Business Week on Harvard's Admissions Process

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
1

<p>A snippet of an article, which I got from a listerv:</p>

<p>"You might assume that Harvard College<em>blessed with higher ed's greatest brand name, and an endowment second to none</em>could afford to remain relatively aloof from this battle. But in reality, "There is no place that works harder than we do," says William R. "Bill" Fitzsimmons, Harvard's veteran dean of admissions. ...</p>

<p>The first phase begins in the spring, when Harvard mails letters to a staggering 70,000-or-so high school juniors* all with stellar test scores*suggesting they consider applying to America's best-known college. Harvard buys their names from the College Board... and ACT Inc.... This "search list" is obviously a very rough cut. Yet Fitzsimmonsis confident he will find many diamonds here since every year some 70% of the students who ultimately attend Harvard are on this list. </p>

<p>SCOUTING FOR TALENT. Each year, Harvard's admissions team tours 140 cities along with four other elite colleges*Stanford, Duke, Georgetown, and the University of Pennsylvania. But Harvard also visits hundreds of other places on its own. In the past year, for instance, members of the admissions team have gone to cities in Latin America, Europe, Africa, and the Far East. ...</p>

<p>In addition to his staff of 35, Fitzsimmons enlists Harvard's coaches and professors to look for talent. The math department, for instance, starts to identify budding math geniuses by keeping a close eye on kids doing well in math contests....</p>

<p>Harvard students also get into the act. Since 2003, Harvard has hired 15 to 20 low-income students to call and e-mail promising low-income high school students. ...</p>

<p>Fitzsimmons dispatches an army of some 8,000 alumni volunteers into the field. ...</p>

<p>CHECKS AND BALANCES. By then, Fitzsimmons will be deep into the second phase of his battle plan: sifting through the thousands of applicants. Every application is rated on a scale of one (the best ever) to six (the worst ever) by members of his staff. In addition, Fitzsimmons often asks Harvard professors to assess students.... </p>

<p>Then, in February, the applications are divided up geographically among 20 subcommittees.... Then, "we present the case for each applicant like a lawyer would," says Fitzsimmons. Following debate, the subcommittee votes, with a majority needed to move along to the full committee of 35. ..."</p>

2

<p>Here's a link:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_34/b3998441.htm?chan=search%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_34/b3998441.htm?chan=search&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

3

<p>A key exerpt:</p>

<p>" ... the Harvard pitch is clearly effective. Harvard achieves its impressive 80% yield even though it is one of the few elite schools that doesn't have binding early-admissions. What that means is that the some-800 high school seniors who are accepted at Harvard each December are still free to opt for another college. "These people really have a chance to see the marketplace, and there are no prisoners," says Fitzsimmons. In contrast, at most Ivy League schools, students who are admitted early must attend that school.</p>

<p>History is full of formerly great institutions that went to seed once they started taking their success for granted. But that hasn't happened at Harvard. Indeed, for all the years he has devoted to admissions, Fitzsimmons is still remarkably idealistic. "What we aim to do is to get the very best faculty together with the very best students," he says. "Our hope is that these synergies will develop the talents of these students to a much greater degree and that they will then give back a lot more to America and the world." That belief may sound corny, but it's clearly helped drive Harvard to go to enormous lengths to find the best and brightest."</p>

4

<br>


<br>

<p>perhaps fitzsimmons can explain, then, why he stopped allowing harvard early applicants to apply to other schools like chicago and MIT early. that system had, after all, allowed those early admits to "see the marketplace" better than they do now. under the current and less-student friendly system, early applicants may not be "prisoners," per se, but they certainly have their freedom curtailed so that byerly hall can enjoy four months' exclusive bargaining rights with 'em.</p>

5

<p>I beg to differ. When Harvard had unrestricted early action, 7,000 students applied to Harvard early. The number on the admissions staff remained at 35. Therefore, to be able to read 7,000+ applications in a month, giving each full consideration became impossible. Admissions officers take their jobs seriously and their decisions are always carefully weighted. They felt that they were not doing justice to these applicants.</p>

<p>Therefore, Harvard reverted to Single Choice Early Action, making early admissions back to where it truly belonged - for students who knew which college was their first choice and had carefully evaluated their options. Harvard made it non-binding so that, as Fitzsimmons says, they could still apply anywhere Regular Action and evaluate the financial aid offers that they would receive from other colleges.</p>

<p>Of course, if there were to be a political reason, Harvard's peer institutions were putting pressure on it to change to a restricted program - they know that Harvard has a lot of pull on admits (approximately 80% yield rate, unparalleled by any other college) - so they knew it was a detriment to their applicant pools.</p>

6

<p>Single-Choice Early Action makes sense because if Harvard applicants were free to apply to other schools early, the advantages of applying sooner would be defeated. It no longer would have been a chance for some to demonstrate particular interest in one school, and for that school a particular interest in them, but, instead, it would change simply into a second "applications-due" date; except, perhaps, used more by the wealthier predisposed by resources to cut short the time needed for application compilation.</p>

7

<p>hogwash, as byerly will explain when he weighs in on harvard's true motivations.</p>

