<p>When I recently submitted my application to Harvard, Harvard indicated that my School Report, attached electronically, was still unreceived. I e-mailed them, and in the response, among other things, they noted that they "anticipated 23,000 applicants."</p>
<p>That's a significant drop from last year's 27,000+.</p>
<p>What do you think of this? Did they make a typo? Are they just artificially lowering expectations, so they can later exceed them? Do they actually expect a ~11% decrease?</p>
<p>Somehow I highly doubt the applicants will DROP, especially with Harvard moving to #1 on the us news report</p>
<p>maybe they're being modest lol</p>
<p>haha yeah. But if it seriously was 23,000, I would thank my lucky stars :D</p>
<p>how many people do they accept each year?</p>
<p>
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how many people do they accept each year?
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</p>
<p>In round figures, 2,000.</p>
<p>about 1800 got accepted last year, i think</p>
<p>Tokenadult, those figures are a little dated, no? According to the numbers you gave, Harvard had an admissions rate of ~9%. I believe last year's was ~7%.</p>
<p>Here are Harvard's official numbers for the Class of 2012:</p>
<p>Harvard</a> College Admissions Office: Guidance Counselors</p>
<p>The U-CAN site doesn't make clear when its pages were last updated, but I knew from another detail that they were a little more up-to-date (today) than the usual College Board source for comparable information. Thanks for the reminder to check the Guidance Counselors tab on the Harvard admission website, which seems to be more convenient and more frequently updated than some other parts of that same website. </p>
<p>From the page cited immediately above, </p>
<p>Applicants 27,462
Admitted 2,175 </p>
<p>2175/27462 = 7.92 percent.</p>
<p>They probably just got their numbers wrong.</p>
<p>Maybe it is 32000 instead of 23000 :s <em>dies</em> :(</p>
<p>I hope It would be 23,000 !</p>
<p>token, the page (you had to click on one of the info buttons) said it was for 2007. Thanks for showing it to us anyway; we can see how the last two years worked out.</p>
<p>It's time for the FAQ: </p>
<p>CURRENCY OF COMMON DATA SET INFORMATION </p>
<p>Each school year the colleges officially count their new freshman class AFTER the school year begins. (One college admission officer told me near the beginning of the school year that his college counts on the tenth day of class in the new school year, which I think is industry-standard practice.) Sometime around the turn of the calendar year (that is, in January during the school year) a college's figures for that freshman class begin to be posted on the College Board website, and possibly on the college's own website in the form of a Common Data Set filing. So what you see today (first semester of the school year) on the College Board descriptions of colleges is mostly information about the entering freshman class that entered in fall 2007 (that is, new college students from high school class of 2007), and that is the MOST RECENT information you have to go on as you apply for colleges yourself in fall of 2008, as a member of high school class of 2009. It is always like this--there is always a built-in lag between the year you can look up and the year you are living in as a student. </p>
<p>I hope everyone noticed that the link Cato91 (the OP of this thread) kindly shared in post</a> #9 in this thread DIFFERS from what a lot of people have been saying about Harvard's base acceptance rate in the most recent year. That's because the latest Harvard figures for the students who just entered in fall of 2008, which is what that link reports on, include students who were offered admission after first being put on the waiting list. So Harvard's overall base admission rate increased compared to the base admission rate calculated just after all the Ivy League colleges announced their regular decision results. That's going to happen any time a college resorts to its waiting list--making offers to students on the waiting list means making more total offers of admission, for a higher overall base acceptance rate. </p>
<p>The confusion among applicants at this time of year (autumn) arises when students find Common Data Set data sources with their own revision cycles, such as the U-CAN pages or the College Board College QuickFinder profiles, and compare those with figures from press releases from colleges issued in the spring. Those are not comparable figures, because they don't report the same stage of the process. After the turn of the calendar year, we should be able to see current, comparable figures from a variety of colleges that reflect the group of students who were admitted in the previous calendar year, and who enrolled in the beginning of this same school year. </p>
<p>In the future I'll keep an eye out at this time of year for Web links like what Cato91 found, specific to one college and current to the date of the Web posting, reporting what happened at that college in most recent year. But I'll continue to be wary of comparing such figures to those found on another college's website, unless I can verify that those are figures from the current autumn (after waitlist movement) and not figures from the spring date when most but not all offers of admission are announced. </p>
<p>Good luck to all of you applying this year. You knew going in that the base acceptance rate would be a good bit less than 50 percent, but you are still taking on the challenge of applying.</p>
<p>Maybe this is not related, but I heard about this year being way easier due to the bad economy..maybe less people are applying to such expensive schools? I don't know if I heard right.</p>
<p>That would be true, but Harvard offers a tremendous amount of money for its financial aid. If you ask me, I think applicants will rise drastically</p>
<p>I think it all depends on Harvard's public relations. In reality, Harvard offers one of the finest financial aid packages in the nation. But some people still associate Harvard with its sticker price of $50,000. If Harvard has been able to trumpet its financial aid initiative well enough, we should see record numbers this year; if not, we should see a drop.</p>
<p>yeah, I agree with Monkeystar, going to Harvard would be cheaper than going to a lot of state schools even</p>