Harvard University Tuesday said it would end its decades-old early admissions program next year because the policy appeared to put low income and minority students at a disadvantage during the college entry process.
“We hope that doing away with early admission will improve the process and make it simpler and fairer,” Derek Bok, Harvard’s interim president, said in a statement.
Starting in 2008, the prestigious Ivy League school, which attracts thousands of applicants from the United States and the world for roughly 1,655 spots in its freshman class, will have Jan. 1 as a single application deadline for the class entering in the fall.
By delaying the move to next year, Harvard, a longtime leader in educational trends and policies, expects other colleges which have similar programs to follow suit.
In the early admissions process, students who submit their applications in the fall are often told by December whether they are accepted. Most college applications are not due until January.
Currently Harvard, the 370-year-old school ranked as America’s second best national university by U.S. News and World Report, accepts one third of its freshman class in December, months before most applicants are notified in April.
Other top schools have early admissions programs
Many other competitive schools have similar early admissions programs — including Harvard’s neighbor, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Princeton University, ranked the best university in the United States; Columbia and Brown. The programs were started years ago to try to bind some of the most promising applicants to one school.
At most universities, but not Harvard, students accepted in December have to make firm commitments to attend at that time, giving them less chance to review aid packages from other schools that might accept them later, Harvard officials said.
“Early admissions programs tend to advantage the advantaged,” Bok said, describing how the school’s 30-year-old policy favors certain applicants. “Students needing financial aid are disadvantaged by binding early decision programs that prevent them from comparing aid packages.”
Harvard’s ground-breaking decision on admissions comes at a time when the university is working hard to woo more students from low-income backgrounds. Bok’s predecessor, Lawrence Summers, launched a program where admitted students whose family income is less than $60,000 can study at Harvard for free.
Harvard is the richest university in the world, boasting an endowment of roughly $28 billion.
It is also one of the most expensive — tuition, room and board cost about $44,000 a year.
