“The best years of your life” — that's what college is supposed to be, right? Almost every adult I’ve spoken to about the start of college has the same thing to say. After a brutal year of applications and decisions, I was ready for those years to begin.
Gen Z is quickly breaking records for college attendance. In a country that houses 4,313 degree-granting colleges and universities, students have many options. Despite these options, the process of applying and attending university has become a daunting machine.
Depending on where or how you grow up, attending a four-year college or university is more of an expectation than an option. If you’re applying to several schools, like many of my high school classmates and I did, there is pressure — pressure to get results and pressure to get in. With price tags on a post-secondary education reaching $75,000 per academic year at some schools, students considering a large or private university may have to confront loans or debt.
At the same time, college acceptance rates are dropping as more students are being encouraged to apply early. Many schools have developed up to three or four rounds of admissions decisions, including early decision, early action and regular decision.
With each of these choices, there are some important things for students and parents to understand. For instance, if you apply in the early decision cycle and receive an acceptance, it is binding. In this process, a student and their parent or guardian must sign an agreement prior to submitting their application consenting to this policy. This cycle is distinct from early action, in which your admissions decision comes early, but is not binding.
There are some appealing factors to the early decision option. As the name implies, early decisions come early relative to regular decisions with timelines ranging from October to December or early January. The beauty of this is that it relieves stress, given accepted students know the school they are attending as early as they can.
This is great for students with a “dream school.” If they know their top choice school ranks far above others, getting that decision early can be a massive relief. But in other hidden ways, early decision may not be so ideal.
The biggest downfall of early decision for many students is financial. Depending on the school, tuition can add up to painful numbers, and an unwritten rule is that early decision often means less financial aid because colleges have less incentive to award merit scholarships. At the very least, students are unable to compare aid packages when bound by an acceptance. This is important when applying early decision as tuition can be a factor that students don’t know to consider.
About 450 schools under the Common Application offer an early decision cycle, a little less than half of the more than 1,000 total schools available on the service. A common statement regarding early decision is that it will give you higher odds of being admitted to a college or university.
Unfortunately, this can come at a cost for low-income students. Because there is an argument to be made for less financial aid being provided to Early Decision admits, some students may not choose this cycle in fear of inadequate support.
This leads to the benefits of early application cycles being reaped primarily by higher-income students and families. With the privilege of higher education already being a difficult divide between socioeconomic classes and areas of the country, these admissions cycles further disadvantage students with such a background.
In a world in which obtaining a college degree in the United States can burden students with monstrous loans or debt post-grad, why do we support a system that may further the problem? Although there is appeal in making a choice on a college a few months earlier, the cost is not worth it in the years following.
It is also infinitely important to consider the age of most college applicants. Seniors in high school are often 17 or 18 years old when choosing where they want to continue their education. Studies show that the human brain is not fully developed until age 25. In supporting a system where students feel pressured to apply and make their choice as quickly as possible, the financial repercussions may not be felt until it is too late to turn back time.
It is our responsibility to develop a system that allows the generations that follow us to make the best choices for their long-term financial and academic success. We need to reevaluate the issues within our system and create one that will minimize fallout and assist future generations in their advancements. As colleges become more obsessed with putting financial gain over the benefit of their students, we must decide whether or not to support that system.
