"Admissions Revolution"

Parent Cafe
190

<p>From the Harvard Crimson: "College prepares for life without Early Action as Class of 2011 sees greater diversity"</p>

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While Harvard has experienced positive returns in its final year of single-choice early admissions, Fitzsimmons said he is “very excited” for next year’s round of admissions and the changes it will bring.</p>

<p>“We will now be out on the road a lot more, travelling through October and until December instead of winding down at the end of October,” he said, adding that College admissions officers will be travelling with Princeton and the University of Virginia, which have both also given up early admission.</p>

<p>Fitzsimmons said the additional travel time will allow his office to “expand horizons” and visit schools that rarely or never send students to Harvard.</p>

<p>“We have a search list of around 80,000 promising students and with more time we can tap into some of those students from those high schools that almost never send people our way,” he said. “It could make a real difference both in the academic quality and economic-slash-ethnic diversity of our class.”</p>

<p>The admissions office is not sure how this new application process will affect applicant numbers.</p>

<p>“Instead of 19,000 regular [decision applicants], we’ll have 23,000 or 24,000 overall applicants, I think, but who knows what the number might be,” Fitzsimmons said.</p>

<p>There is, however, the concern that applicant numbers might decrease as potential students may apply and accept early decisions at other schools such as Yale and Stanford.</p>

<p>“That’s been an issue for a very long time,” he said. “Previously we were always faced with the idea that some very good students would end up choosing binding early decisions at other universities instead of applying here.”</p>

<p>“This is one of the reasons why we look at this as an experiment,” Fitzsimmons added. “We have to be realistic. If we don’t end up as strong as we are now or stronger, we will have to consider going back to [early action], but we hope that this doesn’t turn out to be the case.”

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<p><a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=516472%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=516472&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>