Early Decision

By reinstating early action, we are putting ourselves back in the hunt for some of the brightest minds in the country and around the world.

The University will reinstate its early admission program for applicants to the Class of 2016 after a four-year hiatus, it announced Thursday morning. The program will offer applicants a single-choice early action option — allowing accepted students to respond to the offer of admission in the spring — instead of a binding early decision option, which the University offered from 1996 to 2006. 

“In eliminating our early program four years ago, we hoped other colleges and universities would do the same, and they haven’t,” President Shirley Tilghman said in a University statement.

Though the University of Virginia and Harvard are reversing and reviewing, respectively, their 2006 decisions  to switch to a single admission cycle, Princeton will not give special consideration this year to reevaluating its 2006 elimination of early decision.

 Updated May 12, 2008 2:45 p.m. When Brian Contratto, a high school senior from San Diego, Calif., found out that he had been waitlisted at Princeton, his first choice for college, he elected to stay on the waitlist, but he wasn’t optimistic.“I just sent the reply card in indicating that I ...