Ivy Colleges Ease Early Application Deadline Amid Storm

Harvard University and other Ivy League colleges will accept early applications for the 2013-2014 school year beyond the Nov. 1 deadline because of possible disruptions caused by Hurricane Sandy.

Yale, Columbia and Cornell universities along with Dartmouth College extended their deadlines to Nov. 5, the University of Pennsylvania to Nov. 6, and Brown University to Nov. 7, according to their websites. Harvard and Princeton University gave no specific deadline for delayed applications, telling applicants to cite the reason for lateness in a note to the school.

Under such admissions programs, colleges let students apply and receive decisions before regular deadlines. Applicants typically must choose one school for early admissions. In some cases, they commit to attending; in others, they may later apply to other schools during the regular process. The eight Ivy League colleges are all located in the northeastern U.S., which is being battered by the 1,100-mile-wide hurricane that has shut schools, government offices and U.S. stock markets.

“Damaging winds will affect a large portion of the northeast as Sandy’s wind field stretches hundreds of miles, making prolonged power outages likely,” Jessica Rennells, a climatologist with the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University, said today in a statement.

To contact the reporter on this story: John Lauerman in Boston at jlauerman@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Lisa Wolfson at lwolfson@bloomberg.net

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Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) -- New York and New Jersey prepare and respond to Hurricane Sandy, the Atlantic Ocean’s biggest-ever tropical storm. The storm, 900 miles wide, prompted warnings of life-threatening surges from Virginia to Massachusetts, emptied the streets of the nation’s largest cities, paralyzed mass-transit systems and lashed the East Coast with gales, rain and even snow. It shut the federal government and state administrations, and prevented U.S. stock markets from opening for two days. (Source: Bloomberg)