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Colleges
that once deferred now reject
The thin
envelopes came early this year. Amar Shibli of Westchester
County, N.Y., opened his with trepidation: turned down by
Yale a week before winter break. Luke Moughon of Erwin, Tenn.,
was "hit like a ton of bricks" by the rejection letter from
the California Institute of Technology. Bonnie Fitzpatrick,
a guidance counselor in a tony Maryland suburb, got the news
that Stanford University had spurned a boy with near-perfect
SAT scores, high grades in Advanced Placement classes, and
impeccable recommendations. "In the past," she says, "it seems
that these students would have been deferred, not rejected."
College
administrators confirm the trend. Schools used to give a polite
"maybe" to early applicants who didn't make the first cut
and then keep them waiting until spring for a decision. But
now, inundated with applications, more schools are just saying
no. Middlebury College in Vermont last month rejected 14 percent
of its early applicants, compared with fewer than 5 percent
two years ago (as usual, Middlebury deferred decisions on
hundreds of students). "We see no reason to string kids along
by deferring them," says Monica Izer, admissions dean at Babson
College in Massachusetts, which turned down nearly 20 percent
of early applicants–compared with 8 percent a year ago.
The
rules. What started decades ago as an approach favored
by a small number of college applicants has become the preferred
way for many to get into college, especially selective ones.
Under early decision, students apply to one school in the
fall and, if accepted, are bound to attend (a less rigid option
offered by some schools, "early action," also gives applicants
an early answer but is not binding). These days, nearly 500
colleges accept early applications, and parents and students
know that at most of those schools early applicants have a
much better chance of getting in. Last year, for example,
Connecticut College accepted 202 of its 361 early applicants,
leaving 4,080 regular applicants vying for the last 248 places.
And Harvard fills more than half of every class with early
applicants.
The increase
in students applying early results from the same demographic
bulge that has made getting in tougher and tougher. With more
kids applying–and more convinced that they must get into selective
schools–many guidance counselors urge students to apply early
when possible, to get that edge. Meanwhile, colleges and universities
defend the large numbers of early selections, saying they
prefer students who are passionate about spending four years
on campus.
But the
blatant edge early applicants get annoys public school guidance
counselors, who argue that immigrant students, those from
poorer families, and those living outside of achievement-obsessed
communities are rarely ready to decide on their first-choice
college a few weeks into the senior year of high school. And
everyone agrees that 17-year-olds frequently apply in the
first round because they want to capitalize on the favorable
odds, not because they are smitten with a particular school.
"When we go to college fairs, kids always say, 'I'm applying
early, but I don't know where,' " says Lee Stetson, dean of
admissions at the University of Pennsylvania, which received
2,851 early applications this fall, an increase of 11 percent
over last year's record number.
As applications
to competitive colleges have surged, high schools have exhorted
admissions officers to be candid with early applicants who
simply aren't going to be admitted, says Dan Saracino, assistant
provost of the University of Notre Dame and former president
of the National Association for College Admission Counseling.
Cornell and Tufts universities, which used to defer everyone
who wasn't admitted early, last month started sending outright
rejections.
As for
the rejected students, they're learning to look at the bright
side. Amar Shibli is hoping for better luck with his post-Yale
round of applications. Luke Moughon, who wants to study aeronautical
engineering, isn't fretting about his Caltech denial, or his
deferral from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And
he's even sanguine about the upcoming four-month wait for
a response from Stanford, ever since he was admitted to the
Georgia Institute of Technology, which is considering him
for a merit scholarship.
And though
Jamie McMenamin, captain of the cross-country team at a school
near Baltimore, was disheartened last month by Notre Dame's
thin envelope, she gleefully read about a snowstorm in South
Bend, Ind., the same day. "I decided I didn't want to be cold
for the next four years," she said last week, having applied
to colleges in Arizona, California, and Georgia.
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