How many of the best choices in life are shaped by external pressure? How many times does having only one choice benefit our decision-making?
Yet this is what tens of thousands of high school students, and their parents, face annually when they apply on an "early decision" basis to colleges and universities. They would do well to examine if an early decision is a good decision.
Colleges and universities with early decision plans capitalize on the anxiety of students and parents by requiring students to commit to one and only one college at the time of application. In other words, early decision plans ask students to forsake all other colleges that may admit them before they hear from any of them, before they know their opportunities for financial aid, and before they have the added benefit of their high school senior year. Indeed, high school students must apply through early decision programs very early in their senior year, usually no later than Nov. 1.
This cuts off their ability to spend the next few months exploring what manner of college environment would be right and to consider carefully their full range of admission offers and financial aid awards. Frankly, there is no need to apply under early decision, and there is no need to decide on a college until the traditional May 1 deadline. There are many right choices for each student, and each student deserves the chance to understand them.
Early decision began decades ago in the Ivy League as a method for students from elite high schools to identify the Ivy League college of their greatest preference – as a convenience for the students and these colleges. As the higher-education market heated up in the 1980s and 1990s, hundreds of colleges adopted early decision as a way to lock in a portion of their class, sometimes a large portion, to beat the competition.
Moreover, the U.S. News college rankings at the time rewarded schools with high yield rates (the percentage of admitted students who actually enroll.) Since early decision students yield at nearly 100 percent, this was a way to climb in the magazine's rankings without really changing the quality of education delivered. In other words, early decision morphed into a manipulation of the college-going market to benefit individual colleges.
Today, U.S. News no longer utilizes yield rates in its rankings, and prestigious schools such as UNC-Chapel Hill, Virginia, Yale, and Stanford have dropped Early Decision because it reduces student options, unnecessarily complicates the college admission environment, and because information on how to apply under the program is not evenly available to students across the nation. Some colleges, nonetheless, persist in offering the program, and along with it comes enormous pressure on students fearful about getting into a "good" school – a fear is that is unfounded.
As a student, you want to spend every last minute of time reflecting on whether a college is right for you. This process of discernment is one of the most important learning experiences and growth phases of your life – until you arrive at the fullest and most informed choice, based on who you are and the kind of person you hope to become.
We do neither you nor ourselves any favor by speeding that process, before you can discern if you will flourish at a small school or a large one, a research university or a liberal arts institution, a local university or far-off college. Where will you thrive?
At USC, we could easily institute an early decision plan in order to secure firm, early commitments from prospective students. But it would rob them of invaluable months in which they could explore academic programs, location, finances, ambience and attitudes at schools around the nation.
Many students fail to grasp that they, not others, are in the driver's seat. Students control two of the three decision points: where to apply and where to choose. There is simply no need to give the power back to a college that is overly eager to fill out its fall roster. Your process of reflection and self-discovery while you choose a college is crucial to your life journey.
At the same time that many colleges are prodding students to commit early, new college rankings for 2009 are being released, which only increases the pressure for students to attempt to be associated with the "best" college that will have them. This anxious quest is the antithesis of the quest for sophistication, wisdom and intellectual independence that is the essence of a college experience; that quest is reflected in Einstein's observation, "Everything that can be counted doesn't necessarily count; everything that counts can't necessarily be counted."
Let no college tell you that what counts is an early commitment, and let no one pressure you or your family into investing their treasure before you are ready. You will find the right path by realizing that your destiny lies in your own hands, not in the hands of any who would pressure you for their own purposes.
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