TheOtherView
Opinions from around the country

Yale University announced last Wednesday that it will be abandoning its controversial early decision application system beginning with next year’s admission cycle. Stanford University went public with the same policy change in its own admissions office later the same day.

Early decision admissions is a program where graduating high school seniors are allowed to apply early to a single college or university and find out by mid-December whether they have been rejected, accepted or deferred until later. If accepted, students who apply through the early decision program are required to commit to attending the university they applied to. Other schools should follow Yale and Stanford’s decision.

Initially, Yale had intended to conference with all the Ivy League schools to discuss the possibility of having the entire Ivy League sack the early decision program at the same time. Yale scrapped that idea after hearing news that the justice department might view such a meeting as anti-competitive. Stanford had not been planning on publicly disclosing their policy change until a later date, but decided to follow suit after Yale’s announcement on Wednesday morning. Both schools are planning on replacing early decision with early action admissions, a similar process in which students apply early and hear back from the university by mid-December, but would not be bound to attend.

There are a number of reasons to commend this decision, and a number of reasons why other selective institutions would be right to follow suit. First, one impact of the decision will be much to the benefit of poorer students. Under the early decision program, when students were required to attend the first institution they apply to if they are accepted, their ability to get financial aid was hampered when they could not see what packages other schools might offer. Relieving the burden of early commitment opens up more possibilities in this regard.

The program, while working for the benefit of those students who quickly decide which college or university they want to attend, can be arduous for students who have not yet made up their minds about where to attend college, but who nevertheless want to start applying early. Without early decision programs, those students would be free to send in an early application and continue to investigate other options.

Without early decisions, students would be more encouraged to decide where to attend college based on the types of academic programs that a given university has, and not based on a strategy of applying early just to get into a reputable school. The quality of education at any school will be much greater to everyone involved if students are attending based on their academic interests and not on a sense of binding commitment.

This is a staff editorial from the Michigan Daily at the University of Michigan. This editorial was distributed by U-Wire.