(Source: Yale University)

Despite hints that it might abandon early admissions, Yale has decided to continue the practice. This decision comes on the heels of moves by Harvard and Princeton to eliminate early admissions, a program that many opponents felt disadvantaged low-income students and caused unnecessary stress.

Here's how the Chronicle of Higher Education captured it:

Yale University will keep its early-admissions program despite the recent decisions by its two biggest rivals to abandon the controversial practice.

In an interview published in the January-February edition of the Yale Alumni Magazine, Richard C. Levin, the university's president, said dropping early admissions would not increase the socioeconomic diversity of Yale's applicants.

Last summer harvard university said it would dismantle its early-admissions program in hopes of encouraging more low-income and minority students to apply to the university. Less than a week later, Princeton University said it would stop admitting students early for similar reasons.

There was reason to believe that Yale might follow suit. In 2001 Mr. Levin urged elite colleges to abolish early-admissions programs, saying the policies were increasing the anxiety many high-school students experienced during the application process. Yet Mr. Levin said that Yale could not afford to drop its early-admissions program unless "a critical number" of colleges did the same.

In the interview with the alumni magazine, Mr. Levin explained how his opinion of early admissions had changed. For instance, he said that Yale had seen a significant increase in the number of low-income early applicants since 2002, when the university adopted a nonbinding early-action program, in which students may apply early to one college but may wait until the spring to decide if they will enroll.

Mr. Levin also said many high-school counselors and principals worried that abolishing early admissions at elite colleges would prompt applicants to submit more applications, leading to larger wait lists.

"Changing deadlines and decision dates will rearrange the stresses associated with the admissions process," Mr. Levin said, "but it won't eliminate them."

Although more regular applicants than early applicants receive financial aid at Yale, Mr. Levin said the university's admissions process allowed officials to "compensate" for a dearth of low-income applicants in the early pool.

"Early admissions," Mr. Levin said, "need not affect the overall demographics of the class."

Several admissions experts were ambivalent about Yale's announcement. Jane F. Ross, an independent educational consultant in New York, called Yale's early-action program a "kinder, gentler" version of early decision but said that early-admissions programs in any form pressure students to make their college choices before many are ready to do so.

Ms. Ross also agreed with Mr. Levin's suggestion that abandoning early-admissions programs could have an unintended consequence: a proliferation in the number of applications students submit. "It could make it a numbers nightmare," she said. "If you take away the early option, then you might have a whole high-school class applying to many schools."