It once seemed like the ideal way to get into a college. Pick your dream school, apply under an early action or early decision deadline, and await the (hopefully) good news.
But officials both at Fairfield University and nationally say that may not be the case anymore, as deferrals and rejections are higher than ever.
According to Karen Pellegrino, Director of Undergraduate Admissions here at Fairfield, the early deadlines are a “double-edged sword.”
Often students feel compelled to apply early when it is “not necessarily in their best interest,” Pellegrino says, as the application process takes time away from their first semester of senior year when they should be more focused on academic work.
A New York Times article delved deeper into these recent issues and opinions across the country.
In the article “As a Broader Group Seeks Early Admission, Rejections Rise in the East,” co-writers Jenny Anderson and Richard Perez Pena cite that many schools are receiving a greater spectrum of minorities and foreigner applicants, thus making them more alluring to admissions.
Additionally, there are a greater amount of applicants than ever before because of more opportunities for students to go to college; therefore, the competition is top notch.
When choosing between a New York City prep school student or a student who lives in South America, schools will now pick the latter because of the growing trend of increasing diversity on campus.
In response to The New York Times article, Pellegrino dismissed some myths regarding the early decision and early action decision process.
“The admission process for early action candidates is not less selective, contrary to popular opinion, since we do not have the context of the entire applicant pool when we are making our admissions decisions… They are not more competitively reviewed, but much of our decision making is based on comparing applicants and admitting the best students possible,” Pellegrino said.
As for applicants vying for a spot in the Fairfield class of 2016, early action and early decision applicants rose 14 percent from the year before, but there were still more high school seniors that applied for regular decision, Pellegrino said.
So why do students really apply under these early deadlines?
For many students of Fairfield, applying for the early action deadline simply allows them to know where they stand, and they do not believe that they will have any sort of an advantage over the rest of the applicant pool.
When applying to Fairfield in the fall of 2008, junior Timothy Smith said that he “wanted to know where I was in and where I was out before the new-year.”
Smith benefited from this decision, but others were not as fortunate.
Senior John Tessitore applied early action thinking that he would have an upper hand on the rest of the candidates and was deferred; luckily, he was not discouraged.
“When I found out I got in, I was ecstatic, and ended up coming here. It turned out to be one of the greatest decisions of my life,” Tessitore said.
Other students avoided the November 1 deadline all together.
Junior Diane Carter stated that she did not apply to Fairfield under the early admissions deadline because her high school guidance counselor told her not to, urging her that it would be more competitive, and thus harder to get in.
Yet, out of ten randomly selected Fairfield freshmen students asked, eight of them were encouraged to apply to schools on the early action or early decision agenda by their guidance counselors.
Fairfield’s statistics for the 2011-2012 applicants will not be completed until the fast approaching May 1 decision day.
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