Harvard's Admissions Process

Colleges and Universities A-Z Harvard University
1

<p>Hello all, I posted this in the Parents' Forum under the thread "Why does the GC dislike Harvard?". I am putting the post here for your reference. Best of luck.</p>

<p>--
I guess for the benefit for everyone, I'll go through the admissions process as detailed by my admissions officer.</p>

<p>First, you submit your application. Then, an officer, who is specifically in charge of your high school, reads the application. This is the first "portal," so to speak, and students they know will stand no chance at committee are eliminated. Approximately 5,000 to 6,000 students out of the 23,000 applicants do not get across this first "portal." It is pretty obvious who is eliminated at this point - students who have sub par (below 600) test scores, not taking advantage of their high school curriculum, no extracurricular activities, etc.</p>

<p>The remaining 17,000 will get ratings. Harvard uses 1-6 with 1 being the highest and 6 being the lowest in academics, extracurricular activities, personal qualities and athletics. Obviously, the athletics rating only comes into play if the student actually wants to be recruited or has spent a lot of time on varsity athletics. For most students, athletics isn't really a concern. A "1" or "2" rating in academics or extracurriculars mean extremely high achievement in those respective fields.</p>

<p>In most cases, the regional officer passes the case onto a second admissions officer in the same regional subcommittee. It can even go onto a third reader! At this point, they are comparing students to the overall strength of the applicant pool. Approximately 5,000 to 7,000 students get past the second "portal."</p>

<p>Now, the final, or third, "portal" is much different than many other colleges. Each case is debated by all 35 admissions officers. (NB: This is why I personally believe that there is no luck in being accepted at Harvard.)</p>

<p>The regional officer will debate on the student's behalf, and the other admissions officers sitting there all want students from their region to be accepted. It does get down to the nitty-gritty, mostly on their personal characteristics rather than academics, as if your academics were sub-par, then you probably would not have made it through the second "portal." 12 out of the 35 admissions officers have to say "yes" to your application.</p>

<p>Are these accepted applicants safe yet? Not really. It always happens that the number accepted is always greater than the approxmiately 2,100 students that they shoot for every year. Therefore, all accepted applicants are reviewed YET AGAIN in order to deny or waitlist the student. Most students will be waitlisted at this point.</p>

<h2>With an 80% yield rate, Harvard rarely goes to the waitlist. This past year, for the Class of 2010, there were about 10 students taken off the waitlist.</h2>

2

<p>Is process same for SCEA rounds too?</p>

3

<p>yeah.</p>

<p>But what about the experimental acceptances? Harvard accepts a few students they might not otherwise have to test them and see their performance.</p>

4

<p>newparent: Yes. it is the same, it's just on a much more compressed scale. For SCEA, the process is in about 1.5 months. For RD, the process takes about three months, so they have more time.</p>

<p>Kamikazewave: What are you talking about, "experimental acceptances"? That makes no sense. Why would Harvard admit someone they're not sure of, when they have very good candidates?</p>

5

<p>They accept few candidates every year that they're unsure of, and use the data from that for future admissions. As in an experiment. Makes perfect sense.</p>

6

<p>What about early likely letters for RD applicants? How do the admission officers arrive on these applicants who may be in the order of one to three hundred applicants? These letters come out way before April 1st deadline.</p>

7

<p>Harvard only sends out likely letters to athletic recruits. Athletic recruits, just like any other college, work a bit different in the admissions process. An admissions officer is in charge of a particular sport (I know the one who is in charge of baseball and another who is in charge of football). They are the ones who talk with the dean of admissions who knows the overall applicant pool strength.</p>

<p>Likely letters are only determined again by the 35 admissions committee. You can basically see it as a "separate" process from the regular pool.</p>

8

<p>"But what about the experimental acceptances? Harvard accepts a few students they might not otherwise have to test them and see their performance."</p>

<p>? Sounds like a myth to me. According to Harvard's dean of admissions, 85% of its applicants "qualify" for admission. My conclusion would be that since Harvard has to already turn down so many outstanding, qualified applicants, it has no reason to have any kind of experiment to see how the apparently unqualified applicants would do.</p>

