Early Admissions Edge is Real
Note: This is being re-published for Ivy Bound students and parents. The content is still valid in 2012.
Published on Friday, February 14, 2003, in the Harvard Crimson
Written by DIVYA A. MANI, Crimson Staff Writer
What does half of every
Harvard class have in common?
Besides high test scores
and near-perfect grades, they also applied early - and got in -
according to "The Early Admissions Game," a new book co-authored by two
Harvard economists and and a former admissions officer from Wesleyan
University.
Selective colleges have
long argued that there is no formula or "big secret" in the quest for
the coveted letter of acceptance. But Kennedy School of Government
economists Christopher N. Avery ’88 and Richard J. Zeckhauser ’62 and
former Wesleyan admissions officer Andrew Fairbanks conclude in their
new book that applying early can give an applicant an admissions edge
equivalent to an increase of 100 points on the SAT.
In the context of an
increasingly cutthroat admissions climate, this conclusion is creating
ripples among admission officers and high school college counselors.
"Even in draft form, the
findings of the book - distilled in broad form - have had an effect on
the debate," says Zeckhauser, who is Frank P. Ramsey professor of
political economy. "They will even appear in this year's version of some
college guides."
Though he and his
co-writers had originally hypothesized that applying early did somehow
benefit an applicant, Avery, a professor of public policy, says that
they were "surprised by the magnitude of the advantage."
"We didn't have any grand
plan at the beginning," he says. "We kept deciding to become more
ambitious because the answers [to our initial questions] were so
interesting."
Avery says he became
interested in studying early admissions in 1996, when Princeton,
Stanford and Yale switched from a nonbinding Early Action (E.A.) policy
to Early Decision (E.D.), in which students promise to attend a school
in exchange for a December admissions decision.
"All of a sudden,
applicants had to be strategic about where to apply," says Avery, who
characterizes the book as answering two main questions about the early
admissions process. He and his co-writers say they wanted to determine
the size of the advantage conferred upon early applicants; they also
hoped to determine how much, if anything, potential applicants knew
about this advantage.
Applying E.A. boosts an
applicant's chances by 18.9 percent - the same amount that a 100-point
jump on the SATs would - according to the book's statistical analysis of
more than 500,000 actual admissions decisions. The effects of applying
E.D. are even more drastic, giving an applicant a 34.8 percent boost,
which corresponds to a 190-point SAT advantage.
These numbers acquire
increased significance in light of the authors' finding that "there was
considerable misunderstanding about how the system works," Zeckhauser
says.
This is particularly true
among students from less prominent schools or lower-income families, as
the authors' interviews with hundreds of current and former applicants
demonstrated.
"It was startling to me to
hear how different students from different backgrounds were in
sophistication," Avery says. "Students from public schools . . . really
didn't seem to know much about the process, even after getting into
Harvard."
Furthermore, the study
reveals that colleges play a significant part in the students' confusion
about early admissions.
"A number of colleges
dissembled about the way they chose students," Zeckhauser says. "For
example, a number that offered a significant edge to early applicants
denied that fact."
In their book, the authors
survey college guidebooks, guidance counselors and anecdotes picked up
within social networks, and find that such sources are often
contradictory and generally unhelpful. "The Early Admissions Game"
attempts to fill an informational void, detailing the true state of
early admissions policy and then dispensing advice to potential
applicants. Avery and Zeckhauser explain their numerical evidence using
principles of game theory. They go on to make recommendations as to how
students can understand and succeed in the game.
"We did want to raise the
level of sophistication and particularly to make it clear to all the
participants that colleges are adopting this policy of favoring early
applicants," Avery says.
Thus, the book includes an
advice chapter which consists of ten guidelines for early applicants to
assess their chances. The books also includes a "technical appendix"
which uses the data gathered for the book to create an "admissions
calculator."
"We wanted the book to be
rigorous, yet we wanted it to be accessible to a broad audience,"
Zeckhauser says. That audience includes college admissions
professionals. In the final chapter, the authors assess the likelihood
of various changes in the early admissions system.
"I think there is a good
chance for moderate change," says Zeckhauser, who predicts, for example,
that more colleges will mimic Yale and Stanford's recent switch to E.A.
Another moderate change
discussed in the book involves U.S. News and World Report's influential
college rankings, which favor colleges with early admissions programs by
giving significant weight to yield and selectivity.
An early admissions program
contributes to an increased volume of applicants to the college, thus
increasing the college's selectivity (the percentage of applicants who
are accepted). Early decision ensures that candidates accepted to a
college go on to matriculate, thus increasing the college's yield (the
percentage of accepted applicants who then attend). Thus, some observers
have suggested that U.S. News could mitigate the early admissions frenzy
by reducing the importance of these two measures or by omitting them
entirely.
More radically, others,
such as Richard R. Beeman, dean of the college of arts and sciences at
the University of Pennsylvania, have urged U.S. News to drop the ranking
system altogether.
But Avery says this is
unlikely. "It is so popular and so influential that, at least in the
short term, you'd think that everyone has to make their decisions with
the rankings system in mind," he says, adding that U.S. News has little
financial incentive to make any kind of change, given the popularity of
its college issue.
"There is little chance for
wholesale change," Zeckhauser says. "Many colleges would get rid of
binding early decision if others would do so as well, but each prefers
to keep binding decision for itself, whatever the other does," he says.
Collective action is not
only unlikely, but also legally problematic. "Given past antitrust
rulings, it would be hard for the colleges to get together and agree to
adhere to a common, less binding style," Zeckhauser says.
In spite of their hope that
"The Early Admissions Game" will lead to some kind of reform, they say
that they do not expect any significant changes in the current upward
trend of early applications.
"For better or worse, this
knowledge about how the system is really working will lead to more
people applying early," Avery says. "There's some possibility that there
will be a major change, but I don't know how."