Economy Affects Admissions Stats

After earning his undergraduate degree in 1998 from Florida A&M University and winning a coveted consulting job at McKinsey and Co., Rayford P. Davis realized he couldn’t resist the allure of the Internet and joined a promising start-up company. But the company, Ethcentric, went bust in 2001, and Davis decided the time was ripe to get an MBA.

Davis was one of the 906 students accepted to this year’s first-year class at Harvard Business School (HBS) out of a record 8,893 who applied.

The dramatic increase in applicants to HBS reflects a nationwide trend of surging interest in both business schools and law schools, which many say is due to the economic slowdown.

The nationwide trend is even more pronounced for law schools than business schools. According to the Law School Admissions Council, applications to law schools around the country are up by 5.6 percent this year—the largest increase since 1991—and are expected to increase even more next year.

Harvard Law School (HLS) reported a 6 percent increase in applications for this year’s incoming class, putting it slightly ahead of the national average.

Officials at both HLS and HBS, however, say it is too early to know for sure whether the economy is the cause.

“History suggests that when the economy is down law school applications are up,” said HLS Assistant Dean for Admissions and Financial Aid Joyce P. Curll ’65.

“It’s a good time to go to law school. It’s a good time to go to school, period,” she said.

Davis also cited timing as the primary reason for his decision to return to school.

“Given the current environment, it’s a good time to add those credentials,” said Davis, referring to the cache of an MBA degree.

Davis called the recent economic boom “a fantasy world” that would eventually have to return to normality.

At the height of the dot-com fever, many in the business world felt that a lack of an MBA degree was not necessarily an impediment to entrepreneurial success. But now that the fantasy is over, business and law schools seem to be more attractive to those looking for a stable paycheck.

While it is too early to know how the renewed interest in law and business schools will affect the demographics of the HLS and HBS student bodies, forecasts are mixed—especially at HLS—about a possible influx of Silicon Valley refugees.

“People who are very business- and entrepreneurial-minded might be a nice injection,” said first-year HLS student Katherine W. Wray.

But she also said that “it could be bad because if you have people who are coming just to make money and to hedge against an economic downturn it could lessen the intellectual curiosity of the place.”

At HLS, however, this has happened before—most recently during the last recession in the early 1990’s. The number of applications to this year’s class pales in comparison to the surge in applications in the early 1990’s, when the economic downturn was more severe than it is now, according to Curll.

HLS professor Jonathan Zittrain sees no problem with the economic downturn opening the floodgates at the admissions office.

“So long as the law school’s intellectual puzzles are interesting and socially relevant, I think refugess from other pursuits can be inspired by what they find and, thanks to their backgrounds, make distinct contributions,” he wrote in an e-mail.

—Staff writer William M. Rasmussen can be reached at wrasmuss@fas.harvard.edu.