The Changing Character of Harvard College: Applicants Face Stiffer Costs, Competition

It is a cliche that it's harder to get into Harvard than to stay in--a fact which is reflected in the amount of space devoted to admissions and financial aids in University Hall. What the applicant sees is rather unimposing; a secretary announces that Mr.------ is ready, he enters (with wise instructions to "have some intelligent questions ready for the interviewer"), and he is ushered into a small room where the interviewer may have ashtrays and paperwork scattered about his desk and crayon drawings by his daughter on the wall. They talk about hockey, or Hemingway, or Baroque, and everyone is relieved when the interview is over.

But the simplicity and informality of University 17 disguises the weight of concern and responsibility present in the offices of the Admissions and Scholarship Committee on the two floors above. Here decisions are made which will affect not only Harvard's student body, but the composition of other Ivy League colleges, and of public and private secondary schools across the nation.

For the most part, the admissions responsibility is one of control, of "keeping the lid on the pressure cooker" as one dean phrases it. There is general agreement about the kinds of students Harvard wants to come here, but the difficulty comes in preserving a balance of types, keeping serving a balance of types, keeping everyone financially afloat, and preserving the philosophy of "opportunity for all" which keeps Harvard a national college. It involves controlling the pressures of mounting applications, rising tuition, alumni fathers, and beefing up the football team.

First of all, there is the problem of numbers. Dean Wilbur J. Bender, Chairman of the Admissions and Scholarships Committee, is perhaps the most worried about this problem. He has seen the number of applications rise to around 4,500 this year and is concerned with the Committee's ability to measure "the subjective factor," creative intellectual ability, in applicants numbering perhaps 10,000. "It's a question of how much money the College can afford to spend on admissions," he says, "We are spending too much money now as it is and we are barely able to keep afloat."

Brave New Harvard?

If his admissions nightmare were to come true, Bender speculates various ways of narrowing down the field, each of them equally alarming. Harvard might decide to become a "New England College", concentrating its attention on the better prep schools and high schools, "letting Exeter do our geographical distribution for us." Or it could pick fifty reliable secondary schools throughout the country to supply students. Or it could ignore such things as "character" and "initiative" completely, sorting applications in an IBM machine in order to fill predetermined places.

But these "Brave New Harvard" concepts seem to exist, among other members of the staff, at least, not as realistic alternatives, but as the grotesque projections of certain alarming trends in present-day admissions procedure: the tendency to equate preparation with ability, to rely too heavily on College Board scores and Predicted Rank Lists, and to ignore certain geographic and economic areas of American life. It is not sheer numbers which worries them, but who is applying and whether or not Harvard should take him.

"I'm not convinced we're going to be deluged with applications," Wallace MacDonald of the Financial Aid Office says. "There are enough controlling factors to keep the numbers down. The schools are getting better at guidance, and alumni are doing a good job of counseling. It's the alumnous who bears the brunt of the rejection slip, and he is going to discourage anyone from applying who he thinks can't get in."

"And there's not nearly the chagrin in going to a second choice college there was fifteen years ago," MacDonald pointed out. "There are Harvard faculty with children in colleges they would barely have heard of a few years ago. In the prep schools, the Harvard reject goes off to a school slightly down the ladder along with some other Harvard rejects."

At a public school, there are two controlling factors acting independently of the guidance officer, who cannot discourage applications with the same severity that an independent school can. At Boston Latin School, for instance, Harvard's rising costs--coupled with the growing attractiveness of technical schools in the area--have acted to cut down the number of applications and acceptances. Formerly, Boston Latin sent over one hundred boys to Harvard. Acceptances dropped to sixty two years ago and to forty-five this year.

"Many of our boys come from homes in the lower income brackets," says Senior Counselor Joseph Hopkinson. "And even though awards to Boston Latin Students have been substantial, they feel that Harvard is out of the question for them."

Charges Narrow Field

That family income or interest in another type of school keeps certain highly intelligent boys from swelling the number of applicants, is a fact likely to produce mixed emotions in the heart of an admissions director. It makes his job easier, that is certain, and keeps the IBM wolf from the door. At the same time, it raises doubts about equality of opportunity in the nation and of the Ivy League college's role as a melting pot of income and geographical groups.

One of the most concerned about this problem is Richard King, Assistant Director of Admissions and Scholarships, who has mapped out, statistically, Harvard's journey toward the upper-income brackets. With college costs now at a level equal to 50 per cent of many lower-income bracket family incomes, a family has to place unusual value on a Harvard education to want to send a son here.

