Applications surge at colleges that scrapped early decision

January 16, 2008 03:33 PM Email| Comments (0)| Text size – +

By Linda K. Wertheimer, Globe Staff

In their first year without early admissions programs, Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Virginia received a record number of applications, a sign that their push to open up the competition for spots to more students may be working, admissions officials said.

Harvard, which said today that it has received 27,278 applications, reported the most dramatic jump -- a 19 percent increase, or 4,323 more applicants, compared with last year. Princeton, with 20,118 applicants, had a 6.2 percent increase, and the University of Virginia, with 18,900 applicants, had a 4.5 percent increase.

In fall 2006, with Harvard leading the way, the three highly selective schools announced their decision to scrap decades-old policies of allowing students to apply by November and get early acceptance before their regular January deadline. The switch to just one Jan. 1 deadline for the three schools went into effect with this year's applicants.

In making the change, the universities said they wanted to make admissions less stressful and more fair by eliminating the pressure to make a decision about a particular college so early. They also hoped to attract a more diverse group of applicants; the majority of the students in their early applicant pools tended to come from more affluent backgrounds.

"We are thrilled to see the response," said William R. Fitzsimmons, Harvard's dean of admissions and financial aid. "There were people who projected that we might have really hurt ourselves, that perhaps we'd see many fewer applications. Until you go out and do something like this, you simply don't know."

But Fitzsimmons and Princeton and Virginia admissions officers cautioned that they could not make final conclusions about the effect of eliminating early admissions policies, a move that they hope other schools will make. The number of applicants has been rising at many colleges around the nation because of an increase in the high school-age population, and Harvard this year also announced a new initiative that offered more financial aid to middle- and higher-income families. The universities also cannot analyze the economic diversity of their applicants until after February, when students apply for financial aid.

They need more than one year's data to figure out the full effect, said Janet Lavin Rappelye, Princeton's dean of admission.

"In three to five years, we'll be able to look back to see whether this works for us," Rappelye said. "The question will be, 'Are we admitting a more diverse pool of applicants, and are they coming?' "