Early admissions stats point to inequity

We do not know whether the rise in applications, from 1,493 to 1,800, represents a success of the Undergraduate Admissions Office's extensive new initiatives, which include new CD-ROMs, color viewbooks, increased financial aid and new recruiters. "I don't know why we went up," Shaw cautions. To him, the only possible response is, "Gee, that's nice, we're popular." He adds that he doesn't know if early acceptances are the place to look for diversity, since the early decision pool is traditionally very homogeneous. Don't worry, he says, we'll get the minorities in the next round.

This initial lack of diversity is self-selected, the result of students who need to weigh financial aid offers and avoid the binding early decision process. But as Yale consistently accepts students at a more generous rate through the early process (reminded of last year's acceptance rate, he responds, "Gee whiz"), Shaw acknowledges students may feel "compelled to commit." Sitting back in an elegantly upholstered white chair, sporting a blue polo shirt and silver wire-frame glasses, calculating percentages on the fly with a pocket calculator, Shaw is surprisingly lacking in confidence. "We think about it a lot," he says. "We are sensitive to the fact that we don't want to disadvantage students who are competitive in the regular decision process."

In fact, Yale switched from early action to early decision with the Class of 2001 for this very reason. As many as 100 students a year were carrying slots through April before deciding not to come to Yale. Shaw's goal is to help people who have Yale as their first choice come here, though he acknowledges a growing sense among students that they have to apply somewhere early just as a strategic move. The trend in early admissions has been an increase across the board. And, he adds, the move by Harvard and others to allow applications to multiple schools through the non-binding early processes has only increased stress for high school students and counselors. Students will often occupy a high school's slots at a college, only to decline them in April, letting them go wasted. Harvard's early applications increased 30 percent last year when the change was announced (and they went up another 1.2 percent this year, though the percentage of minorities in the new class decreased).

Leaving early decision as a problem either way, will new initiatives draw more diverse students to Yale? Where, for example, did they cook up this whole thing with the Common Application? From high school counselors, explains Shaw. And what about the money? Well, he notes, 12 percent of applications to Yale use a fee waiver, and financial aid has just been increased for international students and scholarship recipients. Even as the application process gets more competitive—the worst Shaw's ever seen it, especially when it comes to the New York metropolitan area—the undergraduate admissions office is working to bring in more students who are more diverse; plenty of undergraduates play piano and violin but what he could really use is a good bassoonist.

Shaw is constantly running into people who say that if they applied now, "I never would've gotten in." He responds only half-jokingly, "Aren't you lucky?" But, he says, applicants continue to labor under the assumption that there are only 10 universities in the United States—especially when there are actually 2,300. "I don't think we should be focused on applications," he said. Yale has more important things to worry about than acceptance numbers, he figures. Although staff increases are likely at this little building on Hillhouse, perhaps fanfare can be avoided.

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