This morning the UVA Board of Visitors confirmed September’s decision to begin offering early action admission in the Fall 2011.
With the new policy, high school seniors will have the chance to apply to UVA early. November 1, 2011 is the deadline. They will be able to apply to other schools and then wait until May 1, 2012 to decide where to go to college.
From 2000 to 2006, UVA offered a binding, “early decision” admission. Students who chose to apply early would commit to the University if accepted. UVA stopped offering “early decision” in 2007, following Harvard and Princeton, after it was deemed unfair to minority students and those students in need of financial aid.
John Blackburn, the late UVA Dean of Admission, was a champion of the change and said that even if more applications were needed to meet class size goals, “we don’t think that it’s going to have any serious impact on what we do. Besides, we think this is the right thing to do no matter what any ranking magazine says about it,” he said in 2006.