In an article in the College Board Review, King asks, "Have the financial arms of the CEEB colleges been pulling hidden talent from oblivion or have we just been lifting candidates from each other's back pockets?" King goes on to point out that by far the majority of scholarship applicants at Harvard and equivalent colleges are students who will go to college somewhere else if they are denied aid. "I would be reasonably certain," King writes, "that at no College Scholarship Service college do as many as half the scholarship winners come from the neediest half of our nation's population. I would even wager that at no CSS college do as many as half of the dollars spent for scholarships go to students from the neediest half of our population." And this despite the financial aid revolution of determining stipends by need rather than merit.

One indication of the socio-economic background of a student is whether or not his father attended college. The fathers of 32.2 per cent of last year's graduating class had not attended college. But only 20.7 per cent of '60's fathers and 19.3 per cent of '61's fathers did not go to college. "The drop in applicant numbers appears to have taken place largely among candidates from lower income families and from areas some distance from Cambridge," Dean Bender noted in his '56-57 report.

Student body is well-to-do

When one realizes that most of the real income distribution at Harvard comes through commuters rather than through resident students, it is evident that what one thinks of as the Harvard "student body" is a pretty well-off group. "Even our commuting group is not representative of the nation at large in terms of income," states King. And if fewer boys at Boston Latin consider Harvard financially worthwhile, despite the school's traditional allegiance with Harvard, and despite the possibility of commuting, then needy students in Bear Creek, Montana, are probably even less willing to apply without encouragement.

At the same time, Harvard has taken the lead in "selling" Ivy League education in the West and South. Teams from the admissions office have toured schools encouraging applications from students who might never have heard of Harvard before. In the present freshman class, there are nearly six hundred different secondary schools represented, a record number. Geographically, at least, Harvard is becoming more "national" in character. In the class of '56, 44 per cent of the students were New Englanders; in the class of '62 only 29 per cent. While New England has dropped, the Middle Atlantic States have risen slightly, as has the South and Far West.

But if Harvard has spread itself out to include more schools and schools further from Cambridge, the question remains what kind of schools and what kind of people is Harvard attracting. Professor Samuel A. Stouffer, an Admissions Committee member, notes that despite the effort expended toward attracting bright people in large high schools, the small town high school has been neglected. "We don't do very well in Hush-puppy, Georgia," Stouffer comments. The large Eastern preparatory schools continue to supply sizeable delegations, but with more schools represented and fewer from any one. Even Exeter's formidable shipments have eased off some in the past few years. Among all schools, public and private, the average is less than two students per school in each class.

But if the size of the individual school's delegation is getting smaller, at the same time the list of schools sending five or more students (including the bigger prep schools and the better public schools) has undergone a slight shift in favor of the private schools. Thirteen public schools contributed five or more boys to the Class of '58, only nine sent this many to '61. But in the same period, the number of prep schools sending five-man delegations rose from 19 to 25 (with 27 for the class of '60). Although public schools contributed more to '62 than to previous classes, there were more public schools in the running than before. As the standard of secondary school preparation goes up, the individual student can count less on an average high school education to "get him in" to Harvard. Even if he goes to one of the top-flight high schools in the country, he will probably get lost in the shuffle unless he is a proven student or an all-round "outstanding" boy.

The impact of Ivy League standards extends down to prep schools and the better public schools. "We would like to have an entrance examination," says Mr. Hopkinson at Boston Latin, "but we have to consider anyone who has a B average in grammar school." Private schools become more selective as their numbers grow. Scholarships aim toward providing economic and geographical diversity, as well as financial aid. Some schools, like Exeter, do not wait for outstanding boys to apply, but actively seek them. In Iowa, for instance, Exeter finds out the names of outstanding newsboys from the Des Moines Register and Tribune and encourages them to apply.

Other private schools, which have a tradition of admissions at the eighth or seventh grade level, find many of the same problems, slightly altered, that Harvard does. The record of a child who has reached the eighth grade is an uncertain thing at best. A boy who starts prep school this early and does not do well scholastically will be outdistanced further and further as outstanding "new boys" come in to his school.

Brown and Nichols has a lower school which starts with the first grade. "Once we accept a boy, we're going to do our darndest to get him through," Headmaster Edwin H.B. Pratt '36 says. "At the same time, when you have a lot of applicants later on, the temptation is to pick the best of the new lot and discard the though nut whom you already have on your hands."

Preparation is Key Factor

This is not to say that the transfer from public to private school enhances every student's chances of making the grade. In theory, it is only in the marginal cases, where brains and character have been measured to the best of the Committee's ability, that preparation makes the difference. "Other things being equal," reads a now-famous phrase, "Harvard will take the better prepared student."

There are those who point out that with better schooling, better homes, the "other things" cannot be equal in any final sense. But the alternative policy--taking the poorer prepared of two equally promising boys--seems even more absurd. "As the applicant group gets better," says King, "it seems foolish to turn down a boy because he's better prepared."

