<p>Bill Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions and financial aid at Harvard since 1986, said that the 29,112 applications Harvard received this year represented an all-time high, and a 6-percentage point increase from last year. He said the percentage of applicants admitted would be 7 percent, down from 8 percent a year ago.</p>
<p>7%?! i can handle that [nervous laugh]</p>
<p><em>throws jpd the proverbial bone</em></p>
<p>yea i just saw this on the local news
…they attribute the fact to their new financial aid initiative</p>
<p>YEA RIGHT…you got 29000 apps because you are Harvard and no one else is</p>
<p>HAHA, true that. Still, jeez 7%, I know I’m not going to get in, but some of my friends are really onto Harvard. Man, this might suck for them.</p>
<p>Lucky 7…!</p>
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<p>Still, a lot of schools get more than that. UCLA gets nearly twice as many as Harvard each year, and Berkeley and UCSD are only a few thousand behind that.</p>
<p>… yeah but they accept more… ^^</p>
<p>True, but that doesn’t mean the statement makes sense. I could say, “Berkeley, you got 48,000 apps because you are Berkeley and no one else is,” but that doesn’t make it meaningful.</p>
<p>haha i agree, just saying.</p>
<p>Take out the recruited athletes and the 200-300 each year that Dean Fitzsimmons says are no-brainers due to world-class accomplishments, and it’s down to 5.5% for everyone else!</p>
<p>^ I recall Scott Clarke (Yale) saying the same thing in an interview; that 100-200 applicants each year were just so incredibly awesome that they were admitted.</p>
<p>How much overlap do you think there is?</p>