Admissions

changes not only will give applicants a cheater idea of their chances at an earlier time, but also "Will elicit follow-up information from the schools involved to help us make a better decision" on those students who fall into the middle ground.

The top rating will have to be given conservatively, Jewett continued, to keep the system a meaningful source of information. A weak relationship between students given the "likely" evaluation and those admitted would undermine the effectiveness of the system, he said.

Princeton has been operating an early evaluation system for several years with a 92 per cent correlation its "likely" candidates and those actually admitted. Jewett said he would want Harvard correlation to be higher than the Princeton figure.

Yale has been using limited early notification system; giving a small number of students Yale National Scholar status each year, thus indicating that they were likely candidates for admission.

The other major change announced by the Ivy Group Policy Committee concerned early decision. The administrators agreed to announce their early decisions by December 15 of each year. Harvard has no early decision system and does not plan to have one, Jewett said.

The remainder of the statement reaffirms policies currently being used by the schools of the Ivy League.