Seniors debate on their college applications

Two years ago, the University of Virginia made a decision that directly affected last year’s graduating class and will continue to affect future applicants. The University of Virginia, which is located in Charlottesville, decided to stop offering early acceptance as an option for applicants.

UVA is one of many colleges that have gotten rid of the early-decision program. Other schools that have dropped that option include Harvard, Princeton, and UNC. These colleges are public and mostly Ivy League, ones where the financial part of early decision can be a big issue.

“You have to be sure that you want to go [to that school] and can pay the tuition,” said Career Center specialist Robin Roth. “When you apply for early decision, there is a contract made between you and the school. If they accept you, you have to go.”

 Harvard’s website gave an estimate of the tuition for the 2008 to 2009, about $32,557 which isn’t including room, board, or health and student service fees. When applying for early decision, the applicant is promising not only that if they are accepted they will attend the school, but that they can pay for the school without financial aid. Those factors make the binding contract of early decision less desirable for seniors.

“Early decision used to be a strategy for being admitted. People think that if you declare an early, first choice, then you have a better chance at being admitted to that college or university,” said Roth.

Even though some of the nearby colleges and Ivy League schools have given up on early applicants, not all of the schools have. Some Annandale seniors have already applied early decision for schools, like Taimoor Bhatti, who applied for Mary Washington.

“I respect the decision [to end early decision] at other colleges,” Bhatti said. “But I would like it if they [still had early decision at schools]”

There are two different kinds of early applications. There are early decision applications, which bind the applicant to the school, then there are the early action applications, where the applicants submit their applicants by November first of their senior year and they are notified by mid-December instead of April.

“I chose not to apply early decision to Cornell University because I wanted leave my options open. It would’ve been great if they had early action simply because it would’ve been nice whether to know the result of your application without being bound to the school,” said senior Emily Koppelman.

Likewise, senior Anna Davis did not apply early decision for any schools. “Christopher Newport’s 72 hour admissions process made me get all my stuff I had to get done for college in one sitting, like my activities record,” Davis said.

With more people applying to colleges, many of them applying to six or seven colleges, and the same amount of spots in college, actually getting into a school of one’s choice is becoming increasingly difficult.

“It’s the small private schools that are keeping the early decision,” said Robin Roth. “The bigger schools are more competitive and the admition rate is not going up.”

Even though a lot of schools are getting rid of early decision as an option, some schools still have it.

“It’s useful if they have it, but if not, it’s not a big deal,” said senior Sean Huyhn.

Although he may not care about early decision one way or another, it still is a decision that many other seniors may have to make.