Harvard Accepts One Out of Five To Fill Incoming Freshman Class

Harvard has admitted I370 candidates to the Class of I969, after considering the largest and most oppressive number of applications in its history--under the traditional system of personal evaluation of each.

On Monday morning, a mere 20 per cent of just over 6700 aspirants for admission will receive good news in the mail. The Admissions Office expects that 84 per cent--about 1160--of those accepted will decide to come to Harvard. Aiming for another class of 1200, the staff will then fill it out with about 40 selections from the 200-member waiting list and applications too late to be considered in the regular meetings.

The 6700 applicants represented an increase of 1000--a staggering 13 per cent--over last year's total. Last year's 5700 applications were a 12 per cent increase over the year before. It was only when Admissions Committee meetings began that the staff discovered the total to be 6700, since a miscount had originally placed it at 6500.

Included in the new class are 125 Merit scholars, 25 more than in the Class of '63, Fred L. Glimp '50, dean of Admissions and Financial Aids, said yesterday. Except for this figure, the class will probably parallel the past few in most areas. The public school-private school ratio should stay near last year's 57-43 figure, he said.

500 scholarship awards totalling $700,000 were offered to members of the class, and Glimp expects that about 400 of these will be accepted, amounting to $590,000. Both these sets of figures are slightly higher than last year's. Some 57 per cent of all applicants this year requested financial aid, but once again not everyone admitted who needed aid received it. Once Merits, NROTC scholarships, and other outside awards are added to the total, however, about half the new class will have financial assistance.

Half the increase of 1000 applications came from the far West, South, and the Midwest, and these three areas accounted for a surprising 29 per cent of the candidates. Applications from the Middle Atlantic states were down proportionally, and an unusual 10 per cent of the overall increase came from New England public schools.

Harder Than Ever

It was inevitable that it would be harder than ever to get into Harvard this year, and the figures bear this out. Last year's candidates came from about 2500 secondary schools, and representatives of about 800 of these are in the Class of '63. But the yield from many schools has gone down, since the Class of '69--about the same size--will probably be from 900 of the 3000 schools of the applicants.

While "satisfied that we did as well as we could," Glimp admitted to the frustration that so many rejections cause. "When you turn down a fellow who is predicted to do Group II work, you can't do it lightly," he commented.