The University of Virginia announced Monday that it will end its early-decision program beginning in the fall of 2008 in an effort to make the school more accessible to low-income students.

UVa's announcement comes a week after Princeton University made a similar announcement and two weeks after Harvard University became the first elite college in the nation to end the practice.

"I didn't think anybody would do it," said UVa's dean of admission John Blackburn. "Once Harvard and Princeton said, 'Yeah, it's worth doing,' it said to me ... it seems right for UVa."

Critics of early-decision programs have charged for years that because most of the programs don't allow students to compare financial aid packages, they are more attractive to wealthier students. They are also seen as a way savvier students can work the system and get an advantage in the admissions process at exclusive schools. Fewer than 20 of the 947 students accepted for early decision at UVa last year applied for financial aid.

"With so few low-income kids applying for early decision, it's been essentially a program for people who can pay their way," Blackburn said.

UVa has had a binding early-decision program since the 1960s in which students who apply by Nov. 1 agree to enroll if chosen. Each year about 30 percent of the entering class is composed of early-decision applicants.

Low-income students have been underrepresented at UVa since the 1990s, Blackburn said. A combination of tuition freezes and a strong economy led to a decline in need-based aid. UVa has the lowest percentage of students receiving federal Pell Grants among the 31 public universities with endowments of $500 million or more, according to a report from The Chronicle of Higher Education. The grants are awarded to students from families with annual incomes of less than $40,000.

In response to these problems, UVa introduced Access UVa in February 2004. The program pays all of the costs for students whose families are at or below 200 percent of the poverty level. Only one student who qualified for the maximum financial aid package under AccessUVa applied for early decision last year, Blackburn said.

Amy Widner, a spokeswoman with Virginia Tech's office of admissions, said there are no plans to end early decision at Tech. While early decision is binding there, students who applied early last year were actually accepted at a lower rate -- 49 percent -- than the overall rate of 67 percent.

"It does not change their chances; it's just for their peace of mind," Widner said of the early-decision process.

UVa averages about 2,300 early-decision applicants a year. Under the new system, those applications will join the group of 14,500 to 16,000 applications submitted by the normal Jan. 2 application deadline.

About 40 percent of students who apply for early decision at UVa are accepted compared with about 33 percent of regular applicants, though Blackburn said that's a reflection of the applicant pools, not of preferential treatment.

Blackburn said the changes could affect UVa's selectivity rate and subsequently its place in college rankings lists. But when he discussed the idea of ending early decision with faculty and administrators, it received unanimous support.

"This is the right thing to do no matter what people say about us," he said. "For a state university, we ought to be more accessible to low-income families."