<p>Article entitled "He's Redefining Acceptance at Harvard" chronicling changes in admisssions at Harvard over the years and the influence of Dean Fitzsimmons.</p>
<p>Here's the link for your reading pleasure:</p>
<p>He’s</a> redefining acceptance at Harvard - The Boston Globe</p>
<p>Class of 2013 - 38.9% minority.</p>
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<p>Over Thanksgiving, my daughter unearthed my grandmother’s Radcliffe yearbook – Class of 1919. We were pleased to see that she was a leader in both the Menorah Club and the Communist Club. So the nuns may not have been entirely wrong.</p>
<p>"CAMBRIDGE - He set his sights on Harvard University while in middle school, after stumbling across it in the encyclopedia. Though he lived in a nearby town, the son of a gas station owner had never visited the campus. The nuns at his Catholic high school refused to write him recommendations, proclaiming the college full of atheists, communists, and rich snobs.</p>
<p>Not only did William Fitzsimmons get in, one of just a handful of students on a nearly full scholarship the 1960s, he has spent his nearly four-decade career in Harvard admissions helping transform a bastion of privilege into one more accessible to students from backgrounds like his…</p>
<p>“He is the most influential dean of admissions in America,’’ said Jim Miller, Brown University’s admissions dean.</p>
<p>Colleagues say he has persuaded scores of wealthy alumni to fund scholarships for a rising number of low-income students, even if doing so means making it more difficult for their own children to get in. In 2006 he pushed officials to make Harvard the first school of its caliber to end early admissions, which tend to favor the most affluent, savvy students.</p>
<p>“Bill is changing people’s perception of what it takes to come here,’’ said former Harvard president Derek Bok. “There’s such an impression that Harvard is a really elite school full of nerdy people from wealthy families who went to prep school. The great triumph is when you find someone in an unlikely place who against all odds achieved something.’’</p>
<p>For those who are not anti-sports, or perhaps even if you are, a very engaging film is the Harvard beats Yale 29-29. This is a documentary made about a year or so ago regarding a terrific football game. It interviews dozens of the players in the game (including Tommy Lee Jones–whom I like as an actor but didn’t like much in the film), and delves into life at Harvard and Yale in the late 60’s just before co-education and at the height of the Vietnam war.</p>
<p>This film chronicles that period of time when Fitzsimmons was at Harvard, and does a good job of it, IMHO. The great bulk of the film is not so much football as it is the participants talking about the times that were and how the game fit into those times. There are discussions of Trudeau with his Doonesbury strip, Meryl Streep as the date of one of the players, Bush and Gore (Jones has an amusing anecdote here).</p>
<p>I highly recommend this to anyone who is interested in the history of the Ivy’s. Its pretty interesting to listen the the athletes talk about their lives at that time. You can find trailers of it online, and some rental stores have it.</p>
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<p>Harvard was always a bit different from Princeton and Yale insofar as Radcliffe students (“Cliffies”) took classes at Harvard.</p>
<p>The 38% minority includes Asians. The usual minority figure - black, latino, native American - there is closer to 20%.</p>
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<p>Like what Jewish family didn’t have a grandmother or great-aunt who was a socialist or communist, LOL.</p>
<p>Oh, yeah–Harvard is just full of nonelite poor and middle class people.</p>
<p>Spare me.</p>
<p>Harvard has an impressive percentage of students coming from families making les than $60k a year.</p>
<p>“Today, 63 percent of Harvard students receive scholarship assistance, up from 40 percent three decades ago. Those from families making less than $60,000 a year get a virtually free ride; such students account for nearly a fifth of Harvard’s undergraduates, an increase of 30 percent from five years ago.”</p>
<p>By definition, the elite has got to be small (and is scattered among other top schools–Harvard does not have a monopoly).</p>
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<p>Yup. I’m a parent of two of them, and most of their friends on campus would fit that description. And then some of their friends are from remarkably elite backgrounds, but all seem to fit and and mesh very comfortably. Just one of many of my former Harvard stereotypes and assumptions that have turned out to be inaccurate.</p>
