Matthew Mugmon: The truth about early decision

I'm one of them.

I applied early decision to Penn. And given my experience here, I would make the same choice if I had to go through the admissions process again.

I really applied early because, well, I could. My public high school's advising program was good enough that I knew my options and knew them well. I applied early because I liked Penn, but I did it more because I didn't feel like wasting my senior year sending out applications to more than one school.

Penn's binding early decision program served me well. It did its job -- it gave a high schooler a better chance of getting into his top college choice.

So I wasn't surprised by Admissions Dean Lee Stetson's defense of binding early decision last week, which came in the wake of Yale University's decision to allow students accepted early to apply and accept elsewhere: "Our surveys of students have told us that they like early decision and are happy when the process is over. We have not found that students feel forced to make a hasty decision to apply."

There's a shocker: a survey revealing that early decision students -- already convinced that Penn is where they want to spend their next four years -- have positive attitudes toward the program that got them there more quickly and with less hassle.

You don't need four years of college to figure out that for a student like me and a university like Penn, early decision was a win-win proposition.

Stetson also summed up Penn's perspective on it quite nicely: "Early decision in its present format serves us well."

What Yale University President Richard Levin had to say was fairly similar: "Early decision programs help colleges more than applicants."

But the context was very different. For Yale, the statement was the rationale for changing the system, not a justification for keeping it the same.

Now there's a novel concept -- a college opting to put the interests of prospective students above its own.

Levin isn't denying that binding early decision helps Yale -- he's just telling the world that what's best for Yale isn't necessarily what's best for students.

We saw another refreshing view last week, this time from Stanford University President John Hennessy, upon that school's nearly simultaneous announcement that it would do away with early decision: "We have been deeply concerned about the tremendous pressures that talented young people face as they apply to colleges like Stanford." What Hennessy and Levin recognize is that locking students in to a certain school keeps out qualified students who just can't commit in the fall.

Levin, ever the progressive university president, told The New York Times last December, "If we all got rid of [early decision], it would be a good thing."

He also told the Times that other colleges would need to sign on with him on such an effort, or Yale "would be seriously disadvantaged relative to other schools." Last week, he boldly ignored his own advice for the sake of what's right.

So why can't Penn administrators emulate Yale's priority shift and worry a little more about the students who need additional time to consider their options?

If Penn needs a selfish reason, it could consider its recent disappointing performance in The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. Statistics there showed that Penn has trouble attracting members of minorities. To improve its numbers in such surveys -- and thus, its reputation -- it ought to consider that early decision programs make it harder to create a diverse student body. That's not even considering that such an attitude change would make Penn a better place overall.

Not surprisingly, though, Penn is sticking to its current policy.

"It seems to be in vogue right now to be against early decision," Stetson said last week. "But I don't think other Ivies will change their programs just because Yale did."

Neither do I. But I can hope that other Ivies -- including Penn -- would follow Yale's lead and make a fundamental philosophical change, one that would, as Levin said last week, "take pressure off students in the early cycle and restore a measure of reasoned choice to college admissions."

That approach may be "in vogue." And if putting students' welfare above a university's is the latest trend in higher education, then Penn ought to get with the times.

Matthew Mugmon is a senior Classical Studies major from Columbia, Md., and executive editor of The Daily Pennnsylvanian.

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