As about 3,000 admitted students prepare to swarm the University for Days on the Lawn, the University is reflecting on the impact of eliminating early decision admissions.
Associate Dean of Admissions Gregory Roberts said the elimination of early decision admissions significantly changed the admissions process compared to last year, when of 6,273 admissions offers given, 965 -- or about one-third -- were awarded to early decision applicants.
Roberts said the University offered admission to 6,600 students of the 18,579 who applied this year and placed 3,242 applicants on the waiting list. Roberts added that the application pool became more competitive, as the 25th to 75th percentile SAT score range for admitted students increased from 1260 to 1460 on critical reading and math in 2007 to 1290 to 1470 this year.
Admission after Early Decision
Dean of Admissions John Blackburn said the elimination of early decision admissions had several positive ramifications.
"We got a lot of positive feedback from high school counselors," he said. "It seemed to take the pressure off some of the seniors who felt they did not have to make a decision by November 1st," Blackburn said. "Counselors are taking the requirement away that students have to decide in the fall."
Blackburn added that the University had been discussing eliminating early decision for some time, but after Harvard and Princeton announced they were dropping their early admissions programs, "We took it to the administration, the Board, and to the Faculty Senate," and those groups put their full support behind eliminating early decision.
This year, he said, extra emphasis was placed on recruiting top students.
"We teamed up with Harvard and Princeton," Blackburn said. "We took four trips traveling, visiting schools [and] talking to students and parents," adding that admission representatives "canvassed the state of Virginia" especially in rural and low-income areas.
'Bleeding orange and blue'
Blackburn said that while the new approach gave the University an opportunity to reach out to more of the commonwealth's population, the University was concerned about losing potential students who wanted to know their college fate in December.
"There are some students who want to apply early somewhere whether it's Virginia, William & Mary or Duke," Blackburn said. "We assumed we would lose some of those people who weren't dying to come here."
Blackburn also added that early decision was typically "an in-state phenomenon" with about 75 percent of admitted early-decision applicants hailing from Virginia.
Still, Blackburn said he expects "an increase in in-state yield and we don't expect to see any change with out-of-state."
Though in-state yield is expected to increase, Blackburn said, overall the yield -- the percentage of accepted students who choose to attend the University --will decrease, since, previously, one-third of the class had a 100-percent yield.
Typically, Blackburn said, the yield has been in the range of 52 to 54 percent, but "will drop a few points."
Blackburn said, though, he does not believe the elimination of early decision will deter anyone who really wants to come to the University.
"We know that there are thousands of students who want to be at U.Va. who would probably give the first joint off their finger to be here," Blackburn said. "Those students bleed orange and blue and want to be at U.Va, -- whenever we offer admission, they'll be here."
Some current students at the University who applied early noted the benefits of the old system, however. First-year College student Kristen Haurin said she believed eliminating the early decision application option was "a bad thing."
"It was really nice to know that I was going to college in December," Haurin said. "Senior year was a lot less stressful because I knew exactly where I was going ... it was nice to apply early."
Increasing access
Though the early decision option was convenient for some students, Blackburn said the elimination of early decision was made "with the single purpose and hope of increasing the number of low-income students who might consider Virginia."
Yvonne Hubbard, director of Student Financial Services, said early decision admissions put students of lower incomes at a disadvantage because they would be unable to make a financial commitment to the University until they were notified later in the year as to the amount of financial aid they would be offered.
"If you're a student whose family really needs the help in paying for college, if you really depend on financial aid to make that decision ... schools can't tell you that for early decision," Hubbard said.
Of the one-third of incoming classes previously chosen through early decision admissions, Hubbard noted, there were typically very few low-income students in that group.
AccessUVa, Hubbard said, seeks to make the University more accessible to lower-income students.
"Over the past 10 years, from 1996 to a few years ago, the number of people that were receiving financial aid from the lowest economic level were declining over time, " Hubbard said. "Our goal was to reverse that trend, and we've done that."
To increase socioeconomic diversity, Hubbard said, students from low-income families will receive full-grant packages, which comes to about $41,000 a year for out-of-state students and about $21,000 for in-state students. Students from moderate-income families, Hubbard said, will come in knowing a predetermined amount that they will be borrowing.
"We want people to be able to predict what it's going to cost to come to the University for four years," Hubbard said, adding that the amount of socioeconomic diversity in the Class of 2012 will not be observable until the May 1 acceptance deadline.
George Stovall, director of institutional assessment and studies, said that about 993 students from low-income families applied for financial aid this year, compared with 951 from last year. This is about a 4.4 percent increase in applications for financial aid from low income families, as opposed to a 2.9 percent increase in overall applications.
Although Blackburn said it will be mid-summer before final statistics about the incoming class are available, he noted "many [applications] seemed to be coming from students who were the first in their family to go to college."
AccessUVa student representative Kyle Mihalcoe said he thinks the University made the right decision in eliminating its early decision program.
"I think it's a good and right gesture," he said. "It sends a good message to students who are interested in U.Va. but don't really know how they're going to pay for [college] ... that U.Va values their contribution to the community just as much as someone who can pay"
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