Yale Daily News

They should just get rid of the early admission program. All the reasons offered for cutting it back argue equally for eliminating it altogether. Yale doesn't need this yield-boosting crutch.

Couldn't agree more with #1. There's something wrong with filling 50-60% of the class from 20% of the applicant pool. This is hardly a "level playing field."

Early admission is win-win. It lets them know that they have a firm offer from a top college without forcing them to attend if they get a better offer elsewhere. Of course, most students who get in EA at Yale can't be bothered to apply elsewhere. In the end, it's good for Yale's yield AND good for reducing stress for college students.

Yale's early admission program hardly "reduces the stress" for the 82% of early applicants it rejected this year. More likely, it increased the stress exponentially, since they must now acknowledge themselves as "rejects" for another three months until other schools are free to admit them.

No … it is the SCHOOL for which early admission is "win-win": if we want you, you're in, if we don't want you, we don't have to take you and you've lost your chance to earn a similar edge elsewhere.

Poster #4 is 100% correct

You're 50% wrong. Yale didn't reject 82% of the EA applicants this year - about half were deferred, which just means they have to wait until April to find out like all the RD applicants. I know plenty of people who were deferred EA and then accepted. I don't disagree that EA students help Yale's yield rates (because those applicants are implying Yale is their top choice to begin with), but at least EA is better than Early Decision at other schools - students still have a chance to compare financial aid packages and such before making a final decision.

What is also not commonly known is that Yale's policy still allows students to apply to state schools that have rolling admissions, or schools that have earlier deadlines for merit scholarship consideration. There's no reason why a student has to feel like a "reject" from December to April.

Also, applying somewhere EA reduces overall stress in that it forces students to get their applications done earlier, so they're not among the thousands of last-minute submissions that almost crashed the Common Application website on Dec 31. Now THAT would have been stressful.

To #6:

Of course, as an interviewer, I'm acutely aware that the main reason Yale has its virtually unique "single choice" early action option is to get first dibs on top students before they can apply to or be admitted to Harvard. The assumption is that without this advantage we'd lose most common admits to the "Colossus of the North"!

I'd like to think we didn't have to resort to such tactics.

I think Yale and all the other colleges should get out of Early Action/Early Decision altogether. It's CRUEL. Yale should step up to the plate itself here. Other colleges watch its admissions policies. Early Action is stressful and unfair: to the regular applicant, the poor applicants who need financial aid, the badly counseled ones, and even to almost all of the Early Action applicants. It increases stress on every applicant except for the very few who know they're likely to get in and only want one school.

Early Action helps ONLY the admissions office and should not never have been installed.

If you think applying early is less stressful-- it's not. Suppose you think you don't have great chances to get into Yale, but your counselor tells you your chance is better if you apply Early Action-- but it's not necessarily your first choice-- which is also Early Decision or Early Action. This is a common case. Low stress?

Seriously--I think the admissons office should make a first cut and then just do a lottery among those applicants-- it would be just as fair as the "we already have a soccer-playing harpist from North Dakota" approach currently favored.

I second the motion of #6, my fellow alumni interviewer. The Admissions Office, unfortunately, does not seem interested in this kind of advice from "the field."

You old fogies aren't getting it!

Applying early shows that the applicant wants to go to the University. Otherwise the people who really want Yale would be pooled with regular applicants who are applying everywhere and just trying to get into the best school possible.

To Oldballs …

Ah, I see!

So if these "people who really want to go to Yale" have to apply with the rest of the crowd on January 1, they may not look as good compared with all the people whose secret first choice may be Harvard, Princeton or Stanford, but who Yale may, in consequence, admit by mistake?

I applied EA, was deferred, and eventually accepted. At the time, H and P still had their ED programs. I really think that, in the end, having demonstrated a singular commitment to Yale really helped me. Moreover, I did not find applying early stressful because I'd had my application ready since September. The savvy applicant won't be too stressed by applying early. I think it would be better for high schools to step up their guidance programs than for Yale to have to change a process which was working pretty well.