Fairer Harvard?

Like Harvard, Princeton has just announced that it will stop offering early admission decisions. We should understand that this will be hard to do — hard on applicants, hard for the University. As the father of two children who went through that chamber of horrors — college application process — a few years ago, I know how it feels to get that best of early Christmas presents, an acceptance at the school you want to attend — and how it feels not to get one.

Early decisions bind several hundred terrific applicants a year to Princeton —where we offer them a great education and much more. Every fall, we showcase Princeton's arts and humanities offerings for a group of high school seniors, invited from around the country. Many of them apply early and get in. Why not grab these great applicants and nail their feet to the floor?

Instead of working through two smaller groups of files, Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye and her colleagues will have to deal with one huge mass of paper. In the past, our admission deans and their staffs have known an amazing amount about each of Princeton's thousands of applicants. Dealing with the new system could be like facing Hurricane Katrina with a sump pump — ugly conditions for careful comparative reading.

But the reasons we should follow Harvard, for once, outweigh the reasons against. Early in the last century, as Jerome Karabel and others have shown, elite universities worried that too many Jews were crowding in. They decided to make "character," instead of academic ability, the criterion for admissions. By "character," they meant young men from nice households and good prep schools, with bright smiles, firm handshakes and the right tweed jackets. No immigrants or ethnics, please.

In the 1960s, policies changed. University admissions became meritocratic. Admission deans focused on demonstrated achievement: academic, athletic, artistic. The logic of meritocracy and access proved powerful: over time, it opened elite universities to Jews, Catholics, women and minorities. In recent years, it has made Princeton and Harvard spend millions of dollars that could be buying us gleaming labs and dusty books on scholarships for more than half of every class.

But the current system still favors privilege. The kids from private schools and the very best suburban high schools are the ones who know they should apply early. At most universities, this early pool of applicants is not quite as talented as the final one. Rachel Toor, a former admissions officer at Duke who wrote a frank book about her work, recalls fighting for early candidates, only to realize a few months later that they would have stood no chance in the larger competition. Yet applying early affords a huge advantage: at Princeton, almost a third of early applicants are accepted, as against 10 percent of the final pool. The whole system puts a heavy thumb on the scale — in favor of those who start out in life with a big bankroll, either financial or cultural or both, and have done nothing to earn it.

If people are talented enough to make something of the opportunities Princeton affords, let them prove it in one big, fair fight for places. Let's make the kids who come with capital face off against those who come from poor immigrant families. Let them all compete — and let's choose the most brilliant students, the most gifted athletes, the most spectacular artists, and assume that enough of them will accept our offers to make up a great class.

This change won't make our system perfectly fair, of course. But it will open things up and let more light in, and I learned at home that that's always a good thing to do. My late father was an immigrant kid, from a family that didn't speak English. He fought his way through Philadelphia public schools with classes of 60 to a scholarship to UPenn. Would he have made it now, against all those competitors with coaches and mentors? I don't know.

But I do know that he went on to be a wonderful writer, a nationally syndicated columnist for The New York Post. He liked to be critical: that's why he called his column "I'd rather be right." I would too; that's why I've borrowed his title. A passionate liberal, my father was often angry, as fighting liberals are, and critical. But he knew how to give praise where it was due. For today, thank you, President Tilghman, Dean Rapelye and the members of the Board of Trustees. You've made me proud to work here. But believe me, I'll find plenty of things to complain about. For example, why does the phrase "Princeton architecture" provoke bitter laughter? Stay tuned for more on that and other blemishes in our island paradise. Anthony Grafton is the Henry Putnam University Professor of History. He can be reached at grafton@princeton.edu.