It’s Baaaack!
Posted on February 24th, 2011 in Uncategorized | 11 Comments »
Early admissions, that is.
The Times reports that Harvard and Princeton have abandoned the experiment of doing away with early admissions.
(Actually, the Times just links to a Crimson piece.)
In a statement, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Michael D. Smith said that offering an accelerated decision cycle for interested applicants will increase Harvard’s potential to attract top-caliber students.
“We looked carefully at trends in Harvard admissions these past years and saw that many highly talented students, including some of the best-prepared low-income and underrepresented minority students, were choosing programs with an early-action option, and therefore were missing out on the opportunity to consider Harvard,” he said.
The whole point of doing away with early admissions was to help disadvantaged students, as early admissions seemed to favor students from schools and families who could point them in that direction.
Is that argument now deemed invalid by Mike Smith’s phrase “including some of the best-prepared low income and underrepresented minority students”?
Or is that just cover for, “We were losing students to Yale and Stanford”?
Harvard President Drew G. Faust said in a statement that the return of early action is now “consistent with our bedrock commitment to access, affordability, and excellence.”
Except that, just a few years ago, it wasn’t consistent with that commitment; in fact, it was contrary to that commitment. What’s changed?
Getting rid of early admission was the work of Derek Bok, in his interregnum year as president. How does he feel about this reversal? And is this a check on the negative side of the ledger for Drew Faust?
11 Responses
2/24/2011 10:11 pm
It was a great idea, RB, but depended for its success on others, your alma mater included, following suit. As Derek Bok put it,
“We feel that if anybody is going to step up and take the lead to try to get rid of something which is really doing more harm than good in high schools across the country, it’s us,”
Taking the lead implies being followed, but only Princeton and Virginia did so, with the result that Yale, e.g., got to identify its early admissions group and recruit for months before the students Princeton, Yale, or Virginia might also be interested in could be contacted.
Clearly the right move in the circumstances, and if you want to check negatives, Levin, Bollinger and others are at the front of the line. It WAS a good idea, but untenable if only a couple of schools thought so.
2/24/2011 10:57 pm
Penultimate paragraph: read “Princeton, Harvard, or Virginia”
2/25/2011 6:54 am
“If we all got rid of it, it would be a good thing.” — Yale President Rick Levin, in an interview with the New York Times about early admission, December 2001.
2/26/2011 10:39 pm
Bill Fitz… had a good chat this afternoon with Shakira about encouraging her audiences to apply to Harvard. Maybe 50 million seniors will apply next year
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2011/2/26/shakira-show-harvard-foundation/
2/27/2011 10:35 am
Even though it lasted only four years, I am proud of Harvard for taking this lead.
Derek Bok, Jeremy Knowles, and Bill Fitzsimmons deserve much credit for recognizing how much damage early action/decision was doing to high schools as well. It is too bad that school counselors did not support the decision more strongly by documenting the negative effect of early action/decision on the academic effort and productivity of high school seniors.
2/27/2011 10:51 am
(pressed “submit” too soon!)
On the other hand, I do not condemn Drew Faust for returning to early action now - the failure of Yale’s Levin and others to follow the noble lead of Harvard, Princeton, and Virginia is why the effort failed. It’s pretty evident that a number of fine candidates were admitted early elsewhere and subsequently withdrew their Harvard and Princeton applications, so Harvard and the others had little choice but to restore an early action program.
2/27/2011 11:59 am
Maybe Harvard should focus more on teaching the students that are admitted, and less on whether accepts represent the top 2% or the next 2% of the admits… but it takes real intelligence and imagination on the part of those responsible for these decisions to lead. Both qualities in short supply at Harvard these days.
An important question is, can a serious development campaign be launched when it is so evident that intelligence and imagination are lacking at the helm?
2/27/2011 12:10 pm
At Harvard, he quipped, the A students tend to become professors
and the C students become wealthy donors.”
—-WSJ quoting Larry Summers
about Chinese Tiger Mom, Amy Chua’s parenting
He could have added ‘and those who were never admitted become administrators’ who really run the place.
Given this, how does early decisions really matter? and how does education really matter? credentials is the name of the game. Maybe degrees should simply sold as are nobility titles, which would allow getting rid of the inconvenience of managing professors who still think that the primary missions of the institution are research and teaching.
It’s a new day at Harvard when the Crimson celebrates the innovative efforts teaching undergraduates about sex toys
http://www.thecrimson.com/you-tube-video/2011/2/24/sex-toys-performer-sinclair/
maybe they could ask Jeffrey Epstein to chair the campaign
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/6/5/people-in-the-news-jeffrey-e/
2/27/2011 1:33 pm
Mr. Levy,
With apologies to de La Rochefoucauld.
Hypocrisy is the homage which
Expediency pays to principle.
As Anon 11:59 said, leadership is in short supply.
2/27/2011 2:32 pm
is it true that several members of the Corporation are quietly inquiring whether Steve Hyman might be interested in the Presidency?
2/27/2011 5:54 pm
That’s what six or seven of them have been quietly asking me lately.