| It was announced a while back that Harvard, starting in 2007, will drop its early admissions policy. Essentially, students won't be able to apply in like October of their senior year and know by December whether they get into Harvard or not, and then agree to solely consider Harvard. So, jocks, you can stop thinking of joining that chess club in order to boost your extracurriculars because it probably won't matter that much.
Harvard is adopting this policy (and Princeton just followed suit) in order to give minority and/or low-income students a better chance, according to them. They didn't provide any statistics to show that this would improve the situation, but it would seeeeeeem like this would help; low-income students probably don't have the money to hire private tutors, join SAT classes, or buy expensive study materials. Also, if they're locked into one school early-on, they can't compare financial aid packages from other schools.
I don't remember my own experience too much. I think I applied for early admission to UPenn, but they dropped me like a bad habit. I then applied regular admission to some other schools and got wait-listed at one. Financial aid was important for me, so I can see how weighing your options is important. But, I didn't really see a frenzy with people trying to compete for early-admissions spots, which is the circumstance that Harvard is trying to address. I would think that with schools dropping their early admissions policies, it would maintain or even increase the competition for regular admission, because now the pool of applicants is that much larger. I think the real problem for incoming students is the SAT and just the cost of tuition alone. SATs are the worst indicator of potential college performance and tuition costs are really unbearable, even with financial aid.
But, why worry about all that stuff. Maybe in the future all schools will drop their early admissions policies, and that's good news for you seniors. So put down the books and do those keg stands, because now you'll be able to enjoy your senior year. Cheers to you! |
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