When two professors on Harvard's Standing Committee on Admissions and Financial Aid said that the school was strongly considering allowing applicants already accepted under other colleges' binding "early decision" programs to enroll at the Cambridge campus, the implications of the announcement, made in early June, were daunting.
If Harvard opted to break the traditional gentleman's agreement among the nation's top colleges and universities, the action would critically disadvantage schools who counted on their early decision applicants to matriculate.
Instead, they would have to fear deferral from students accepted during the early action or regular decision round at Harvard -- a college with a yield 10 to 15 percent higher than its closest competitors.
A recently-released statement from Harvard's Office of Admissions and Financial Aid, however, withdrew that possibility.
"It is our expectation that students admitted elsewhere under binding Early Decision will honor their previous commitment and not matriculate at Harvard," the document said according to The Crimson.
Despite the earlier notices that left other top colleges wondering if, according to Dartmouth's Dean of Admissions Karl Furstenberg, Harvard was "essentially going to be raiding schools' admissions," Harvard's policy for next year will include no marked changes.
Furstenberg explained Harvard's changing line in the context of a decision made last fall by the National Association of College Admissions Counselors.
The policy, set forth at a conference held shortly after Sept. 11 and consequently with abnormally low attendance, allows students to apply to colleges under both early action and early decision plans, with the presumption that students would matriculate at the early decision school if accepted.
"They saw this as maximizing students' flexibility," Furstenberg said of the NACAC's decision, which represented a change over the earlier system in which early decision applicants were limited to planning applications to other schools under regular decision in case they were rejected from their first choice.
"I think Harvard was trying to sort out just what that meant" for its own admissions program, Furstenberg said.
While Furstenberg did not anticipate a similar issue arising in the future, he expressed a "hunch" that further developments in the ongoing early admissions debate will ensue along a pair of lines.
For one, continued evaluation of the merits of such programs as a whole are likely to continue -- last December Yale President Richard Levin stated a personal desire to do away with the college's early decision program.
Though Levin stated that he would not enact such a change without cooperative actions from other elite universities for fear of putting Yale at a disadvantage, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has recently axed its own program.
Additionally, the NACAC will "probably take a closer look" at the new guidelines that were issued last fall.
Furstenberg expressed approval for Harvard's recent decision to maintain the status quo, but noted that "it would have been better if they'd avoided this whole mess entirely."
Harvard Director of Admissions Marilyn McGrath Lewis did not return a phone call request for interview.
