Brown University Interim President Sheila Blumstein announced Saturday that the university will change its early admission procedure from a non-binding "early action" system to a binding "early decision" option.
The change will take effect this fall with the class of 2006 admission cycle.
This is a drastic change in Brown's admissions department, which had switched to a non-binding system two years ago.
For the past two years, Brown candidates who were accepted early — after having applied by Nov. 1 — received non-binding offers of admission allowing the students to apply to other universities.
Under the early action policy, students had until May to make their decision to attend Brown. The new early decision policy will require students to make a binding decision on Brown's offer of admission months before the regular admission reply deadline, Brown spokesman Mark Nickel said.
This change leaves Harvard University as the only Ivy League school with a non-binding early action option.
Two years ago, the National Association for College Admission Counseling ruled that universities like Brown could not restrict early admissions applicants to applying to only one school. The ruling led to a more than 65-percent increase in early applications at Brown.
The workload created by the application increase has been staggering, Nickels said.
"The idea of the early action policy was to attract students who were sure that Brown was the place that they wanted to end up," Nickel said.
"Once that rationale changed, early action became more of a strategy where people would apply just to make sure they had a backup [school]," he added.
The early action admission process became inefficient, said Michael Goldberger, Brown University director of admission. "Clearly, we are now evaluating application materials from thousands of students who have not yet narrowed their sights on Brown and two years ago would not have applied early," he said in a press release.
"We have, in effect, simply moved the regular admission process several months forward," he added.
During the Class of 2004 admission cycle, 16,806 students applied to Brown. 1,052 were admitted early action. 1,478 were admitted under the regular admission process.
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