For Harvard and Princeton, early admissions will remain in effect for fall 2006, but will no longer be an option for the class entering in 2008. Students will not be able to apply for early admissions beginning in the fall of 2007 and all applications thereafter will be due by January 1st. Harvard and Princeton are the first Ivy League schools to cut early admissions programs, directly affecting potential students and other universities that give high school seniors the ability to apply in the fall and receive a decision from admissions by mid-December. All students that apply to Harvard and Princeton will now be evaluated from the same pool of applicants and notified of their acceptance in the spring. The University of Virginia has also recently abolished early admissions practices. All three schools believe this will benefit low income students who rarely apply for early admissions.

Schools have argued that early admissions programs discriminate against disadvantaged students and gives extra advantage to the already advantaged. Poorer families will not risk committing to one school until they see what kind of financial aid they are eligible for. Guidance counselors for these students are usually inadequate and have more students to counsel than the more affluent high schools. Studies of the top 14 elite colleges have shown that the majority of students that apply for early admissions do not need financial aid. Harvard has also taken additional steps to make itself more accessible to poor and working-class students, such as not requiring families with an income below $60,000 a year to pay for their child’s education.

Yale, MIT, Stanford, and the University of Pennsylvania currently have no intentions of stopping their early admissions practices. Likewise, state universities are unlikely to stop early admissions because they depend on knowing how many students will attend in the fall to calculate class size for the upcoming year. Tufts University is still deciding whether it will follow in Harvard and Princeton’s footsteps. Tufts cut back on its early admissions program two years ago, from accepting forty percent of applications to a third. Tufts also admits to accepting too many students during early admissions, when more compelling students have applied during regular admissions in the spring.

According to Vicki Wood, PowerScore SAT Admissions Counselor and Course Developer, “Anything that levels the playing field is an improvement. The elimination of early admissions programs will benefit applicants who were previously unaware of the program, such as students from low-income schools or from schools with inadequate guidance programs. Their applications will be judged in the same time frame as the applications of students from more affluent districts and schools, rather than after one-third of the admissions openings are filled by early applicants. If early admissions truly does not give applicants an advantage, then they should still be accepted during regular admissions. On the downside, students who planned to use early admissions to prove their allegiance to a particular college or university will have to find new ways to show their sincerity and passion.” For students applying to these schools as graduate students, “It’s tough to predict what effect, if any, this might have on admissions policies for graduate level programs,” states Steve Stein, PowerScore LSAT and GMAT Instructor, Admissions Counselor and Course Developer.

The consensus among the top universities is that eliminating early admissions programs will benefit low income students, but add anxiety for students that have to wait to apply and receive a response from their school of choice. In the Harvard University Gazette, the Harvard interim President, Derek Bok states, “We hope that doing away with early admission will improve the process and make it simpler and fairer.”

PowerScore Instructors and Admissions Counselors are available to assist students applying for entry into the College or Graduate School of their choice. PowerScore has gathered a team of admissions experts—including former college admissions board members, college instructors, and students from top ten colleges and graduate schools—to address students’ admissions counseling and admissions essay needs. Our admissions experts can help students address weaknesses in their application such as a low GPA or SAT, GRE, GMAT, or LSAT score, inconsistent grade performance, and disciplinary violations. Our counselors will develop a plan tailored to students needs in order to provide them with the best possible application.

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