Following the College’s decision to dismantle its early admissions program, current high school juniors, the first students who will apply under the unified system, say the change could prove costly by turning potential applicants away from Harvard and towards schools that maintain the program.

Those who apply early to schools generally enjoy a higher rate of admission, an advantage that those seeking entrance into Harvard’s Class of 2012 will not benefit from. For the Class of 2010, Harvard admitted 21 percent of its early applicants, but accepted only 9.3 percent of its regular applicants.

“I think that by deciding to take away the early admissions option, Harvard will in a way be reducing its appeal to some top tier applicants who are seeking security in knowing where they’re going,” Phillips Exeter Academy junior Conor P. Flynn said.

Not having the option to separate oneself into an early applicant group may make applying to Harvard more daunting.

“People who apply early admissions to Harvard are probably very qualified and very interested, and now that you’re putting all those people in the general pool, which is already wicked competitive, it is going to be that much more competitive,” said another junior at Exeter, Kevin S. Donohoe. “It might make me shy away from the school.”

Others fear that the larger applicant pool may elevate the importance of standardized testing.

“Its going to dehumanize the applicants,” said a junior at Annapolis’s The Key School, Colin B. Casey. “Before, because there were fewer people applying at a time, people who were reviewing applications could actually look into who the person was. Now students are just going to become a list of statistics.”

But a college adviser at The Key School, Paul M. Stoneham, said he does not believe Harvard will be hurt in the long run.

“There are enough wonderful minds that don’t get into Harvard,” Stoneham said. “The quality of the student body isn’t going to decline, if the numbers go down slightly,” he added.

But Stoneham said he does not believe that the numbers will decrease in the long run since he sees the elimination of early admissions as a trend that other schools will follow.

“Colleges are grinding their teeth about early programs. My assumption is since Harvard has made this move others will be emboldened to do the same,” he said.

—Staff writer Benjamin L. Weintraub can be reached at bweintr@fas.harvard.edu