College Permission System

Most colleges allow all students to apply to admission but a few elite colleges require students to send an initial letter of interest during their junior and receive a permission letter. Students are not allowed to apply to these schools had they not completed the permission process. This method has proliferated over the past decades as colleges have seen applications skyrocket and have had trouble evaluating them. The first college to adopt the new system was Yale University in 2002. However, permission letters remains largely obscure given it’s novelty and the fact that most schools fill out requests without consulting students directly. A few gifted high schools are known for giving students complete control over which schools they request permission from.
History
During the years leading up to 2002 many top colleges such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology received a record number of applications. After complaints that this did not allow each student to be evaluated sufficiently, Yale University made the unprecedented move in 2002 of requiring student to first receive a permission letter in the spring of junior year. Stanford and five other colleges adopted their own form of permission letter the following year and as of the year 2014, there are 74 colleges that required students to go through a preliminary process before applying. Over the years the request letter has expanded from simply grades and standardized tests to include a text from school official. However, some elite universities such as the University of Virginia, Binghamton University, and Harvey Mudd College have resisted the change. Gregory Richards, the Dean of Admissions at UVa, famously argued that “every student deserves his day in court after four years in high school.”
Process
The permission system is known to be a mostly technical process, as it is intended simply to eliminate students who don’t understand the standards of the school they are applying to or have some disqualifying facet. For this reason most schools deem that the forms should be filled out directly by counselors that understand the expectations at different colleges. The application for permissions is significantly shorter and more simple than the ultimate college application. No college requires a writing portion, and most colleges only require grades, standardized test scores, a short note from an administrator, and any violations of school policy that may be on a student’s record.

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