An all-time low 5.9 percent of applicants received offers to join
Harvard College’s Class of 2016 on Thursday. This marks the seventh
consecutive year that Harvard’s admission rate has fallen.
At 5
p.m., 1,260 students received notifications of their acceptance by
email. In total, including the 772 students admitted in December in the
early action acceptance round, a total of 2,032 initial offers, more
than 100 fewer than last year, were extended to applicants. The admit
rate for those considered under regular decision, including the 2,838
early action candidates who were deferred to the original round, was 3.8
percent.
This year’s accepted students were selected from an applicant pool of 34,302, down 1.9 percent from last year.
The percentage of black, Latino, and Native American students accepted to the class decreased slightly, while Asian Americans and Native Hawaiians were accepted at slightly higher rates.
Black students make up 10.2 percent of the accepted
students, and 11.2 percent are Latino—down from last year’s 11.8 percent
and 12.1 percent, respectively.
Ten percent of the accepted students hail from foreign countries.
More
than 60 percent of students accepted this year will benefit from a
record financial aid budget of $172 million; families receiving aid will
pay an average of $12,000 of the total cost of Harvard undergraduate
education, which next year will rise to nearly $55,000. Under the recently modified guidelines of the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative, students from families that earn less than $65,000 will attend Harvard at no cost.
“It’s
a big commitment, and it’s aimed right at the people that need the
money the most,” said Dean of Admissions William R. Fitzsimmons ’67.
Last year, even with a slightly larger applicant pool, the acceptance rate was a bit higher, at 6.2 percent.
Fitzsimmons said in a press release that the return of early action admissions,
discontinued at Harvard in 2006 and revived for the Class of 2016, made
it more difficult for the admissions office to predict the number of
students who will ultimately matriculate. Thus, officers were conservative in the number of students they accepted.
Furthermore,
good press might spur accepted students to choose Harvard in
higher-than-usual numbers. “There’s been some very, very good publicity
about Harvard this year,” Fitzsimmons said.
“Not simply the Harvard basketball team and ‘Linsanity,’ but that’s certainly out there,” he added.
Harvard placed an unspecified number of students on the waitlist,
and these students will receive notice of their status later in the
spring. Fitzsimmons said that the office expects to admit more
waitlisted students than usual this time around, since it was cautious
in its initial offers.
With the emails sent and the letters in the
mail, Fitzsimmons said the admissions office will now turn its focus to
reaching out to admitted students.
“The most important thing is that students get to the right match,” Fitzsimmons said.
Admissions
officers will send personal notes and make phone calls to admitted
students, and alumni will host events for admitted students across the
country and internationally.
All students, whether they were accepted in the early or regular cycle, must respond to their offers of admission by May 1.
Admission
rates at some other Ivy League schools decreased as well this year.
Yale’s admission rate was 6.8 percent, down from 7.4 percent last year,
and Princeton’s dropped to 7.9 percent from last year’s record-low 8.5
percent.
—Staff writer Elizabeth S. Auritt can be reached at eauritt@college.harvard.edu.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/3/29/admissions-harvard-rate-2016/
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