Praising the good, admitting the bad of Early Decision's growing popularity

Adrienne Hadley '04 began her college search early into her junior year at Brookstone School, a private kindergarten-through-twelfth-grade institution in Columbus, Ga., and became "literally ob-sessed" for the next year.

In addition to collecting such notorious texts as "A is for Admission" and the ubiquitous Kaplan and The Princeton Review guidebooks, Hadley also attended information sessions, visited websites, made appointments with counselors, teachers and older friends, and charted out two separate campus tour trips — a 'Northeast' route and a 'Southeast' route — all before entering her senior year of high school.

"I knew that I needed to have it all figured out by the beginning of senior year," Hadley explained, "so that I could apply early somewhere."

While Early Decision is a program encouraged only for students who have a definite first-choice school, Hadley's decision to participate in Early Decision preceded her decision to apply early to Princeton. Her adamancy about applying early stemmed from one widely held belief.

"I thought I had a better chance of getting in," she said.

Hadley's college-admission saga, while a foreign tale bordering on insanity to most American students, should resonate deeply with an unusually large percentage of current Princeton students. Like Hadley, they had all once been shrewd and apt players of the Early Decision game; now, like Hadley, they are all collecting their rewards.

The Princeton student body is certainly proof that the Early Decision system, in general, 'works.' However, although the program's rationality is widely accepted, many involved in the college admissions community have begun to question its conscience, as well as that of its employers — that is, the nation's most selective institutions of higher learning.

The September 2001 issue of Atlantic Monthly featured a critical investigation and analysis of the Early Decision process by James Fallows, who concluded that this increasingly popular but grossly unjust practice perverts the admissions system and should therefore be abolished.

In the article, Fallows condemns this "winner-take-all game" on three grounds: It cheapens the true value of the high school experience, exploits the social anxieties and paranoia of the upper-middle class and unfairly rewards a select minority at the expense of the vast majority.

Fallow's assertion that Early Decision devalues the high school experience referred to the shortened timeline that it allows the applicant to prepare for the college admissions process, as well as to the added stress that this earlier deadline imposes on the already overwhelmed 16-year-old.

This argument is supposedly most relevant at private schools and affluent suburban public schools, where each year top students like Hadley, worried about handicapping their chances of 'getting in,' believe they must apply early.

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All of the Early Decision applicants interviewed said they applied early because they thought it would increase their chances of acceptance. Like Hadley, many were certain about their decision to apply early well before they reached the same level of confidence about which school was to receive their Early Decision commitment.

All of these current Princeton students therefore were forced to operate on a shorter and more concentrated timeline during high school, having to file away potential resume-builders and PSAT scores as early as freshman year.

However, according to these students, Fallows seemed to attribute too much of this effect to Early Decision, downplaying the influence of the overall atmosphere and culture in which many Early Decision candidates were raised.

Many former candidates believe that the Early Decision process only reinforces the tightening of schedules and expectations rather than creating it.

"Though Early Decision may have been a catalyst for the sorts of pressures I experienced, I feel that they existed regardless," said Cate Edwards '04 from Raleigh, N.C.

The typical Early Decision candidate, it seems, already possesses the focus and discipline that early application demands. Therefore, all they need to do is channel these qualities properly in order to harness Early Decision to their advantage.

"I don't think that I specifically worried so much about getting into college. It was just a goal of mine to do well starting my freshman year," Jessie Garton '05 explained. "And I joined clubs and played sports because they were important to me."

Former Early Decision applicants at Princeton res-ponded with similar reservations to Fallow's second charge — that the program feeds socio-economic class "neuroses."

Parents were the principal factor in this argument, especially those from professional-class backgrounds, who tend to become emotionally preoccupied with getting their children into the 'best' college — often with detrimental results on the children themselves.

Most students, however, defended the purity of their parents' intentions with gratefulness.

"I actually appreciate that obsession and those imposed pressures now, although I hated them at the time," Edwards said.

Unquestionably, as Edwards pointed out, parents do want what is best for their children. Although The Atlantic muses on the implications of the word 'best' — do they want the school that provides the best education for their children or simply the most prestigious school? — what fuels these parental desires is embedded in the culture itself.

In other words, it lies outside the arena of college admissions. Parents wish to give their children every advantage in the proverbial 'real world,' and in this real world, names and connections matter and the prestige factor does count.

The professional upper-middle class understands this truth probably better than any other socioeconomic faction, as Jenna Steinhauer '04, a former Early Decision applicant from Long Island, noted.

"I would guess that more educated parents see it as their role to help their kids by becoming very involved in the process," Steinhauer said.

All of these statements from current Princeton students, however, constitute the view from the winner's circle. This is where Fallows' third and most serious accusation enters the picture. He charged that Early Decision is unfairly exclusive, magnifying the rewards for the rich while narrowing the chances of the poor.

Technically, Fallows admits, the rich student and the poor student are both allowed to benefit from the Early Decision system. That is, no explicit rules bar the poor kid from playing the 'game.'

However, the fine print must be considered. Students at most large urban public schools lack the resources to be ready to apply to college by the start of senior year. For example, an insufficient number of guidance counselors or a lack of preparedness for standardized tests may handicap them. An astonishing majority of American high school students, in fact, are not even aware of the Early Decision program in time to take advantage of it.

"Applying early means you need to have a really good understanding already of what the admissions process is like," Hadley said. "I was lucky in that I had the means to acquire this understanding early on."

There is, of course, also the consideration that applying early restricts the applicant from comparing financial aid offers, thereby narrowing the Early Decision opening even more for all but a select number of American college applicants. None of the previously quoted interviewees had applied for financial aid from Princeton.

On the other hand, there certainly exists a strong "case to be made for the rise of early-decision programs, and Fred Hargadon enjoys making it," according to the The Atlantic.

Although the University's Admission Offices could not be reached for comment — due, appropriately enough, to the onset of the 2001 early admission season — its website describes Early Decision as "the most efficient way in which to effect a match between the kinds of students Princeton seeks to enroll and those among them who seek to enroll at Princeton."

Early Decision's proponents explain that the program is a practical way to choose from those students who truly wish to attend the school and an effective means of weeding out 'trophy hunters' from the applicant pool.

In the growing debate over Early Decision, one fact is becoming increasingly clear: Princeton University's stance on the matter is critical to the future of college admissions.

It is widely recognized among admission officers, high-school guidance counselors and critics of the system that the initiative rests within the nation's very top schools. The Atlantic quotes several sources that concentrate the responsibility of Early Decision reform within Harvard, Yale and Princeton only.

According to Fallow himself, it would take the top ten nationally ranked schools to administer change in the Early Decision system — and this, of course, is a list that Princeton famously leads. As the theory goes, whatever these schools choose to do, the rest will follow.

As another admissions cycle kicks off this fall, the academic community will turn its eyes towards Princeton, possibly awaiting their cue. More importantly, high school students across the nation will be watching, too.