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<p>Harvard has one of the nation’s most generous FA policies, but let’s not get carried away with how much they’re doing for those in the lower income rungs. That “30% increase” in students from families making less than 60K translates to an increase from around 15.4% to 20% (or less–it says “nearly a fifth”). That’s not a trivial shift, but it’s not enormous, either; it means each year Harvard takes a few dozen more students in this income bracket than it did five years ago. And remember, the median household income in the U.S. is only around $45,000; over 60% of U.S. households make under $60,000. So if kids from this group make up “nearly a fifth” of Harvard’s student body, you’d have to say that households with incomes under $60,000 are clearly still an “Under-Represented Majority” at Harvard.</p>
<p>As for the big increase in the percentage of Harvard students receiving scholarships (now 63%, up from 40% three decades ago), that’s mainly because Harvard is now much more generous in providing grant aid to students from upper-middle-income families. Harvard now routinely provides need-based financial aid, i.e., cash grants under its no-loan policy, to kids from families earning up to $200,000—and sometimes higher, if there are “special circumstances.” With family income up to $180K, you pay only 10% of household income. So a kid from a family with an income of $180K, which puts them roughly in the top 5% of income-earners, can go to Harvard for $18K a year, with the remaining $30K or so provided courtesy of the The Harvard Corporation. Generous indeed . . . especially at the high end, where few competitors match Harvard’s generosity.</p>
<p>I’m not knocking it; Harvard’s a great deal, if you can get in. But let’s not kid ourselves about how much they’re doing for those in the lower income brackets. It speaks volumes that 37% of Harvard’s students receive no need-based aid, despite Harvard’s generous high-end FA policy. Given those FA policies, we can infer that nearly 2 in 5 Harvard students are from families with incomes in the $200K+ range, which puts them in the top 2 or 3% of income-earners; while only half as many (<20%) come from the 60% of households making <$60K. </p>
<p>Bottom line, Harvard is not nearly as much a “leveler” as it would have us believe.</p>
<p>^^ Good points - and I would add that I am curious to see what effect the crash in Harvard’s endowment will have on these numbers going forward. You have to have a HUGE endowment to support policies such as this because someone has to pay the bills. And with the sizeable drop in their endowment, they will be hard pressed to continue this policy</p>
<p>Thanks, bclintock. I thought that was the case. It’s a little grating to read about Harvard patting itself on the back about this.</p>
<p>Harvard’s annual undergraduate financial aid represents less than 0.5% of its much-reduced endowment. (It used to be less than 0.33%.) Granted, not all of the endowment is available for this purpose; lots is committed to the professional schools. But given the high priority and high visibility of Harvard’s financial aid policies, and the fact that most were being put in place 7 years ago when the endowment was roughly where it is today, I don’t think there’s serious doubt as to the sustainability of Harvard’s effort in this area.</p>
<p>JHS:</p>
<p>The appropriate figure to use is not the endowment but the payout–that is the amount available to be used not only for financial aid but for all other operational needs. Harvard and other institutions have been trying to keep the payout to under 5% (which raised Congressional hackles earlier). I believe that Harvard is still trying not to breach the 5% line.
At 5%, the payout on 26 billions would be $1.3 billions. I remember reading a financial aid figure some time ago at $86 millions, but it is unclear to me whether this covers only the College or the graduate schools (including GSAS which does not have a separate endowment).</p>
<p>Sustainable or not, I’ve heard that the Harvard Corporation had been pushing for expanding finaid to families making $180k or less for quite a while and will not be persuaded to rescind the expansion, though it would make quite a dent in the deficit.</p>
<p>Re: post #13:
I don’t know what the fact that 37% of Harvard students receive no finaid except that Harvard does not discriminate against students with families making more than $200k.
Despite being saddled with parents who fall into this category, my S definitely earned his place at Harvard. And from what I could see, so did his friends with families similarly circumstanced, as did his friends on full or partial rides.</p>
<p>marite – yes, the payout is important, and it is fairly standard to target that at 4-4.5% annually. Or . . . approximately $1 billion+, based on current levels, with undergraduate financial aid representing less than 10% of that. Which is why I predict it will be sustainable.</p>
<p>I was recently at Harvard freshman parent weekend. I can’t speak to the freshman class as a whole, but my young relative’s suite consisted of three wealthy white kids (from prep schools or mega-publics like Scarsdale), and two URMs. No middle class white kids in sight (Unless you consider an annual income of $300K or up “middle class.” While it may seem middlin’ in some enclaves in Westchester or Fairfield Counties, or in wealthy parts of LA, it just is not meaningfully middle in reality.)</p>
<p>On the other hand, I do actually know a genuinely middle class white kid in the class of '12.</p>