Every year, Harvard receives tens of thousands of applications from some of the brightest young students in the world. Just a tiny fraction of those students, 3.41% for the Class of 2027, ultimately get in. Many of these applicants, desperate to give themselves the greatest shot at admission, eagerly submit their applications under Harvard’s Restrictive Early Action program. At first glance, Harvard’s REA program seems like a win-win situation for both students and the University. However, the many drawbacks of the REA plan are significant enough to warrant its abolition.
Under Harvard’s REA program, applicants submit their applications by November 1st, months before the regular admissions deadline of January 1st. After six agonizing weeks of waiting, students learn in mid-December whether they have been accepted, deferred, or rejected. Students who apply early signal to the school that it is their first choice and form part of a smaller—though highly qualified—pool of applicants. They find out their admission status much sooner than they would under regular admissions, saving them months of worry and stress. Harvard, in turn, uses their REA program to identify particularly enthusiastic students, which may help them prop up their yield rate—thus improving their standings in national rankings—and shape the composition of a sizable portion of the first-year class.
The biggest problems with REA and other early admissions programs are related to equity. It is important to note that REA programs are not nearly as problematic as Early Decision (ED) programs, which require students to commit to attending a school without knowing how much it will cost them. These binding programs discourage economically disadvantaged students from applying, preventing them from being able to consider different financial aid options. As racial inequality is so closely correlated to socioeconomic inequality in this country, perhaps it is not surprising that ED applicants are also three times more likely to be white.
Even though Harvard employs a non-binding REA program and pledges to meet the financial needs of all accepted students, equity issues still remain. Harvard does not release any data on the socioeconomic status of the students it admits early, but general research has shown that students who apply to early admissions programs come disproportionately from wealthier, whiter families, tend to have college-educated parents, and have greater access to college counseling resources. Because the acceptance rate for early applicants at Harvard is significantly higher than the rate for regular applicants—for the Class of 2027, the REA rate was 7.56%, nearly three times the regular rate of 2.57%—many students feel that they must submit their applications early to increase their chances of admission.
Harvard’s admissions website lists some of the reasons students should consider applying under their REA program. “Applying to Harvard under the Restrictive Early Action program empowers you to make a college choice early,” it states. However, not all students can afford to do so. Harvard’s REA program privileges students who have the ability to determine their college choice and complete an application far sooner than they would need to under regular decision programs.
Moreover, the “restrictive” element of Harvard’s early admissions program also raises concerns.
Applicants may not apply to any other private institutions under ED, EA, or REA plans, or to a binding ED program at a public university, which severely limits students in their college application processes and prevents them from exploring all their options—whether financial, academic, or otherwise. Furthermore, students who do not get in early to Harvard miss out on opportunities to apply to other schools under non-restrictive early action programs that may have accepted them.
By adopting an early admissions program, Harvard intensifies the college admission obsession by putting more pressure on students to perform nearly flawlessly from the very beginning of their high school careers. Although the difference between Early and Regular Decision deadlines may seem insignificant, a few months can make a big difference to students. Under early admissions programs, students must construct a well-rounded application based on just three years of high school. With later deadlines, students can make use of their senior year to get involved in new activities, show commitment to old ones, and improve and grow academically. They are also able to put more thought into supplemental essays and develop deeper relationships with the teachers writing their letters of recommendation. The additional time also gives students the opportunity to consider all of their post-graduation options more carefully. Students should not feel rushed into such important decisions about their future.
Programs like Harvard’s REA foreshorten the high school experience. Submitting applications by November renders almost all of senior year essentially irrelevant, specifically for those students admitted early. Even though these students must maintain a certain level of academic achievement, many feel far less urgency to engage seriously with their second-semester coursework, especially when compared to students applying under regular decision programs for whom second and third-quarter grades matter much more. Thus, early admissions programs shift the focus away from actual learning and toward simply churning out applications as quickly as possible and then riding out the year, which sets students up poorly for their intellectual journeys in college.
The best way to address the many problems surrounding early admissions programs would be simply to get rid of them. Harvard, alongside Princeton and UVA, eliminated its early action program in 2006, referencing the increasing pressure and stress it generated as well as major equity concerns. “The college admissions process has become too pressured, too complex, and too vulnerable to public cynicism,” said then-interim Harvard President Derek Bok. “Early admission programs tend to advantage the advantaged. Students from more sophisticated backgrounds and affluent high schools often apply early to increase their chances of admission, while minority students and students from rural areas, other countries, and high schools with fewer resources miss out.”
The three schools reversed track in 2011, fearing that they were missing out on qualified applicants from diverse backgrounds as other institutions expanded their own early admissions programs. “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,” Harvard Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Michael D. Smith said in a statement.
A more diverse range of students may now be applying early, but Harvard showed a serious lack of commitment to its progressive ideas by resuming its early admissions programs. The University’s single-deadline policy had attracted praise for improving the admissions climate by reducing overall stress and anxiety for applicants of all backgrounds as well as diminishing access issues for lower-income applicants, yet the school abandoned the policy when others did not follow suit.
As a result, early admissions have become the new normal, even as many of the fundamental issues that plagued it in 2006 remain today. If Harvard and other schools truly want to show their dedication to resolving equity issues, promoting student welfare, and calming the chaos of the college application process, they should come together, abolish early admissions, and establish a single application deadline.
Gemma Maltby ’27 (gmaltby@college.harvard.edu) hopes never to discuss college applications again.