"We don't take as many risks as perhaps we ought to," King adds, "but a $2000 a year scholarship is a pretty high investment. There is a danger to us that we will lose our investment if a boy doesn't do well at Harvard, and there is a danger for him if he finds he can't compete."

It is common occurrence among the deans and Senior Tutors to run across "athlete insecurity" among those on scholarship. Often a student will get the idea he was accepted solely because of athletic ability, and feel an obligation to sacrifice other college values to "paying back" his sponsors on the athletic field. Thus the Admissions Committee must be very careful to choose athletes who they are sure will succeed academically, not those that can merely get by.

Tests are Fallible

Preparation, the "sure thing" versus the risk, is causing much of the grief in admissions circles today. For one thing, an unerring relationship between academic ability and the ability to score well on College Board Tests has never been satisfactorily established. The Predicted Rank List, which tries to sum up ability and motivation, is by no means infallibile, since Group IV PRL entrants have gone on to receive Magnas, and vice versa. Although an applicant will probably never stand or fall on Predicted Rank List alone, the trend is to lop off applicants on the very lowest range of ability. Five or six years ago, the average Harvard student was in the top 5 per cent of the nation's college group, now he is in the top 3 per cent. Ten per cent of the class of '58 scored below 507 on the College Board SAT's; this percentile score was raised to 530 in the class of '61.

While Board scores have gone up all along the line, they will probably not rise too much higher. It will be far in the future when Harvard will refuse the 550 boy with outstanding achievement in other areas.

But the predicted rank list and the test scores are an accurate measure of academic ability, they do not exist in a vacuum. They are even less 'fair' measures of basic intelligence than an I.Q. test. Richard King emphasizes the fact that "performance in school, on tests, in activities is directly related to the socio-economic status of parents." Thus, as Harvard gets more selective, the applicant from the depressed area gets passed over. Not only is the poor boy not likely to apply, King points out, but he is not likely to compete well "on paper" with his richer, better-fed rival. Education, like charity, begins in the home.

At the same time as the lower-in-come boy lags behind in the race, the alumni son looms stronger and stronger. Chances are he doesn't need a very large scholarship, if any at all, and he has probably been very well prepared. A study of Ivy League alumni sons made recently points out that 80 to 90 percent of this group goes to prep school. In recent years, the policy has been to give the Harvard son "the benefit of the doubt" in border-line cases. But as this group grows in numbers, decisions will become more difficult.

Alumni Sons, Large Group

In his 1956-57 report, Dean Bender commented on the large (19 per cent) number of Harvard sons in the Class of '61. "Clearly considerable weight has been placed on Harvard parentage by the Admissions Committee, more weight than some will think is proper.... The fact is that the Harvard-son group is, academically at least, somewhat less able than the admissible candidate group as a whole, so that preference given to Harvard sons is greater than would appear from the above figures."

But if the group as a whole is less able, it is often because alumni are the least realistic about their sons' chances for admission, and burden the Harvard admissions committee with applications which have been filed over the protests of the school's guidance officer. "We try to be good to Harvard," says Wesley G. Spencer at Brown and Nichols, "We're not always successful. There are always some alumni who think they have an inside track with the admissions committee and will apply anyway."

Harvard Sons Preference?

At this stage, Harvard can reject those Harvard sons who "don't measure up" in good conscience, hoping that an alumnus will not take the blow too severely. But Harvard sons are going to apply in increasing numbers, and they will be smart and well-prepared. How does an admissions Committee which "gives the benefit of the doubt" now turn down alumni sons in the future, not on the basis that they are not good enough, but that someone else is better or more deserving.

Professor Stouffer, who is as loyal to the poorly-off boy as anyone on the Committee, nonetheless feels that "if a Harvard son is reasonably good, we ought to take him." Stouffer and others believe that the spaces created by future College expansion ought to be filled, first of all, by the qualified alumnus' son.

One simple answer to the problem of preparation lies in standardized secondary schooling--those schools which fail to meet the minimum standards imposed by Ivy League colleges simply are not considered at admissions time. President Emeritus Conant has been a strong advocate of this "pull the high schools up by our bootstraps" theory of admissions, despite the danger of leaving the the small town high school irrevocably behind.

There is, at present, a certain amount of pressure from the faculty to raise standards of preparation in mathematics and foreign languages and thereby eliminate a certain amount of elementary instruction in the first years of college. But Harvard would probably continue to take boys with relatively poor high school backgrounds. Saving the reasons for the "risk" in admissions until later, it is interesting to observe how successfully the College has managed to assimilate the Westerner with algebra and plane geometry on his record without slowing up the Exonian who has had a year of advanced calculus. Most of the credit goes to the Advanced Standing Program.