Decision Denied

As leaves start to change color during these first official days of autumn, many high schools seniors have already begun applying to college. Unfortunately, both Brown and Princeton Universities are going out of their way to make the process more stressful than it has to be.

Contradicting recently changed national guidelines, Brown and Princeton continue to refuse to allow their Early Decision applicants to apply to other colleges’ non-binding early action programs. This puzzling choice provides very little benefit to Princeton and Brown, while reducing the options available to students. A strong, sensible system to enforce Early Decision commitments would be far preferable.

Last fall, the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) revised its policy on early programs, allowing students to simultaneously apply to Early Decision and Early Action. Under Early Decision, students make a binding commitment to the institution to which they apply, indicating that school to be their top choice and agreeing to enroll there if accepted. Early Action involves no such binding commitment—it is virtually the same as regular admissions, except of course that the decision is made earlier.

The new NACAC rules are a substantial step forward for high school students. With Princeton and Brown, Early Decision is a one-shot deal: if students apply there early and get rejected, they must wait until the regular admissions cycle to hear any responses—reducing their options and forcing them to compete with many more applicants. But if a student applies Early Decision to Brown and Early Action to Harvard, and is rejected at Brown but accepted to Harvard, then there is no conflict—the student and Harvard benefit, while Brown loses nothing.

Officials at Brown and Princeton said they wanted to maintain autonomy over their own application processes. This reasoning appears specious; both are members of NACAC and are thereby obliged to adhere to its admissions guidelines. It is more likely that Brown and Princeton are worried that students they accept Early Decision, but who are also accepted Early Action at another university, might enroll at the Early Action school and break their commitment to attend the Early Decision institution.

If this were true of most students accepted under Early Decision programs, Brown and Princeton might have a good justification for their action. But the vast majority of students do adhere to the Early Decision commitment, creating little problems for the two top-tier schools. Furthermore, if colleges created a comprehensive agreement where Early Action schools agreed not to enroll students who broke a binding commitment elsewhere, then the problem would be solved—and such a system is not beyond the realm of possibility. For a student to break an Early Decision commitment to attend another institution requires a substantial lack of integrity; the Early Action institution to which the applicant would be absconding should have no qualms about rescinding the admission of students who break commitments elsewhere. Ironically, by alienating themselves from NACAC, Princeton and Brown risk jeopardizing the type of collaborative open system that would allow them to enforce early decision acceptances.

The entire argument would be moot if Early Decision were dropped in favor of Early Action, which serves students rather than colleges. Early Action usually gives students a response before the regular admissions cycle starts, affording students additional information about their chances of acceptance to other institutions—not to mention in many cases the security of being already accepted to one school. But until then, Princeton and Brown are making a difficult process even more painful for high school students.