So what is really going on here? Maybe the problem is that early admission isn’t actually harmful to minority and underprivileged students. Columnist Nathan Mathabane claims that this system gives the admissions office more freedom to choose students, which allows them to take more underrepresented students. Mathabane overlooks the fact that the pool of early applicants who will most likely come to Princeton already has fewer minority applicants than that of regular application, so it would be hard to select students such that minorities become overrepresented.
Another argument goes that prospective students, no matter their socioeconomic background, should be able to get on a computer to see when the early admission deadline is. This argument ignores a whole host of other factors that help richer students with good guidance counselors “play the game” of admissions. However, the real issue here is not why application rates of poor students are lower than those of their wealthier counterparts. Actually, even the fact that there exists a minority gap in early admission rates is not the real concern. What is important is that Princeton believed that there was such a gap four years ago, and on Thursday reinstated a policy that, by its logic, hurts underprivileged students.
Princeton’s decision to reinstate the policy was based, therefore, on an obsession with one of the metrics that compare it to the other three or four top schools in the sacrosanct college rankings, namely admission statistics. Princeton alludes to this motivation in last Thursday’s announcement: “One consequence is that some students who really want to make their college decision as early as possible in their senior year apply to other schools early, even if their first choice is Princeton.” Princeton was losing students, and therefore yield numbers, to schools such as Yale and Stanford that did have early admissions processes.
Which brings us to Princeton’s excuse as to why this policy is being rejected. Princeton’s announcement and quotes to the ‘Prince’ indicate that it has chosen to reverse the policy because schools did not follow suit. Setting aside the issue of Princeton’s dictating its actions based on what Harvard does and Yale doesn’t do, the University did not move toward single admissions in 2006 contingent on other schools (i.e., its admissions rivals) doing the same. It did so on the well-intentioned grounds that “adopting a single admission process is necessary to ensure equity for all applicants.” The sentiment that simply because other schools did not join Princeton, we were unable to change the system as we hoped, belies the stated goal of the policy — to make the admissions process “fair and equitable to all our applicants” This lofty goal is forced to take a back seat because Princeton wasn’t able to reform the entire system. Is Princeton so consumed with its place in the competition with other schools that it will reimplement a policy which, again by its own logic, decreases minority presentation here on campus?
The obvious flaw in Princeton’s excuse is that the policy of a single application is a direct analog of the policy of grade deflation. They are both systems that Princeton implemented with the intent of improving our education and with the hope that other schools would follow. Single application was scrapped because other schools did not implement it, so why not grade deflation? Because grade deflation does not directly and statistically affect our standings with other top schools. Whether grade deflation is good or bad, successful or not, is not the issue here. The reason grade deflation is not also removed due to lack of institutional support is because it’s not verifiably affecting our yield.
In conclusion, I think Princeton’s decision to reinstate early admission was a disheartening one. Not just because it will have a negative effect on our ability to attract qualified poor and minority students, which I think it will. Not just because it, as Tilghman said in 2006, increases “frenzy, complexity and inequity in a process that even under the best of circumstances is inevitably stressful for students and their families,” which I think it will. But because of the message that Princeton is sending that overcoming these difficulties is second to keeping our admission statistics and yield competitive.
Luke Massa is a sophomore from Ridley Park, Pa. He can be reached at lmassa@princeton.edu.
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