8

<ol>
<li><p>Harvard got heavily lobbied by Levin of Yale, who was desperate to get out of ED, where Yale was getting killed because its early pool seriously lacked diversity, but feared the yield hit he would take if he went all the way to open EA.</p></li>
<li><p>The national college counsellor's group had came up with a stupid rule that open EA schools would have to allow applicants to apply to at least one ED school. In the one year this oddball rule was in effect, Harvard lost over 80 admits to Yale - which still had binding ED and legally forced these 80+ Harvard common admits to withdraw their applications.</p></li>
<li><p>This latter development really ****ed Harvard off, and it seriously considered a frontal challenge to binding ED, refusing to recognize the binding nature of the evil practice on the ground that it was an illegal restraint of trade. <a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=214992%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=214992&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li>
<li><p>Again, Levin got down on bended knee, and Harvard, against its own interest (IMHO) saved Levin's bacon by throwing in with the "non-reform reform" known as SCEA. Stanford breathed a sigh of relief and followed suit, hoping to reduce the size of its cross-admit pool with Harvard. <a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=243415%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=243415&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/li>
<li><p>No other Ivy was willing to risk the yield hit.</p></li>
</ol>

9

<p>I still think, and I recall that I got this idea from one of Byerly's posts, that Princeton will eventually have to go SCEA (which I guess in NACAC-speak is "REA") to demonstrate that it is a "peer" institution to Harvard, Yale, and Stanford. To me, it's just plain suspicious that a college offers only binding ED--why should it be afraid of giving admitted applicants a choice of where to matriculate, just like my state's flagship university?</p>

10

<p>Xjayz really hit the nail on its head. There was no way Harvard's admission committee of 35 people could manage the sheer volume of applications that unrestricted Early Action created. Especially given the month or so Harvard's Admissions Committee had to make decisions. H/Y/S changing to SCEA meant that some students would have the benefit of knowing ahead of time if they got into college while eliminating the pressure to choose a "right fit" early in senior year. H/Y/S's SCEA puts a check on the volume of early applicants (an advantage to all 3 schools' admissions staffs) and is obviously much better for the students.</p>

11

<p>i'm sorry, but it was never an application-volume issue. if that were it, the admissions office could have solved or at least addressed the issue by hiring additional readers or moving the application deadline forward a bit. if that were it, it could have taken measures to depress the number of frivolous applications. on the contrary, harvard has done and continues to do all it can to stoke that number, including sending materials to 70,000 PSAT'ers and staffing offices to telelphone prospectives all year long. as for "obviously much better for the students," i hope that you're not comparing single-choice to open EA, since SCEA handicaps applicants in a way open EA never did. as shown by harvard, applicants' well-being is rarely the driving force behind decisions; competitive standing is.</p>

12

<p>"if that were it, it could have taken measures to depress the number of frivolous applications."</p>

<p>No school can stop anyone from applying. And they shouldn't, either.</p>

<p>"on the contrary, harvard has done and continues to do all it can to stoke that number, including sending materials to 70,000 PSAT'ers and staffing offices to telelphone prospectives all year long."</p>

<p>Harvard buys the info for the <em>top</em> scorers on the SAT. All universities market to their target applicant by buying his/her info from the College Board. This is simple marketing. Harvard wants the top scorers to know it's out there and that they should consider applying. I don't think Harvard expects 70,000--or anywhere near that number--to apply. If Harvard wanted to inflate its applicant numbers, it would target <em>lower</em> scorers, full well knowing it is going to reject said students.</p>

<p>"as for "obviously much better for the students," i hope that you're not comparing single-choice to open EA, since SCEA handicaps applicants in a way open EA never did. as shown by harvard, applicants' well-being is rarely the driving force behind decisions; competitive standing is."</p>

<p>No, I'm comparing Y's and S's formerly ED policies (which Princeton still uses) to their current SCEA. Nevertheless, f.scottie, SCEA does not disadvantage applicants at all. It is non-binding. Students can apply wherever they want in the fall AND the spring. ED, on the other hand, severely limits students' options and is a clear ploy by universities to increase their yield. Take Princeton, for example: 26.8% admitted ED, 7.8% regular. Students who need to compare financial packages suffer the most from ED. Clearly, the "well-being" of applicants is even less of an issue at ED schools, like Princeton, than it is at H/Y/S/MIT.</p>

13

<p>Princeton's vulnerable position is revealed by the fact that its "RD yield rate" is far lower than Harvard's - or even Yale's or Stanford's; thus, it feels it must still rely on the "binding ED" crutch to boost its overall yield rate.</p>

14

<p>The last paragraph of the Biz Week story is especially telling about Harvard admissions.</p>

<p>"History is full of formerly great institutions that went to seed once they started taking their success for granted. But that hasn't happened at Harvard. Indeed, for all the years he has devoted to admissions, Fitzsimmons is still remarkably idealistic. "What we aim to do is to get the very best faculty together with the very best students," he says. "Our hope is that these synergies will develop the talents of these students to a much greater degree and that they will then give back a lot more to America and the world." That belief may sound corny, but it's clearly helped drive Harvard to go to enormous lengths to find the best and brightest. "</p>