<p>I’d have to say that I also disagree with the motives that Harvard used to justify its action. I cannot see how the erradication of Early Admission helps lower income students in any way. In fact, I just think it puts them at a disadvantage. It is certainly very easy to see how programs like Early Decision significantly impact applicants of lower income, since in ED the option to compare FinAid packages is nonexistent. Therefore, the ED option is out of the question for these students. However, I think that early action simply rewards students who have been diliigent about sending in their materials to the college of their choice, and serves as an effective tool to combat anxiety. Further, it is useful for college admission departments since it gives them the chance to somewhat spread out their applicant pool. </p>
<p>Getting rid of EA basically means one thing for everyone: More applications and more applications fees. Basically, if every kind of early admission is done away with, pretty much every kid that got in ED and several who got in EA or SCEA at a lot of schools will, from this day forth, be forced to apply to all the schools in his list. Given that about 20% of of admits accross universities are admitted EA, we’re talking about all of these kids applying to 12 schools… instead of that 1. So, now that we have more of these applications, we have another problem: plummeting yields. Suddenly, schools that could preserve their yield through ED will no longer be able to do so, and now we are in a situation in which admission rates HAVE to skyrocket, since every student now becomes a liability, since you have very little guarantee that he’ll attend your institution. Thus, waiting lists grow huge, and the aggony for thousands of HS seniors just intensifies. Which brings me to the point about this move actually hurting underprivileged students. With everyone going RD, every kid will be forced to apply to many more schools, since he 1) doesn’t have the option to applying to a couple to see how it turns out, and 2) so much will now be left up to waiting lists, and predicting your admission at a given school will be even harder. Moral of the story? Everyone will have to spend more money filling out apps and devoting time to endless applications.</p>