The policy change at Harvard, Brown and Georgetown that allows high school seniors to apply early action at more than one school appears to have boosted the number of early applications at all three universities.

Compared to the Class of 2003, Harvard's number of early action applicants jumped by 31.8 percent. The Brown Daily Herald reports that Brown experienced a 58 percent overall increase in applicants. According to Georgetown's Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Charles Deacon, 46 percent more students have applied early to Georgetown.

Deacon attributed the increase to the recent policy change. He said Harvard's change in particular was important "because people feel the need to apply early since [Harvard] takes so many students early. There's no question there has been an influence."

Michael Goldberg, Brown's Director of Admissions, has a similar opinion.

"Our changing [the policy] along with Harvard and Georgetown has to have had the major impact on this change" in the number of early applicants, he said.

Goldberg said the full impact of the change will not be known immediately.

"Either it will be a strategy for sophisticated, suburban kids or real diversity will increase," he said.

One college counseling director at a high school, Dawn Cobb of the Polytechnic School in Pasadena, California, disagrees with the change in admissions procedures.