University President Drew G. Faust said in a statement yesterday that the return of early action is now “consistent with our bedrock commitment to access, affordability, and excellence.”

Princeton President Shirley M. Tilghman also said in a statement that she believes that renewing early admissions will allow her school to better recruit students from underrepresented groups.

“By reinstating an early program, we hope we can achieve two goals: provide opportunities for early application for students who know that Princeton is their first choice, while at the same time sustaining and even enhancing the progress we have made in recent years in diversifying our applicant pool,” she said.

Fitzsimmons noted that applicants will gain no additional favor for choosing to apply in the early round rather than the regular cycle.

NO WORM FOR THE EARLY BIRD

When Harvard announced the elimination of early action in 2006, University officials hailed the move as a progressive step that would both help Harvard recruit students from underrepresented groups and ease the stress of the admissions process for students of all backgrounds.

Fitzsimmons told The Crimson in 2006 that the removal of early admission was “certainly a win for students in the bottom quarter and bottom half of the income distribution.”

At the time, the University argued that low-income students were hindered from participating in early admissions programs since they needed to apply to many schools in order to compare financial aid offers from multiple institutions.

In addition, Harvard administrators said that wealthier students had greater access to the resources needed to put together a successful college application by the Nov. 1 early action deadline.

“Early admission programs tend to advantage the advantaged,” then-Interim University President Derek C. Bok said in a statement. “Students from more sophisticated backgrounds and affluent high schools often apply early to increase their chances of admission, while minority students and students from rural areas, other countries, and high schools with fewer resources miss out.”

At the time of the announcement, Harvard administrators said that they hoped that many top universities would follow in Harvard’s footsteps, but only Virginia and Princeton did away with their early decision programs.

Some experts said that while the prestige of schools like Harvard and Princeton allowed them to eliminate early admission, other schools could not do so without significantly damaging the quality of their applicant pools.

“Other schools can’t afford to do away with early,” Amy Sack, president of admissions consulting company Admissions: Accomplished, said in an interview with The Crimson yesterday. “An early plan is very important to some schools, though it’s not maybe to schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Stanford,” which high-caliber high school seniors will apply to regardless of their application deadlines.

Despite the fact that only two schools mimicked Harvard’s policy during the past five years, independent Conn. college counselor Gay S. Pepper said she believes that Harvard changed the admissions climate for the better by temporarily eschewing early admissions.

“It sent a real shock wave. A lot of colleges realized that early decision wasn’t benefiting the students. Many colleges started [non-binding] early action programs instead,” Pepper said. “It was a very daring move.”