Rapelye to tour states with Harvard, U.Va. deans

Princeton, Harvard and the University of Virginia seem like an unlikely trio, but admission deans from the three institutions are now on tour together, visiting 19 cities across the country over the course of 15 days to tell applicants and their families about the financial feasibility of attending an elite college.

The undergraduate admissions offices of all three universities ended their early application processes — binding Early Decision at Princeton and Virginia, non-binding Early Action at Harvard — last year. For the Class of 2012 and beyond, the three institutions will accept only one round of applications.

Dean of Admission Janet Rapelye, Harvard dean of admission William Fitzsimmons and Virginia dean of admission John Blackburn and their staffs are traveling to cities like Los Angeles, Baton Rouge, Detroit and Washington, D.C., to recruit economically disadvantaged students, some of whom are beginning to consider their college searches this fall.

"We are specifically traveling together because our three institutions have chosen a single application deadline," Rapelye said in the statement announcing the tour. "A single admission process allows us to look at the broader pool of students at one time, and it allows us to sustain our efforts to make this as fair a process as possible. We're serious about bringing students from every economic background into the pool and to our campuses, and this recruiting trip is one of the many ways we're doing it."

The Early Decision deadline was Nov. 1, but with that deadline gone and all applications due Jan. 1, the admission office can continue recruiting for several more weeks. "We now have the month of November to continue recruiting students," Rapelye said in an interview with The Daily Princetonian last month. "I will be traveling with my colleagues ... with the hope of reaching some students who may not have had the good fortune of having strong counselors or good advice early on."

Rapelye added that there may be some students at the events who are already actively considering the University. "We may very well have some students at those events whom we have seen at other times, and that's OK too," she said, "but we're really trying to reach out to students who may not have had as many advantages in this process."

Early admission programs have historically been criticized for disadvantaging minority applicants and students from low-income backgrounds, who typically start their college search later than those from private schools. Critics have argued that such applicants are less likely to be aware of the opportunity to apply early — which often yields a better chance of admission — and that if admitted, poorer applicants don't have the opportunity to compare financial aid packages before committing to one school.

"We have worked aggressively over the past several years to expand financial aid," Fitzsimmons said in a statement. "An early admission program that is less accessible to students from modest economic backgrounds operates at cross-purposes with our goal of finding and admitting the most talented students from across the economic spectrum."

The deans also said the trip was an important effort to address disparities in the quality of college counseling at high schools around the country, highlighting a recent report from the U.S. Department of Education that found there is an average of 315 students for every one counselor in public high schools nationwide. At each site visit, admission officials will host an evening program for parents and students and a morning breakfast for invited guidance counselors from nearby high schools.

In recent years, about 50 percent of the University's freshman class has been admitted early. And those students apparently faced an easier road to acceptance: 26 percent of early applicants were accepted last year, compared to just 7.2 percent of regular decision applicants.

— Princetonian staff writer Doug Eshleman and senior writer Catherine Mevs contributed reporting to this story.