More Apply Early, But Fewer Get Accepted

Over 1,500 more students applied for early admission to Harvard this year than last, but Byerly Hall accepted 24 fewer candidates than last year.

Given the 24.3 percent increase in early applications, the admissions committee expected to admit up to 1,300 students early, compared to 1,174 last year, according to Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67.

But despite the record number of applications, the number of top-caliber students seeking admission has remained constant, Fitzsimmons said. The result was more deferrals—but not necessarily more difficult decisions.

“We were surprised because we anticipated with so many more applications, it would be reasonable we’d increase the number of admits,” Fitzsimmons said. “It could well have been there were more people who could have been better suited as regular applicants who came into the early pool this year.”

Of the 7,620 students who applied Early Action, Harvard accepted just 1,150 for an admissions rate of just 15.1 percent. Last fall, the College accepted almost 20 percent of 6,126 applications.

This fall marked the first year that national guidelines allowed students to apply to Early Action schools such as Harvard at the same time as binding Early Decision schools like the University of Pennsylvania. That policy change, which led many to predict Harvard would have access to top students whose Early Decision applications would previously have prevented them from applying to the College, may have factored into the spike in applications. But Fitzsimmons said that even with added flexibility in the application process, there are only so many top candidates to go around and that most who had an interest in Harvard would have applied last year as well.

“We go after that certain number of people, and everyone else is after those same people as well,” he said. “Perhaps those same very top people did end up distributing themselves the same [among selective schools].”

However, while Harvard accepted about the same number of students early this year as last, some accepted students will not attend because of their Early Decision commitments elsewhere. This could decrease Harvard’s enrollment yield from its early pool compared to last year’s.

Harvard has always told its alum interviewers not to ask students where else they are applying, but this year the admissions office sent out special correspondence reiterating how “awkward” this question could be for students who had filed an Early Decision application at another college, according to Fitzsimmons.

He said he has no idea how many students who applied early to Harvard were accepted elsewhere under binding Early Decision programs, but that Byerly Hall expects to find out in the next few weeks as applicants who now know they are committed elsewhere decline Harvard’s offer of admission.

While a quick “no” doesn’t necessarily mean a student has a binding early acceptance, Fitzsimmons said that before students could apply to both Early Decision and Early Action schools, “very few” turned down Harvard immediately after their early acceptance.

Depending on how many students decline, Fitzsimmons said it was possible that Harvard would admit more Regular Decision applicants than it has in recent years to compensate for a lower early yield.

“It would seem to us reasonable that students would pretty quickly withdraw from us [if they were accepted elsewhere under Early Decision],” he said. “That might give us more confidence to admit more people in April.”

But he said the Regular Decision yield might be higher than in the past, since many of the students who have binding early commitments may be the same students who would have turned Harvard down in April under the old system.

Last spring, many faculty members on the Standing Committee on Admissions and Financial Aid supported letting students who wanted to break early decision commitments come to Harvard. But after substantial criticism in the media, Harvard issued a statement this summer saying it expected students who had such commitments to withdraw, and Fitzsimmons said earlier this fall that any student who sought to renege on an early pact would not be allowed to attend.

He added that while he expected the vast majority of students would be honest, Harvard would eventually find out through guidance counselors, classmates or parents if a student were hiding an early decision commitment and rescind that student’s admission.

However, it is still possible that a student accepted early at Harvard and through Early Decision at another college could slip through the cracks and matriculate at Harvard.

About four out of five applicants chose to be notified of their admissions decision by e-mail in the second year that Harvard has offered the option. Harvard does not offer decisions on its admissions Web site, unlike Yale, which maintained its Web notification this year despite a security breach of the site last spring by members of the Princeton admissions office.

The demographics of students accepted early to the class of 2007 changed little from the last year, according to a University press release. There were slight increases in the percentages of Latinos, international students and students from New England and the Pacific states who were accepted.

—Staff writer Dan Rosenheck can be reached at rosenhec@fas.harvard.edu.