Discriminatory Education: Early decision should be abolished from college applications due to the unfair opportunities it gives to privileged, wealthy families

Sally Sue spends her afternoons working three jobs to help support her single mom and crams her homework to maintain her 4.0 GPA. Sally applies to college regular decision. 

As much as she wanted to apply early decision to her dream school, Harvard, she couldn’t afford to pay full tuition if she was accepted, and wanted to compare the financial aid packages of the schools she was accepted to.

Billy Joe has a 3.0 GPA and is a quadruple Ivy League legacy with wealthy parents. He applies early decision without a second thought.

The early decision application process favors rich, privileged students and should be abolished  to ensure a fair college admissions process.

Early decision acceptance rates are on average 30-50% higher than regular decision acceptance rates, according to College Zoom.

Wealthier families are more likely to take the financial risk of deciding early, leaving students from poorer families with less chance of admission to top schools — essentially a way to make the rich richer and discriminate against lower-income families through education.

When students apply to multiple colleges through regular decision, they have the choice to wait until acceptance to receive scholarships and financial aid plans from each school. This allows families to compare options and choose a financially-viable school.

Early decision removes this financial safety cushion.

Though early decision policies vary from school to school, typically applicants accepted through early decision rounds are required to withdraw all other applications and are legally bound to attend, according to the College Board. It offers a higher acceptance rate and early response, but at what cost?

According to The Hill, students who attend private high schools are 3.5 times more likely to apply early decision than those who attended public school. Additionally, students who live in the wealthiest ZIP codes are twice as likely to apply early decision.

While colleges can still technically offer scholarships to early decision applicants, the students are already legally bound into attending — there’s no reason for the college to further entice them by adding a tempting check to their acceptance letter.

Maybe it seems like there’s no issue: wealthy students can apply early decision and everyone else can just apply regular decision. But colleges typically fill 40% of their freshman class through early decision, according to Collegiate Gateway, leaving less spots for underprivileged students to fill.

Basically, rich students are securing admission before disadvantaged students even send their application to admissions officers.

The shiny attraction of having a better chance of getting into your dream school becomes dull for the 28.7% of families that don’t even make $79,450 a year to pay for the approximate $317,000 total for a bachelor’s degree at Harvard, according to SoFi.

Also, the “privileged poor” — students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds but attend private high schools before entering college — represent 50% of lower-income students of color at elite universities. According to Vox, students who aren’t given the opportunity to attend a private high school are much less likely to get into an elite university — let alone be able to afford it.

Along with financial discrimination, people of color are at a disadvantage. 67% of early applicants at Georgetown University in the Class of 2022 were white, according to CNN. 

There’s a reason why colleges are keeping early decision around. Schools increase their acceptance rate for early decision students for their own benefit — to increase the yield of the amount of people accepted versus the amount that actually enroll. 

Colleges want to boast that 99% of the students they offer admission to are accepted, and accepting applicants through early decision is a guaranteed way to raise that percentage.

A more practical alternative for both colleges and students  is early action. Early action has all of the benefits of early decision — higher acceptance rate and early response — without being legally bound to attend a school. It also allows the student to compare financial aid packages to other schools they’ve applied to — solving the problem for disadvantaged students. 

Early action also gives students the opportunity to opt out of attending the university — without going through a lawsuit.

Early action is unfortunately not available at all schools because they have a large number of applicants and take a more holistic approach when reviewing applications depending on each school’s admission policies.

According to the College Board and National Association for College Admission Counseling, 12.4% of four-year non-profit schools offer early decision while 38% offer early action. 

No schools should offer early decision in order to truly treat college applicants from different financial capacities be treated the same.