As the University’s Nov. 15 Early Decision I (ED) deadline approaches, prospective Wesleyan students across the country begin what for many is a scramble to re-draft college essays and puzzle over the FAFSA. ED has recently come under criticism by peer institutions such as Yale, Stanford, and Harvard, all of which have discontinued their Early Action programs, arguing that not only does the process favor students of more affluent backgrounds, but also contributes to what has been described as a U.S.-News-obsessed rankings “rat race.”

“We believe Early Decision serves students well when it is used as intended: for those who really do feel clear about which school they want to attend,” said President Michael Roth in an e-mail. “We have studied whether there are class—or other biases—in the Early Decision pool, and we don’t think there are.”

A Sept. 7th joint statement signed by Roth (along with the Presidents of 18 other liberal arts institutions, including Amherst, Bowdoin and Vassar) signals the University’s effort to distance itself from the “rankings frenzy,” although that does not entail re-evaluating ED policies.

“From now on, data we make available to college guides will be made public via our websites rather than be distributed to a single entity,” reads the statement, which also commits to no longer mentioning rankings by U.S. News on said websites.

ED has been accused of being manipulated in order to boost a college’s rankings, particularly in the U.S. News report. By admitting most of the class through ED, a college may then send out fewer offers of admission during the Regular Decision deadline in April. This would boost a college’s selectivity and yield rate, yield being a measure of how many students disregard other offers of admission and actually choose to attend that school.

Senior Associate Dean of Admissions Greg Pyke disregarded this critique of ED.

“Yield is actually no longer part of the U.S. News formula, so to tie ED to efforts of some schools to improve their rankings probably won’t get you very far,” he said.

ED has also received criticism particularly from the Harvard Admissions Office for advantaging wealthy students, arguing that students from lower income backgrounds are more likely to apply Regular Decision in order to better compare financial aid packages.

“I ended up not applying Early Decision to any school because it was just not an option for me,” said Holly Wood ’08, currently working on a senior thesis in Sociology on how the college admissions process disadvantages students of lower means. “I had to compare financial aid packages from multiple schools in order to make a choice.”

ED is also criticized for favoring affluent students because those who attend private schools are more likely to receive guidance from counselors and parents who are experienced with the application process.

“My guidance counselors weren’t pushing college,” said Toni Martello ’08, who is completing a Psychology thesis on the experience of working class students in private liberal arts schools. “They were like, just graduate. Get out of here.”

“Coming from a school like I did, which was not a very good public school, only about four or five of us out of four hundred ended up going to a private university,” Martello added. “There wasn’t anyone there who was knowledgeable about the process of applying to college. I did all my research online because I couldn’t travel. I took virtual tours because I was personally motivated to go. There wasn’t anyone standing behind me pushing me.”

Based on a February 2007 report released to the Board of Trustees, obtained by the Argus, the University usually admits no more than 40 percent of the class through ED. When comparing the percentage of low-income students who enroll through ED versus those who enroll in April, it is clear that students who apply through ED are slightly more likely to be affluent. However, the difference is not substantial or unusual in comparison to peer institutions.

“[Wesleyan’s] early decision program serves the institution and the community in ways that would surprise the general public and flies in the face of much of the rhetoric against early programs,” stated Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Nancy Meislahn in an e-mail.

The report to the Board of Trustees states that when examining three ‘snapshots’ of classes—the class of 2006, 2008 and 2010—on average, usually 31 to 36 percent of those who enrolled through ED received grant aid, while another of those 5 to 7 percent were eligible for Pell grants, which are reserved for students who demonstrate the highest levels of financial need.

Jean Puckrus ’08, former member of the now disbanded Class Matters, an organization for working class students, is one of those students receiving a sizeable amount of need-based aid. She applied ED to the University precisely because her level of financial need was so high.

“When I was applying Early Decision I actually didn’t think about financial aid so much because I’m actually welfare class, not working class. I’m kind of out of the whole struggle,” Pockrus said. “Lower middle class people probably would have it worse than I would have it because then you’re in the situation where you actually have to compare a lot of packages.”

