The greatest number of students who could not accept Harvard’s early offer of admission because of an Early Decision commitment attended Yale, followed by Stanford—although one such takeaway was scored by the University of Indiana at Bloomington. Princeton did not allow its Early Decision candidates to apply early elsewhere.

Much of the enforcement for Early Decision agreements was undertaken by high schools, who could endanger their relationships with colleges if their students backed out of binding agreements. According to Stephen Singer, the college counselor at Horace Mann School in the Bronx, Horace Mann required students applying early to multiple colleges—and their parents—to sign a written promise to attend their Early Decision school if accepted. This agreement was included in their files, he said, and specified that if they tried to renege on their agreements, Horace Mann would call the relevant colleges and inform them of the situation.

“We intended to be as vigilant as humanly possible,” he said.

By reverting to its prior policy, Harvard’s rules now conflict with the definitions adopted by the National Association of College Admissions Counseling (NACAC) in September 2001, which prompted Harvard to try allowing its Early Action candidates to apply elsewhere Early Decision. NACAC’s written policies require that its member colleges conform to its definitions or risk expulsion from the organization.

But now that a number of leading institutions are disregarding NACAC’s rule allowing Early Decision applicants to also apply Early Action—Princeton, Brown, Yale, Stanford and now Harvard all limit their early candidates to one early application—NACAC has decided to delay enforcement until it can review its definition, according to Martin A. Wilder, NACAC vice president for admission, counseling and enrollment practices.

Bruce Breimer, the college counselor at New York’s Collegiate School, said it was not surprising that NACAC would back down after facing resistance from its most influential members.

“Harvard was trying to be a good team player, but NACAC doesn’t have the stature that a misplaced guideline should induce colleges to do things they don’t want to do,” he said. “NACAC is a well-intentioned bureaucratic organization that has never shown the kind of leadership that would give it that kind of standing.”

Harvard’s return to its old policy aligns it with Yale and Stanford, who announced this fall they would end their binding Early Decision programs and offer Early Action next fall—and like Harvard, they will not allow their early candidates to file other early applications.

Last year, Harvard was the only college among the nation’s four most selective institutions to offer Early Action, but after the shifts by Yale and Stanford, only Princeton still requires early applicants to enroll.

Wilder said this might represent an emerging consensus on early admissions policy among the most selective schools.

“It may be moving in the direction [of consensus],” he said, “but only of a very small, extremely selective group of schools.”

But Breimer said he thought it was unlikely that the nation’s elite schools would offer the same early admissions policy in the near future.

“There’s no move towards unanimity or uniformity,” he said. “Early Decision has worked well for Princeton. Is this the start of some sort of uniform policy? I doubt it.”

Princeton’s outgoing Dean of Admission, Fred Hargadon, has traditionally been a devoted supporter of Early Decision. Breimer said his successor would likely take two years before deciding whether to change Princeton’s policy in order to see how Yale and Stanford’s moves to Early Action affected their yields, or the proportion of accepted students who attend.

—Staff writer Dan Rosenheck can be reached at rosenhec@fas.harvard.edu.