9

<p>xjayz-You should write a book! Or at least an "expose" magazine article.</p>

<p>Also, is it true that accepted students can go to Byerly and see their application + rankings? I'm not sure if I'd want to! But it would be kind of cool.</p>

10

<p>I think all the stuff is being moved to a new building and Byerly will no longer be used for FAS admissions.</p>

11

<p>just<em>forget</em>me: Yes. The file is at FDO, but should be at your House Office this fall. The application is "sanitized." This means your teacher recommendations and stuff won't be there, but you might see "random" numbers on your essays, which have no meaning unless you knew what was going on! I'm going to request to see my file this fall. ;)</p>

<p>WindCloudUltra: Yup. Admissions is moving over to Chronkite to accomodate the anticipated increase in applications and to also separate the information area and the actual admissions officers' offices for security/privacy reasons.</p>

12

<p>xjayz wrote: "Harvard only sends out likely letters to athletic recruits."</p>

<p>I really don't know if this is true or not nowadays, but I know that it was definitely FALSE when I applied to Harvard.</p>

<p>This is because I myself received a "likely" letter-- I can't recall, I think it was sometime in February or March-- and I was Regular Action, and I played no sports at all.</p>

13

<p>Why do they anticipate an increase in applications? Everyone will be applying to Brown after their lead role in the OC. Obviously.</p>

14

<p>I forgot to clarify. 99% of the likely letters Harvard sends out are to athletic recruits. Again, likely letters have to be agreed upon by the admissions committee together, just like the third "portal."</p>

15

<p>Its already been done!</p>

<p>An excellent and detailed book about Harvard and the admissions process was written two years ago by Dov Fox, '04.</p>

<p>It is called "The Truth About Harvard: A Behind the Scenes Look at Admissions and Life on Campus" (2004, The Princeton Review, 235 pp., list price $13.95)</p>

<p>I think its still available cheaper though Amazon etc. An excellent book for those interested, and highly accurate as far as I can tell.</p>

<hr>

<p>PS: the OP leaves out any mention of the alumni interviews, and their role in the selection process which I find (naturally!) to be a significant omission!</p>

16

<p>This is after all parts of the application is complete, which naturally includes the alumni interviews.</p>

17

<br>


<br>

<p>just one quibble: a school's waitlist use - and the extent of that use - in a given admissions cycle are determined not by its actual yield alone, but by the disparity between its actual and its estimated yield. for example, a school could have a 90% actual yield in a given year, but have estimated that 91% of admits would enroll, and thus have to go to its list to fill its class.</p>

18

<p>Byerly - I figured interviewers' comments would naturally be taken into account when evaluating each applicant's "personal qualities" score, alongside with teacher and counselor recommendations and the essay. After all, none of the application elements were directly referred to in the original post. Does that sound about right? Or are interviewers' comments considered separately?</p>

19

<p>Many of the more active regional alumni groups are actively involved, and often consulted, right to the end. A few even "rank" applicants from their region.</p>

<hr>

<p>PS: scottie is right that there is no direct connection between the use of the waitlist and the yield rate. When a school projects its yield - and annoiunces its initial admit number based on that projection - it can never be certain exactly how many admits will accept the invitation. Thus the admit rates/yield rates announced in April, May or June are generally more optimistic that the "real" yield rates based on who shows up for classes.</p>

<p>Incidentally, heavy use of the waitlist clearly affects the early "admit rate" projections, since 100 taken off the waitlist means 100 additional admits to fill the same number of slots. (Some colleges never acknowledge this, and continue to flog their initial "admit rate claims.) On the other hand, ironically, heavy use of the waitlist doesn't necessarily hurt the yield rate, since the marginal admits all come in with a nice, juicy 100% yield rate ... equivalent to binding ED, but at the other end of the admissions process.</p>

<p>I once heard an anonymous admissions officer observe, wryly, that the "ideal process from the school's point of view" would be to take 100% of applicants from the waitlist. The yield rate, of course, would be a satisfying 100% as well, and the class could be perfectly assembled on a "piece by piece" basis!</p>

20

<p>Maybe that just isn't disclosed as readily as the information in the original post.</p>