Business School Applications Up Seven Per Cent

The number of women and minorities applying to Harvard Business School rose this year as the total number of applications sweelled seven percent to an all-time high of 4500, Dean W. Currie '69 director of Admissions and Financial Aid, said yesterday.

The number of women applying to the business school rose by 10 per cent this year, declining from the average increase of 30 per cent per year that held steady over the last four years, Currie added.

Minority Increase

Minority applications increased in proportion to the growth of the entire applicant pool, following a trend of the past four years.

Currie declined to predict the final numbers of acceptances of women and minorities. Last year's entering class had 110 women and 50 minority students.

Recruiting Challenge

"The challenge of minority recruiting is great and the numbers of students applying are small and fairly dissappointingly small," he said. "However, while other schools have greater numbers of minorities, Harvard is light years ahead in terms of quality."

Currie said that Harvard and many other schools moved too fast during the sixties in admitting minorities into the MBA program. He said lowering standards for minorities served to penalize those minority students who were well qualified, and who would "in effect be receiving a second class degree."

More recently the policy has been to have the same standards for all admissions. Attempts to increase the number of women and minority students at the Business School have meant increasing the resources devoted to recruitment efforts.