally.”

Even those who’ve identified a first-choice school may find themselves struggling with the question of whether to apply early. “There were many colleges that I really liked and where I knew I would be happy,” says freshman Stephanie Sud, who was admitted early decision. “I waited about as long as I possibly could before I checked the box on my application for early decision. I finally decided that if I were admitted, there was no way I could possibly regret it.”

Early decision has become increasingly popular with students who think it boosts their chances of acceptance at an elite school because the applicant pool is smaller than during the regular admission period. Many colleges, including Stanford, admit a greater percentage of applicants from their early-decision pool than from their regular-decision pool, and some—like Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania—admit more than 40 percent of their freshmen class early. (Stanford admits about 25 percent.)

As these programs have drawn more applicants, they also have attracted more fire. Critics say early decision favors privileged students who have college-educated parents and counselors to help them understand the process, and who do not need to compare financial-aid offers from multiple schools. Some observers also say early decision gives the most competitive colleges an unfair ability to lock in the nation’s brightest students by limiting their options.

Mamlet thinks some of the debate was whipped up by an article in the September 2001 Atlantic Monthly by former editor James Fallows. “It panned early decision as bad for kids and helpful to institutions,” Mamlet says. “So, at the time that we are asking students to be honest about who they are and what they care about and what they value in their admission applications, you have this dynamic where they’re thinking, ‘But I can’t trust you not to hurt me.’ ”

Then came the demon-wrestling of Yale president Richard C. Levin. In December 2001, Levin, ’68, publicly criticized early-decision programs, and in the spring he asked antitrust officials at the U.S. Department of Justice for permission to talk about the issue with his colleagues at other prestigious universities. He did not receive a definitive response, and on November 6 he announced that Yale would replace its binding early-decision program with early-action admission. Six hours later, Stanford announced that it had independently reached the same decision.

President John Hennessy, provost John Etchemendy, PhD ’82, and Mamlet had been discussing concerns about early decision for some time. They were considering making a change after the November 1 deadline passed, and the Yale announcement prompted an on-the-spot decision.

Mamlet was host that day to 170 high school counselors, who had come to learn about Stanford’s admission process and how they could help teachers write letters of recommendation. As she was finishing her remarks at the breakfast session, media calls started pouring in—from the Associated Press, the New York Times, Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle. “My first reaction was to think, ‘No, [the counselors have] come to spend the day at Stanford, and I can’t leave,’ ” Mamlet recalls. “But then I realized I had to go back to my office, and that’s when President Hennessy called and said, ‘This is where we were going—be bold.’ ”

But in stating that students who select the early-action option can apply early only to Stanford, the new policy violates rules set last spring by the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC). Those guidelines stipulate that students be able to apply to as many early-admission programs as they want. “We really wanted to support the professional thinking,” says Mamlet, who has chaired NACAC committees in the past. “However, we don’t believe that rule is in the best service of students. We don’t want to take away altogether an early option, because we believe that’s an appropriate vehicle for students. But we can’t have early action at Stanford without it being single choice, because we don’t have the staff. If there’s no disincentive to apply early, then our application numbers are going to skyrocket, and that means we have six weeks to make decisions on all of these candidates.”

It’s possible that Stanford’s and Yale’s moves will have national impact. Already, NACAC has asked Mamlet to write a paper explaining Stanford’s thinking. “They genuinely want to know why we made the decision we did,” she says, “and then they’ll look at their policies.”

What's the Difference?

With their November 6 announcements, Stanford and Yale have created a hybrid—less restrictive than early decision, less permissive than early action—that some are calling “single-choice early action.” The differences between the early programs: