Harvard: no more early admissions. Um...yay?

Apparently this is a shocking news flash on CNN, and as I was eating my dinner--home-made bean and lettuce wrap, refreshingly cold from my fridge with at least 94% of my recommended daily intake of fiber, mind you--numerous thoughts of What Would I Have Done (WWIHD) raced through my head.

So yes, I got in early action, as did most people I know at Harvard. I applied to Harvard as a wager with some friends that I'd never get in (I still owe those guys the dinner I promised). Early action seemed logical. Figured I'd get the fanciful application out of the way, and get ready to deal with 'real' apps for school like Tufts and BU and UMass. Early action had other sweet advantages: if I did get in, it's straight to senioritis-ville for the second semester. Sweet cruising, no real learning. yep. Life would be good. If I didn't, well, I never expected I'd get in anyway, so life would go on as planned. Sweet.

I feel the need for a medal now when I think about how I schemed all by myself, since the CNN article made it sounds like it was only the advantaged prepschool kids with in-the-know counselors/$20,000 consultants who can deviously scheme such a cost-benefit analysis and execute said plans. To be fair, it appears that in general more advantaged kids are the real recipients of the benefits of early action at the expense of more disadvantaged applicants. Hopefully abolishing the system will encourage a more diverse application pool, as Harvard thinks it will, and create a fairer process. I'm still skeptical about making the process less stressful, however. If anything, now one has one more school to apply to, at the same time as plenty of other ones, to add to the innevitable 'ball of stress' come senior year.

I was scheming, and calculating, but on my own. Whatever. Without early action, I don't think I would have applied to Harvard, and the bet with my friends would have remained just another lunch time conversation in the cafeteria. I'm so glad I applied early though, especially since senior spring was awesome once my brain check out in January. Ahhh, those were the days......