Usually, students most likely to qualify for a Pell grant—including self-identified welfare class students such as Pockrus—make up 13 to 14 percent of a class. For the matriculants of 2010, 7 percent of students who enrolled through ED qualified for a Pell grant, in contrast to the applicant pool for Regular Decision, in which 13 percent of matriculants qualified for a Pell.

“We do have an acceptably similar percentage of Pell grant recipients in both the ED and the Regular decision pool,” said Director of Financial Aid Jennifer Lawton. “…Between the two pools we’re probably talking about less than a nine percent difference, which is good. If we were looking at a 50 percent [difference] I’d be worried.”

“In terms of our peers, the percentage of students that we have on Pell really falls right in the mid-range, so we’re doing pretty well,” Lawton added.

When comparing the classes of 2010, 2008 and 2006, it becomes clearer that consistently a slightly higher percentage of low-income students matriculate through Regular rather than Early Decision, although the disparity is relatively small. For the class of 2010, 31 percent of students enrolling through ED received grant aid, versus 46 percent who enrolled in April.

“That’s lower than the regular decision pool, but it’s a lot higher than what the public expects,” Pyke said. “I think a lot of people think that nobody or almost nobody who needs financial aid comes through ED, when in fact if you look at the average for this five year period [from 2006 to 2010], it’s a little more than a third.”

Brendan O’Connell ’08, a former member of Class Matters, is another one of those students with high financial need who applied through ED, not because the University was his number one choice but because his financial need was so great that he assumed he would either receive a generous financial aid package or nothing at all.

“I had so little resources, they had to offer me something,” O’Connell said.

“Early Decision is a gateway for the rich,” he added. “I don’t think Wesleyan is wealthy enough to honor its commitment to need-based aid. Harvard and Yale have the endowments for that, but Early Decision at Wesleyan is designed to lock in the people who can afford to pay full tuition.”

Other underrepresented populations at the University, such as students of color and students who speak English as a second language, are also slightly less likely to apply through ED. In the class of 2010, approximately double the percentage of ESL matriculants enrolled through Regular rather than ED: 11 versus 5 percent, respectively. Also in 2010, 19 percent of those matriculating through ED were students of color, with 30 percent of those who matriculated through Regular decision also identifying themselves as students of color.

These numbers still place the University in good standing in comparison with peer institutions.

“Roughly one third of the students of color who enroll at Wesleyan do so through Early Decision,” Pyke said. “That’s very different from a lot of other colleges.”

Pyke explained that in the early 90’s when the University created two rounds for ED, with one binding deadline on November 15th and the other on January 1st, not only did this double the number of ED applicants, but it also helped increase the number of student athletes, students who lived outside New England, and students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds.

Although another major critique of ED is that it favors students from private schools, this is not the case for the University’s ED program. The percentage of students from public schools enrolling through ED is consistently proportional to the number of students enrolling in Regular Decision.

“In that measure, access and diversity are not negatively affected by Early Decision,” Pyke said.

Although ED is also criticized for limiting a student’s financial aid options, at Wesleyan it is possible for a student to enter an appeals process if they are unhappy with their financial package. Currently, less than 1 percent of ED applicants choose not to enroll at the University because of dissatisfaction with their financial award.

“The good news is that we don’t treat ED people or those who apply through Regular Decision differently,” Lawton said. “Whether that is known widely out there, I’m not really sure.”

“There’s no disadvantage in the financial aid process when applying ED,” she added. “If I read a file during ED and then read the same file during Regular Decision, I’d come up with the same results. You’d get the same financial aid either way. In people’s minds is there a deterrent [against applying ED if a student has high financial needs]? There shouldn’t be.”

Indeed, for several low-income students at the University, the deterrent against applying ED isn’t likely to go away anytime soon, even with the process for appealing unsatisfactory aid packages.

“I think it makes more sense to just get rid of it,” Pockrus said. “How could they put some kind of weird limit on it? They couldn’t just let the poor kids apply early.”

“Most working class people don’t end up applying to Wesleyan anyway,” O’Connell said.