The Meager Harvest

Harvard admissions officials spend a good part of each fall on the trail. And every January for the past five years, they have been rewarded with a bumper crop of applicants.

This year their luck failed. The number of students applying to the College dropped steeply--falling from 13,846 last year to 13,372 this year. The decline--the first since Harvard and Radcliffe merged their admissions committees in 1975--left some admissions officials shaking their heads and wondering what had happened.

Others--like William R. Fitzsimmons '67, director of admissions--said they had expected some falloff within the next few years.

The declining number of teenagers in New York and Massachussetts, modifications in the Early Action program, and tougher admissions standards resulting from the larger applicant pool may have contributed to the drop, Fizsimmons said last week. But he agreed that these factors pale somewhat in light of Yale University's record-breaking 800-application increases.

One promising phenomenon appeared this year, though: Despite racial tension here last fall, the number of Black applicants rose by about 750.