After a sharp rise in Early Action applications this year, the University announced yesterday that it would re-institute a policy preventing applicants from applying early to both Harvard and other colleges.

In an effort to comply with national guidelines established in fall 2001, Harvard decided last year that it would allow its Early Action candidates to also apply early to an Early Decision school.

Students accepted through Early Action at Harvard are not required to enroll. By contrast, students applying through an Early Decision program at other colleges are obligated to attend if accepted.

The College reversed course after an unprecedented increase in early applications stretched Byerly Hall’s resources to the limit with applications from many students who were not eligible to enroll, according to Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67.

This fall, early applications soared from their customary level of 6,000 to around 7,500. But according to Director of Admissions Marlyn McGrath Lewis ’70-’73, 88 students who were accepted early—about one in 13—withdrew their applications when they were accepted to other colleges under binding Early Decision, slightly decreasing Harvard’s early yield, which at its traditional level near 90 percent is the highest in the country.

“[The policy change] allows us to focus on those candidates who are free to accept our offer,” said McGrath Lewis. “It’s more honest and simpler for applicants…We did expend a great deal of effort in evaluating people who would not have been in the pool [under the old policy], and we would prefer not to do it again.”

McGrath Lewis said University President Lawrence H. Summers approved the change yesterday.

“Our return to a single early application policy is far better for students,” Summers said in a press release. “It is more closely aligned with the original intent of early admission programs, which are designed for students with a clear and well-considered interest in a particular college or university. This kind of program was never intended to put extra pressure on students by moving the deadline for multiple applications into the early fall.”

The old policy left applicants who had been accepted early by both Harvard and an Early Decision school holding a Harvard acceptance letter they could not use without violating their commitment to another college.

Last spring, Harvard’s Standing Committee on Admissions and Financial Aid discussed letting those students enroll anyway, but administrators decided against it after a series of critical articles ran in national newspapers.

While most students in this situation honored their Early Decision agreement and withdrew, McGrath Lewis said, three or four failed to withdraw their Harvard applications. In one case, she said, the University was recently informed by another elite institution that a student whom that college had accepted under Early Decision was also accepted through Regular Action at Harvard after being deferred. When Harvard contacted the student, according to McGrath Lewis, she said she “forgot” that she was expected to withdraw her application to Harvard.

“I don’t doubt she will do the right thing,” McGrath Lewis said. “[But if not,] we will say no thanks.”

In a “handful” of cases, according to Fitzsimmons, students with other binding commitments tried to enroll at Harvard anyway, but were told they could not after an admissions official spoke to their college counselors.

“We spent a great deal of time with a relatively small number of people who ended up being admitted here and to a binding Early Decision college,” Fitzsimmons said. “This is not easy. But we were very clear. If they were admitted binding Early Decision somewhere else, they really had to go.”

However, he said, Harvard did not inform those students’ Early Decision schools that they had tried to break their commitments and attend Harvard.