Yale Tops Harvard in First-Year Selectivity

Despite admitting even fewer applicants than last year, Harvard was less selective than Yale in choosing the Class of 2008, marking the first time in recent memory that the Bulldogs have been top-dog in the Harvard-Yale admissions rivalry.

Yale accepted a record-low 9.9 percent of its largest-ever applicant pool, edging out Harvard’s acceptance rate of 10.3 percent.

The Bulldogs’ admissions coup is virtually unprecedented.

Harvard’s acceptance rate has been lower than Yale’s for at least the past eight years.

Dean of Admissions William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 said he did not have records on whether Yale has ever had a lower acceptance rate in pervious years.“We don’t really compare acceptance rates and things like that,” Fitzsimmons said.

Yale College has a smaller class than Harvard, which means that fewer applicants are usually accepted. This year, Yale accepted 1,950 applicants, compared to 2,015 last year.

Harvard accepted 2,029 applicants for the Class of 2008, down from 2,056.

“[Yale] has a class of around thirteen, fourteen hundred so they of course are going to go out with fewer admits,” Fitzsimmons said.

Yale also enjoyed a surge in applications this year, most likely a result of its shift to a single-choice early action program, Fitzsimmons said.

“The effect on the earlies, they actually went up a lot. We on the other hand went down considerably. There’s no question that clearly would factor into the number of applications they had.” he said.

Harvard switched to the same program this year, which limited its previous policy that had allowed applicants to apply to multiple institutions early.

“Some people have been rediscovering Yale just as the same way Columbia has been rediscovered in recent years,” Fitzsimmons said, citing campus improvements and recent redevelopment projects in New Haven as factors attracting students to Yale. “I think that Yale is getting its due.”

But Fitzsimmons also wonders whether the reason could be much simpler.

“Again, my brother would say, ‘It’s the mascot,’” he said. Fitzsimmons’s brother is a Yale alumnus.

BY THE NUMBERS

Next year’s incoming class, if not the College’s most selective ever, still set several admissions records, according to figures released by Byerly Hall last Thursday.

Three more women than men were accepted to the Class of 2008, marking the first time in University history that the College has accepted more females than males.

“Historically Harvard has been seen as a male institution,” Fitzsimmons said. “That kind of a stereotype has been slow in dying. This year’s numbers will go a long way… We hope to erase that stereotype from people’s minds.”

Fitzsimmons said that Byerly Hall has been working on increasing the number of women in the College class since the mid-1970s.

“This is a milestone,” Fitzsimmons said. “But we have to keep in mind that this is a battle that will continue. Social forces out there can sometimes act against women going to expensive private schools like Harvard.”

Thick envelopes were mailed last week to 1,016 women and 1,013 men. However, the final gender ratio will depend on which admits choose Harvard.

According to Fitzsimmons, the class will most likely end up with more male students.

“Historically the yield on women has been lower than the yield on men,” Fitzsimmons said. “We have to be realistic here.”

Last year, females comprised 48 percent of admitted applicants to the Class of 2007.

This year’s admits also included more Asian-Americans and blacks than ever before.

Nearly 19 percent of this year’s accepted students are Asian-American, compared to 16 percent last year.

The Class of 2008 also contains the highest percentage of black students ever admitted, comprising 10.3 percent of this year’s accepted students—a tenth of a percentage point above the previous record.

Fitzsimmons said that because Asian-Americans tend to have high yields, next year’s class may have the most Asian-American students ever.

“On the other hand,” Fitzsimmons said, “African-Americans are among the most hotly contested students in the country. Their yield tends to be considerably lower than the overall average yield, so it’s really very, very hard to know.”

Despite initial fluctuations in figures in December’s early round of applicants, this year’s overall admissions numbers were very similar to last year’s.

A surge in regular applications helped produce one of the largest applicant pools in history, despite the decrease in Harvard’s early admissions applicant pool. 19,750 students applied for spots in the Class of 2008—only about 1,250 fewer than last year.

The College switched to a single-choice early action program this year, after the former system—which allowed applicants to apply to early decision and early action schools simultaneously—led to a bloated early applicant pool and logistical headaches at Byerly Hall.

Admissions officials said in early November that they had expected the decline in early applicants because of the change.

Positive feedback from students, counselors and alumni affirmed the decision to change to a single-choice early admissions system, according to Fitzsimmons.

“We have no intention to change [again],” he said.

This year’s pool also contained the lowest number of valedictorian applicants in five years. Fitzsimmons attributed the decline to the increase in schools doing away with class rank.

Regional demographics for the Class of 2008 were virtually identical to last year’s class of first-years. Again, the mid-Atlantic states produced the highest number of admits.

Accepted students have until May 1 to accept or decline their place in the Class of 2008.

—Staff writer Michael M. Grynbaum can be reached at grynbaum@fas.harvard.edu.