James M. Fallows ’70, whose 2001 Atlantic Monthly article “The Early Decision Racket” sparked much of the controversy over Early Decision, said he believed that the “trend of history” was moving against binding admissions.

“When the most prestigious schools say that this is something they don’t need, it may become seen as a tool of less prestigious schools,” he said. “There would be a shaming factor.”

But others suggested that it would be much more difficult for slightly less prestigious schools to abandon Early Decision, because their admissions yields would be likely to drop substantially.

“This is an incremental change,” said Stephen Singer, college counselor at the Horace Mann School in New York. “In and of itself, I don’t think it’s going to make a significant difference. But if it’s the first step in a series of steps that other institutions take, then you could look back on [these] decisions as being very pivotal.”

Yielding to Students

By exposing their early admits to the vagaries of the market, Yale and Stanford are opening themselves up to greater competitive pressures than they have faced in years, said Harvard Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67.

Three out of four students who get into both Yale and Harvard choose Harvard, according to Fitzsimmons.

“[Yale and Stanford] have done something that doesn’t appear to be in their institutional self interest,” Singer said, “and they’re willing to do it knowing that they may take some competitive hits. They should be applauded.”

Although Fitzsimmons said the changes might give Harvard access to more top candidates who previously would have been bound to attend Yale or Stanford, he lauded them for making decisions in the best interest of students.

“We lose [Early Action students] to them every year, now they will lose some to us,” he said. “But it’s a winning decision for students.”

The policy changes leave Princeton as the last of the four most selective schools to still have an Early Decision program. But Princeton’s Dean of Admissions Fred Hargadon said Princeton had no intention to change its policies. Moreover, he warned that the decisions might actually exacerbate the pressure on students by leading to additional growth in the total number of early applications.

“Absent any quid pro quo for seeking an early decision from colleges, I have no doubt that more and more students will be applying Early Action,” Hargadon wrote in an e-mail. “I don’t happen to think that’s a good idea, [but] I recognize that some colleges would simply welcome the resulting increase in their applications, regardless of how serious or well-thought-through such applications may be.”

Early Decision is attractive to colleges in part because locking in substantial portions of their applicant pool increases their yield, or ratio of admitted students to enrolled students, which factors prominently in the annual U.S. News & World Report college rankings.

Early Decision has also been criticized for privileging wealthy applicants who don’t need to compare financial aid offers from multiple colleges before making a decision.

Neither Stanford nor Yale mentioned this factor in their public statements, although Stanford Assistant Dean of Admission Marcela M. Muniz said that Stanford “considered how financial aid affects a student’s decision to consider other options within the whole scope of issues.”