Garden Street Gaffe

Harvard’s announcement last week that it would make its early admissions policy more restrictive—reverting to a version that had been abandoned several years ago—is deeply unsettling. For the last several years, students applying to Harvard’s non-binding early action program have been able to simultaneously apply to other universities under similar non-binding programs. But now, in what can only seem a petty move to lessen paperwork and ratchet up admissions yield by a sliver of a percent, Harvard will not allow its early-action applicants to apply elsewhere on the early schedule. While not entirely destroying the immense benefits of a non-binding early admissions program, Harvard is acting entirely counter to its spirit of flexibility and choice.

University President Lawrence H. Summers has said the newly restored policy “is far better for students.” But if this is really Summers’ motive for approving this change, both it and he are badly misguided.

In fact, the reinstated policy will be worse in all ways for incoming students. Under the new system, admits will have less time to make their choices about where to attend college. Rather than being able to consider multiple non-binding early acceptances between December and the May deadline, these students will only be able to seriously consider Harvard’s offer until regular admissions come through in April. Summers says that the old system “put extra pressure on students.” But it is difficult to see how compressing the four full months of careful consideration into a single manic month will ease that pressure in the least.

The argument from the admissions office is that the early application program was originally designed for a special group of students: those who are clear about their choice and have well-defined interests in this University. But if more restrictive programs—like the one Harvard is returning to—are beneficial, they only help the rich. Affluent students do not need the extra months to compare non-binding offers. When financial aid packages are not at issue, prospective students can spend a leisurely fall making decisions about which college to attend—since comparing price tags is not necessary for these students, neither are the months in which to do so.

But for students in more modest financial situations, multiple non-binding early acceptances can be a valuable tool in the search for an affordable education of the best quality. Once admitted early to several schools, students for whom money is tighter can compare and contrast the tentative need estimates they are provided—and potentially lobby for more financial assistance—long before packages come out in April. Under Harvard’s new policy, that will be impossible.

Whom, then, will this change help? Only the admissions office, which is acting, it seems, out of a selfish desire to move up a notch or two in meaningless college guides by improving its yield. But that yield is already astronomically high. This move bespeaks that most un-Harvard of qualities: insecurity. If Harvard is afraid that competitors like Yale and Stanford, both of which recently switched from binding to non-binding early admissions policies, will snatch up its best applicants, surely the answer is not to put a further stranglehold on those students. A school with our prestige can afford to allow prospective students the maximum in flexibility. Other schools may have to scrounge desperately lock in the students they invite to attend; we don’t need to handcuff our prefrosh to the right choice.

Some point out that single-application policies are de rigeur at other early action schools. But far more common are binding early decision programs, which Harvard has always shunned, and rightly so. What the admissions office apparently does not understand is that Harvard isn’t great because it follows the crowd. Harvard is great because of its unique quirks: its commitment to an accessible and liberal early admissions policy used to be one of them. Changes like this work actively to undermine Harvard’s position as a leader in sensible admissions policy, pitching us back to an outdated and elitist past we would all prefer to forget.