Which Colleges Offer Early Admission Programs?

Early admissions is a complex and constantly changing game. In recent years the cast of characters has grown significantly, with more and more colleges entering the competition for the best students. But still the true rules of applying early are rarely known to students and their parents. In the interest of leveling the playing field, we devote this article to uncovering the mystery of early admissions.

Five major points emerge here and are furtherelaborated in the chapters that follow:

1. Elite private colleges overwhelmingly employ early admissions programs.
2. The system is confusing because the rules and deadlines differ from college to college.
3. Students from advantaged backgrounds are the most likely to apply early.
4. Most early programs are of modest size, but many are substantial, and some have even grown to the point that they leave relatively few spots in the class for regular applicants.
5. Almost every college with an early program admits a higher proportion of early applicants than of regular applicants. At many colleges this creates a concern about the availability of regular admissions slots.

Which Colleges Offer Early Programs?
Currently, only one-third of all four-year colleges in the United States offer early admissions programs.1 Yet almost all of the most selective private colleges have such programs. (This figure measures selectivity using the average SAT scores of current students. Other measures of selectivity, such as the U.S. News rankings, produce a similar pattern—the higher the ranking, the more likely that the college is to offer an early program.)
Almost all colleges offer one of two early admissions programs:
Early Action (EA) or Early Decision (ED). Early Decision, which requires early applicants to commit to enrolling if admitted, predominates at the most selective colleges. Early Action, which allows early applicants to apply and enroll at other colleges in the regular process, is most common at the least selective colleges. A small number of colleges offer both programs.

Public colleges, which primarily cater to in-state students, usually at dramatically reduced tuition, operate in a less competitive environment than do private schools, with strong built-in demand. Their natural response is to adopt admissions practices that are different from those of their private counterparts. For instance, a survey conducted by the National Association for College Admissions Counselors in 2001–02 found that private institutions were about three times as likely as public institutions to offer early admissions programs.

Many public institutions offer rolling admissions programs and publish standard admissions criteria based on thresholds for grade-point average and SAT scores. For students who meet these criteria, the admission thresholds serve as a form of Early Action they guarantee admission before the regular application deadlines.

The public institutions that offer early admissions tend to offer Early Action, and some of these programs are quite extensive. The few public institutions that offer Early Decision tend to be the socalled public Ivies that compete for top students nationally, such as the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of
Virginia, and William and Mary.

The policies of most colleges are relatively stable, though some add or change an early admissions program each year. For example, among the “Top 50 Universities” and “Top 50 Liberal Arts Colleges” named by U.S. News, only four changed the status of their early programs from 1997–98 to 1998–99, and each of these four colleges simply added either Early Action or Early Decision in 1998–99 to complement an existing program.
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