This week, about 200,000 applicants to elite colleges will learn the result of their one and only “binding early decision” bid, which offers by far the best odds of admission. But for those who get in, the news comes with one giant asterisk: Back when they applied, they had to commit to attending the school if they were accepted — without knowing how much financial aid they’d get and without being able to weigh better academic or financial options elsewhere. As for those who don’t get in, the news can be crushing. Their silver bullet missed its mark.
Until a few years ago, early decision was a niche option offered by a limited number of selective colleges and governed by rules that shielded applicants from aggressive sales tactics. But legal changes in 2019 — and a huge increase in applications to selective colleges in 2020 — led more schools to funnel more of their admissions through this channel. Now, many top schools reserve half to three-quarters of their entering class for those willing to submit to these restrictive terms. (A note: Other early pathways, such as early action and rolling admissions, merely speed up the process, without any of the restrictions.)
Schools like the early decision track because it allows them to lock down attractive prospects and raise the school’s yield, the status-bestowing percentage of admitted students who enroll. Applicants put up with it because they feel they have little choice. It turns the business of applying to colleges into a complex strategy matrix in which students try to game out their chances rather than looking for the school where they’re most likely to thrive.
Applying to college doesn’t have to be this way. Congress should take action, now, to forbid binding early decision agreements for tax-exempt universities receiving federal aid. State legislatures should bar restrictive early decision practices in their states, as several have done for legacy admissions.
The House Judiciary Committee is already investigating the admissions process, out of concern that tuition algorithms may violate antitrust law. On a recent trip to Washington, I met with representatives of that committee to explain that strict early admissions agreements are part of the same problem, a tool with which schools in effect force families into paying whatever the algorithm determines.
Early decision forces 17- and 18-year-olds to make life-altering decisions without comparing options. It scares off middle- and lower-income households, allowing colleges to pad their budgets with full-pay students while still claiming to be “need blind.” And it reinforces a cynical, transactional approach to higher education that cheapens both students and institutions.
This year, Eryn Schoenebeck of New Prague, Minn., applied to Boston University, her top-choice school, through the early decision option. Would she have done it if she didn’t think it would help her get in? “Definitely not,” she told me. “If it didn’t influence my chances of admission, I would’ve loved to see where else I could get in.”
At Boston University, her chances through early decision are three times as likely as through the less restrictive options. Elsewhere, the numbers are even more skewed: If you want to get into Amherst, signing away your chance to consider other options gives you an almost fourfold advantage. At Tulane, the advantage is fivefold. At Northeastern, it’s more than tenfold.
Ms. Schoenebeck told me she’ll be thrilled if she gets a yes from Boston University, but that on balance, “I think it would be better for students if the whole system ran on regular decision.” As she put it, “I’m only 17. At the end of the day I’m still a kid. I get why schools do early decision. But asking a 17-year-old to sign an agreement” that could obligate them to “pay $90,000 a year is a really, really big ask.” As of this writing, she’s still waiting to hear the school’s verdict.
The early decision agreement that students, parents and high school counselors must all sign states that a student must attend the college if accepted, but it hints at an exception if, even with financial aid, the cost of attending is still too high for the student to afford. The thing is, says Mark Salisbury, an expert on how financial aid and admissions interact, the school gets to decide what qualifies as too high. A spokesman for Tulane told me that of the people it admitted by early decision last year, it released around 10 percent from their obligation, for financial reasons. But applicants don’t know in advance how this will play out.
Because there is so much uncertainty, families with high incomes are more likely to choose early decision and therefore benefit from its more favorable odds. It’s the perfect tool for maximizing revenues at schools positioned as luxury products, with price tags to match. “If you are filling half your class through early decision, and most of those kids are full pay or close to it, you’re not really need blind,” said Sara Harberson, the founder of Application Nation, a college advising service.
The system pits the interests of teenage novices against those of powerful institutions that pay huge salaries to admissions leaders to maximize the school’s advantage at every turn. It’s not even clear that the early decision agreement would hold up in court, and a lawsuit now challenges the whole approach on the grounds that it violates antitrust law. If colleges claim these contracts are binding when they’re really not, that’s a substantial misrepresentation. In any case, the implied threat is terrifying.
Tulane has found a way to make the process scarier still. After a few applicants reportedly reneged on their commitments, Tulane responded by blacklisting the students’ next high school graduating class from its early decision admissions round. This kind of payback is the stuff of mob movies. We shouldn’t see it from tax-exempt, nonprofit universities.
In spite of this — or perhaps because of it — early decision is spreading, even among some colleges that accept more than 80 percent of all applicants, likely because it makes them appear more selective. It’s also catching on in public universities, almost all of which had previously steered clear. This year, the University of Michigan offered binding early decision for the first time, joining the University of Virginia, which reinstated the practice in 2019 after having discontinued it as a “barrier to qualified low-income students.”
American colleges face a daunting array of challenges. Federal research grants have been slashed. The number of college-bound high school seniors is declining. Artificial intelligence has undermined academic honor codes. Faculty members worry that their institutions are in a race to the bottom that ends in a diploma-for-cash trade. Running admissions like a high-class casino is not the solution.
Applicants should be able to weigh multiple options before deciding where to spend the next four years of their lives. Killing early decision would benefit students and schools and be a small but important step toward revitalizing a culture of learning on our campuses.
Daniel Currell, a lawyer and consultant, was a deputy under secretary and senior adviser at the Department of Education from 2018 to 2021. He is a trustee of Gustavus Adolphus College.
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