princeton vs. yale

PtonGrad2000
Sat, 29 Apr 2006 14:13:22 +0000

Well, Byerly. Feeling a little sensitive lately? Actually, that is exactly how these events happened. After Princeton publicly stated its intention (and reasons) for switching to early decision, Yale’s then Dean of Admissions Shaw (who has since become Stanford’s admissions dean) requested a copy of the paper that had been written by Fred Hargadon at Princeton. Fred sent it very willingly to Yale and Shaw made the decision not long after that to make the switch as well.

As Hargadon has written, (excerpted from his response to Karabel printed in a recent issue of the Princeton Alumni Weekly):

“As far as Early Decision vs. Early Action admissions programs are concerned, my suggesting that Princeton should change from the latter to the former had absolutely nothing to do with “competition” with other schools, improving yield, attempting to appear more selective, or any other ulterior motive attributed by Mr. Karabel, albeit his imaginings are very similar to the opinions of other critics that have appeared in the media from time to time over the years. No, I had simply reached the conclusion that Early Action didn’t make sense to me for Princeton.

“For my first 20 years as an admissions dean (five at Swarthmore and 15 at Stanford), we had no early admission program of any kind. In fact, the only time I was aware of such programs in the Ivies would be when a Stanford applicant who had received a positive early nod from one or another Ivy would send a letter to that effect for inclusion in his or her Stanford application, presumably in an effort to impress us and maybe improve his or her chances for admission to Stanford. Of course, when I arrived at Princeton, an Early Action program was already in place. Well, after a few years of stopping everything on Nov. 1 to devote all of our time to reading and evaluating and making decisions on early applicants in time to let them know of our decisions the first week in December, I questioned the rationale for such a program. I asked myself why the admissions staff should drop everything on Nov. 1 to read and evaluate and make decisions on one group of applicants, so that they could be notified of our decisions a mere five weeks after the deadline for submitting their applications, those being offered admission then being given four and a half months to let us know whether they’d be enrolling or not, while the bulk of our applicants would not learn of our decisions until at least three months after the deadline for submitting their applications, those of that group being offered admissions then given about three weeks in which to let us know whether they’d be enrolling or not.

[…] I also suggested some additional positive effects of an Early Decision program. One would be that of reducing the multiple application pipeline, since those admitted ED would be withdrawing any applications they may have already submitted to other colleges and/or not submitting any other applications at all. In other words, if we admitted 500 students ED, that would reduce the multiple application pipeline by anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 applications, assuming applicants at that time were filing, on average, anywhere from four to six applications (an average that has jumped considerably in recent years, in part because of how easy it’s become to apply to a larger number of colleges by using the Common Application). And if one further added the number of ED admits of the group of similar colleges with such programs, the number of applications by which the multiple application pipeline would be reduced would not be insignificant. I also suggested that it was even likely that a school like Princeton having an ED program might make life better for those colleges who frequently were spending a lot of staff time and effort dealing with applicants who were treating them as a backup in the event they did not gain admission to, in this case, Princeton.

[…] The fact that Yale requested, and I sent them, a copy of my position paper on this issue before they, too, decided to move from EA to ED at the same time, should have made it obvious to Mr. Karabel that I was not even remotely proposing ED as a means of competing with Harvard and Yale. Nor was I persuaded by the various criticisms leveled at ED, not all of them completely disinterested. For instance, I have seen no evidence that EA applicant groups or EA admit groups are significantly more heterogeneous than ED applicant or admit groups. And if I’m not mistaken, some EA schools fill the same percentage of freshman class slots with those admitted early as Princeton does with those admitted ED.”



Yale’s stated reasons for switching to early decision (announced shortly after Princeton had made its announcement) echo those made by Hargadon. See Shaw’s comments in the following Yale Daily News article.

http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=7911

“We are never quite sure how many of our early candidates are really serious about coming here,” said Richard Shaw Jr., dean of undergraduate admissions and financial aid. “This early decision procedure allows us to be fairly absolute about how many students will be coming.”

“The early action option had been a boon to students but a hassle for admissions staff.

“For students, early action provided a risk-free way to ease senior year stress. But for admissions officers, having large numbers of undecided accepted students meant constantly hedging the number of other students they admitted.

[…] “We find that a large number of students continue to collect acceptances even after they have been admitted early,” Shaw said. Under the early decision system, that’s not a possibility.”



I hope this clears it up. Byerly, I doubt that you have any personal knowledge of these events at other schools and are probably relying on Mr. Karabel’s speculative comments. (By the way isn’t Karabel both a Harvard College alumnus and a Harvard Graduate School alumnus?) Either Karabel never bothered to interview Hargadon before making his claims or he simply dismissed whatever Hargadon had to say. I agree with a previous poster who stated that anyone who knows Hargadon personally would know just how straightforward a man he is. If you have any citations from either Princeton or Yale that offer a picture different from the one presented above, we’d love to see them. (Lately, you Harvard grads - and students - seem to be showing a real disdain for citations!)