Harvard University Requests College Planning Partnerships to Participate in its College Access Collaborative

The project is headed by Christopher Avery, professor of Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and author of The Early Admissions Game: Joining the Elite, a defining book on early admissions.

This research project is motivated by recent studies that concluded that students from families with below-median incomes are dramatically underrepresented at selective private colleges. The project will attempt to assess why this is so. There is currently a scarcity of high-qualified, low-income applicants.

The Early Admissions Game:

Each year, hundreds of thousands of high school seniors compete in a game they'll play only once, whose rules they do not fully understand, yet whose consequences are enormous. The game is college admissions, and applying early to an elite school is one way to win. But the early admissions process is enigmatic and flawed. It can easily lead students toward hasty or misinformed decisions.

This book--based on the careful examination of more than 500,000 college applications to fourteen elite colleges, and hundreds of interviews with students, counselors, and admissions officers--provides an extraordinarily thorough analysis of early admissions. In clear language it details the advantages and pitfalls of applying early as it provides a map for students and parents to navigate the process. Unlike college admissions guides, The Early Admissions Game reveals the realities of early applications, how they work and what effects they have. The authors frankly assess early applications. Applying early is not for everyone, but it will improve--sometimes double, even triple--the chances of being admitted to a prestigious college.

An early decision program can greatly enhance a college's reputation by skewing statistics, such as selectivity, average SAT scores, or percentage of admitted applicants who matriculate. But these gains come at the expense of distorting applicants' decisions and providing disparate treatment of students who apply early and regular admissions. The system, in short, is unfair, and the authors make recommendations for improvement.