Early Application Numbers Plummet

Early applications to Harvard fell by almost 50 percent this year from the record-high 2002 level, a drop attributed to new restrictions preventing candidates from simultaneously applying early to other colleges.

Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 said that preliminary estimates place the number of applications at around 4,000, down from last year’s record high of 7,615.

This decrease comes as the University reinstates pre-1999 restrictions, after several years of looser early application policies.

This year, Harvard, Stanford and Yale all offered non-binding “Early Action” plans, but prohibited students from applying early to any other school.

From 1999 through last fall, students were permitted to apply to multiple Early Action programs. Last year, policies were at their most liberal, as students could apply to Harvard, other Early Action schools, and one binding “Early Decision” program.

Early applicants to Harvard swelled during that time, soaring 24.3 percent last year.

Fitzsimmons said this year’s drop is due entirely to the change in application policies.

According to Fitzsimmons, this year’s application numbers were consistent with pre-1999 levels.

Fitzsimmons said he anticipated, and even welcomed, the drop.

“It’s a return to an era in which people will be much more thoughtful about what they are doing early,” said Fitzsimmons. “We hope they’ll spend the whole senior year thinking about where they want to be instead of making this rush judgement.”

Fitzsimmons also said it’s hard to compare the applications numbers for the years leading up to 1999 to now because times and peer institutions have changed.

Fitzsimmons said he could not predict how the decrease in applications will affect admission rates for the early applicant pool. While the pool nearly doubled over the past several years, the number of students admitted early stayed near 1,000.

The decrease will, however, allow for more care to be given to the applications over the whole year.

“In general, we’ll have a lot more time over the course of the year, not just in Early Action but in regular admissions as well,” Fitzsimmons said. “Last year...at 7,600 applications, we felt we were reaching close to the limit.”

The return to restrictive admissions policies puts Harvard and its peer institutions in violation of guidelines adopted by the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) in 2001. Fitzsimmons said that NACAC would be studying the issue further.