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Institute of International Education
809 United Nations Plaza
7th Floor
New York, NY 10017
USA
Tel: +1 (212) 984 5367
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Straits Times
Top US colleges ease up on admission rules
By Jane Lee
11/18/2002
(c) 2002 Singapore Press Holdings Limited
Students who get early acceptance at Stanford or Yale can change their plans if
need be and choose not to enrol
FROM next year, students applying to prestigious universities Yale and Stanford
in the United States will no longer be compelled to attend the colleges if their
applications are accepted through the early-decision scheme.
Under the scheme, a student uses his preliminary A-level results to apply to a
college by November and gets a reply in mid-December, the New York Times
reported recently.
Under the regular admission process after the final results are out, he would be
notified in March or April.
If he is accepted under the early-bird scheme, he has to enrol at the university
if it accepts him - a rule that is followed by all Ivy League colleges except
Harvard and by most top American colleges.
But, technically, there is nothing the university can do if the accepted student
refuses to sign up, other than forfeit a deposit, as the application is not a
legal contract.
A student can apply to only one university under the scheme, which requires him
to withdraw any other applications under the regular admission exercise.
Both colleges arrived at their new decision separately early this month, but for
similar reasons - to ease the pressure on students during the application
process.
Yale president Richard Levin said in a statement that, in recent years, an
increasing number of applicants have been resorting to early-bird applications,
to improve the odds of gaining admission to these prestigious institutions.
But many discover they made their choice too early, before they had the chance
to study other options.
Yale and Stanford will now offer an approach known as early action.
Early applicants will still be told in December whether they have a place, but
now they will be allowed to apply to other colleges, too, and will not have to
make their choice until May.
Both universities, however, will still bar early applicants from other
early-admissions programmes.
However, many other American colleges, including Harvard, the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago, do not limit students
from applying early elsewhere.
Last year, about two in five of the 1,300 freshmen in Yale and almost 35 per
cent of the Stanford's 1,600 or so freshmen were admitted via the early-decision
route.
According to Open Doors, a publication by the Institute of International
Education, 46 Singaporeans got into Stanford last year and 18 into Yale, but it
is not known whether they entered on the early or regular admissions schemes.
Although figures for the number of Singaporeans who try for an early decision
are not available, Ms Carolyn Gerber, the director of the United States
Education Information Centre here, confirms some give it a shot.
But she advises against doing so, saying it is too risky to commit to a
university before making sure that one can afford the fees, which can be more
than $70,000 a year.
She said: 'Many students get caught up in the hype of it. They see their friends
going for an early decision, so they think they need to as well. But it's a
dangerous path and they need to resist it.'.
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