Princeton Review Admits Reporting Incorrect Harvard Data

A major guide to college admissions admitted yesterday that it erred by publishing an incorrect statistic on Harvard's diversity.

The Best College for you, a joint publication of Time Magazine and the Princeton Review, reports in its 1999 edition that African-American students make up only one percent of Harvard College.

The correct figure, according to the latest Harvard-Radcliffe Office of Admissions data, is about 8 percent.

The mistake is published on page 156 of the 240-page guide, which retails for $6.95 and has been distributed to newsstands around the country.

Princeton Review, which supplied the data to Time for the book's publication, said it was not aware of the mistake until contacted by The Crimson yesterday.

"We screwed up," said Evan Schnittman, who directed the project for Princeton Review. "I've got to say, mea culpa."

Schnittman said the relevant race statistic was incorrectly entered into the company's college database, so the magazine might not be the only publication in which the statistic has been incorrectly reported.

"I looked up what Harvard submitted to us. It's clearly not...one percent," he said.

The error gives Harvard the smallest percentage of African-American students of any college or university in the state, when in fact, according to self-generated statistics, Harvard has one of the largest.

Both U.S. News & World Report's Best Colleges and Newsweek's How to Get Into College report the figure correctly.

Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons '67 said he was unaware of the error.

"This is the first I've heard of it," he said.

Fitzsimmons said the error "certainly isn't going to help our recruiting, but there are many other ways we do our job," he said. "On the other hand, there are lots of guides out there."

Using the selection service provided by the College Board, Harvard sends out more than 53,000 information packets--with the correct data on diversity--to desirable prospective applicants, Fitzsimmons said.

Contacted yesterday, the Time editor responsible for the guide, Jillian Kasky, said she was not responsible for the mistake.

She said the error would likely be corrected in print in August 1999, when the next edition will be published. Time instructs newsstands to keep the current book in stock until at least April 26.

"There's really not a way we can correct it [before then]," Kasky said.

One article in the book notes that, in response to court decisions that have "undermined" affirmative action programs, minorities and African-Americans in particular may be less likely to apply to institutions that are less diverse.

Princeton Review's Web site, at www.review.com, paints a very different portrait of Harvard's admission landscape that the one published in the guide.

Harvard is listed as the "most diverse" of all311 colleges it surveyed, above such campuses asBoston University and Columbia.

The Web site, however, records the figure forHarvard's African-American enrollment asunavailable.

After being made aware of the College's correctdiversity statistics yesterday, Schnittman saidHarvard's data will be available on the PrincetonReview Web site by next week

Harvard is listed as the "most diverse" of all311 colleges it surveyed, above such campuses asBoston University and Columbia.

The Web site, however, records the figure forHarvard's African-American enrollment asunavailable.

After being made aware of the College's correctdiversity statistics yesterday, Schnittman saidHarvard's data will be available on the PrincetonReview Web site by next week