Hey everyone,
Kathy asked me to post the opinion piece I wrote back at the beginning of the semester, so here it is:

Ellen Cushing
5 February 2008
Political Journalism and Activism (Kathy Engel)
Opinion article

Early Decision and the Crisis of Meritocracy

Last fall tens of thousands of high school students participated in the early admissions programs of a number of selective colleges and universities. In exchange for withstanding the intensity of a drastically compressed application process and, often, a binding agreement to attend the school if admitted, these Early Decision students are afforded a statistically higher chance of getting in to the most elite schools. And as the various-sized envelopes arrived in mailboxes across the country during the last three weeks of December, most of these students learned where they would be spending their next four years. But what they didn’t know is that really, their fates were sealed long before these envelopes, their futures determined largely by the long and ugly history of institutionalized class stratification in the college admissions system—a divide which the early decision process serves only to intensify and perpetuate.
The debate surrounding the value of Early has long been simmering in the hearts and minds of higher-education professionals but, two years ago, came violently bubbling up to the surface of popular discourse as Harvard and Princeton Universities made the bold, admirable step to abolish their programs. This symbolizes something powerful, that something has gone wrong. The American meritocracy is failing, foundering, falling apart, and Early plays an undeniably large role in this system.
The primary problem with early decision is that, like so much of our educational system and college admissions process, the people it generally benefits are those who already come from economically advantaged backgrounds. These programs—Early Decision, which is binding, and Early Action, which is not--overwhelmingly favor financially secure students. Accepted early decision applicants must commit to a school before seeing its official financial aid package and lower-income families may need to compare several schools’ packages before making a commitment. At virtually every school offering such a program, Early applicants tend to be wealthier and more homogeneous than the regular-decision pool. In 2005 at the University of Virginia, one of the most elite public universities in the nation, 172 students whose household income fell at or below 200 percent of the poverty line were accepted, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education. Just one of these students was admitted early.
The University of Virginia has since eliminated its Early Decision program.
Early also favors those students who are well-informed enough about the college process to know about the existence of these programs. In other words, it's unlikely that first-generation college students from inner-city schools with one overworked and underpaid college adviser for hundreds of students will even know that early admission is an option. Thus, privileged students gain yet another edge in the increasingly competitive college race, and disadvantaged students miss out in a system where the chips are already overwhelmingly stacked against them. Every step of the way, lower-income students are denied the resources to which their more affluent classmates have easy access, from quality primary and secondary education to private college counselors and SAT tutors. Those who have the economic, social and personal resources and support to beat the system continue to do so while those who don’t continue to get beaten by it.
The final argument against Early may be a softer, more subtle one, but no less potent: these programs put a significant social and psychological toll on students, forcing 17- and 18-year-olds to make important, ironclad life decisions they may not be ready for, or which they may be pressured into by parents or peers. Students may feel like the only way they can be accepted to these extremely elite colleges and universities, many of which accept fewer than one in every ten students, is to apply early, even though they may not be prepared. College advisers at highly competitive high schools, whose largely affluent student bodies mean that Early is a commonly used admissions strategy, have reported their observations that the search begins to be less about finding a good fit personally and academically, and more about gaming the system. Furthermore, Early raises the emotional stakes, making an already stressful and draining process even more so, exploiting and increasing student anxieties and bringing the already frenzied process to a fever pitch.
This is not to say that early admission doesn't have its advantages. Most importantly, it allows students with complicated histories – an arrest, for example, or a severe grade drop due to personal circumstances – to ensure that their applications will be read and evaluated closely as one of a smaller number. But why not take the resources devoted to Early Decision and use them to hire more application readers for the regular season, so that this close attention can be guaranteed for all students, not just those who have the luxury to apply early?
Two years ago, two of the country’s oldest and most prestigious universities chose to end this discriminatory practice. One can only hope that they sent a message to the thousands of other schools whose early decision programs hurt those who have already been hurt the most by a flawed system. One can hope that some day, when the envelopes appear in mailboxes nationwide, it will no longer be true that one delivered to an affluent suburb is overwhelmingly more likely to contain an acceptance than one delivered to a housing project.