Volume CXXXI, Number 24 May 3, 2002 f

Early decision will stay
JAMES FISHER
ORIENT STAFF

The College's admissions office has no plans to scrap the early decision process after the University of North Carolina gained nationwide attention by doing so last week.

President Barry Mills said he backed the early decision option because it attracted a diverse group of students who were eager to come to Bowdoin. He also said that "for any single college to move away from early admission would not be workable."

Early admissions programs offer colleges and universities the opportunity to fine-tune an incoming class's makeup. Students who apply for early decision, known also as early admission, are bound to accept a college's offer of enrollment if one is made. In the early decision process, the admissions office is guaranteed a 100 percent yield.

Bowdoin has had an early admissions process in place for several decades. "In its purest form," said Dean of Admissions Jim Miller, early admissions brings "students who have a very strong interest in a particular institution to an institution which has a strong interest in a student."

In recent months, some players in higher education have raised concerns about early admissions programs. Richard Levin, Yale's president, pushed for Ivy League schools to remove the early decision option from admissions packets in an interview last fall. It is UNC, however, that is the first American university to cut off an existing early admission program, a decision it announced last Friday.

Evidence that the program was hindering UNC's efforts to diversify and lowering its academic standards prompted the change. The university said that the process was attracting students with relatively low GPAs and SAT scores. UNC also found that early admission students were rarely minorities, and often well off.

Bowdoin administrators said UNC's conclusions about the effects of early decision programs did not seem to apply here. "I think it works to everybody's advantage," Mills said. "We've been able to use early decision to build on our goals of making Bowdoin a more diverse place." Miller said that "we get a fair number of students of color in early decision." He said that the socioeconomic pictures of early and regular admissions pools "are not different."

High schools, meanwhile, have their own problems with early admissions. Students who apply for early decision have slightly better chances of being accepted than those who apply later. According to Eric Monheim, college counselor at The Bullis School in Potomac, Maryland, the temptation of any kind of statistical edge drives students to apply for early decision as a way to beat the system. "We have kids come in and say, 'I'm applying early. I just don't know where yet,'" he said.

"The message from colleges is pretty clear," Monheim said. "You have to apply early." He estimated that 45 percent of Bullis seniors applied early decision this year. At nearby private schools, he said, up to three-fourths of graduating classes do.

Bowdoin administrators downplayed the stress and strain that early admissions might place on high school students scrambling to get fat envelopes from selective colleges. "I hope that students who apply early here are doing so for the right reasons," Miller said. "That's something we need to research." Miller said that the "enormous pressure" on juniors and seniors to apply early may be an "unintended consequence" of the early decision process.

Jaime Brewster, an admissions officer at Colby, said that the Waterville school has not considered changing its early decision policy. "We promote that students don't use early admission as a strategy to get into college," Brewster said.

Officials here did open the door to a formal study of Bowdoin's early decision process. "We're definitely looking at it," Miller said. "It's a good idea for us to look at it from a Bowdoin perspective." It was unclear, however, how Bowdoin's decision would be affected by the decisions of schools with which it competes. Mills said that a unilateral move by any college to drop early admissions would be "unworkable".

Miller suggested, though, that "there may be an antitrust issue... as to whether schools can move in concert to eliminate early decision." Miller said that he hasn't discussed the process with admissions officers at Bates, Colby, or other schools. "I think we need to do what's best for us," he said.