I was discussing the admissions process for the EECS department with a friend at lunch today, and a question popped into my head. Why is there nothing similar to "early decision" for applying to grad school? Actual early decision probably would not work, as we have no admissions office reading applications, so the extra work of going through applications early would be too much. My idea is instead to have a checkbox on the regular application, saying something to the effect of, "If admitted, will accept offer." This should probably actually say something like you won't accept an offer from another school, whatever the early decision form says for undergrad admissions.
According to my friend, this information would be useful during the admissions process. There are lots of qualified students that get rejected for essentially arbitrary reasons, and with this information, it might be slightly less arbitrary, as certain students could be accepted to guarantee a certain yield. The very top students would be admitted regardless of whether they had committed or not, but for others, checking the box may provide their application with a little boost. Of course, applicants who don't check the box may be at a disadvantage compared to those who do. But, some applicants who would definitely come to Berkeley may be at a disadvantage now, since they can't communicate this information to the admissions committee.
Anyway, I'm curious as to what others think about this proposal.
4 comments:
Some thoughts:
It would probably be useful only at the end of the process, actually, when deciding where to make the fellowship offers. If, no matter how sweet your fellowship is, some person is still 60% likely to go somewhere else, is it worth your while? In that sense knowing someone is ready to commit is valuable.
Most people will not want to commit to going somewhere *without* hearing about the aid offer, so the number of people for whom this option is relevant may be very small and hence not worth it.
This may be most useful for non-top-tier schools -- places where making a targeted offer to an interested candidate may make a significant improvement in the quality of students who accept.
I didn't think about the financial aid stuff. I imagine that a fellowship on the EE side could actually make quite a large difference, since it'll make it easier to get an advisor, who would support you through the prelim process, etc. I think on the CS side, since not so many people are filtered at prelim time, it might have less of an impact on an applicant's willingness to commit, as having no fellowship typically has the relatively minor impact of forcing you to teach for an extra semester.
One downside is that at the time they apply, most applicants do not have enough information to make a good decision. The availability of this checkbox opens up a strategic choice that they do not have a basis for making rationally. This may lead to worse outcomes. For example, students who pay too much attention to rankings may end up at highly-ranked schools where they can't find an advisor who works well for them, and students who underestimate their abilities may end up committing themselves to worse schools than they need to.
I agree that there is a possibility of ending up with no reasonable advising options. But, how rationally did we make our grad school decisions? I'm not sure that after meeting potential advisors for 20-30 minutes during visit days, I had any real idea of how compatible we would be. To me, the bigger problem is what asarwate pointed out with the fellowships. In fact, by committing to a school, it seem that you are jeopardizing your chances for funding, as they know you have to attend even without a fellowship. Perhaps the idea could be refined to take this into account? I dunno, I need to get to work, but I'll think about it more.
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