Harvard Moves Forward With Financial Aid Initiative

The incoming Class of 2009 will be both the most competitive and the most economically diverse in Harvard’s history, an achievement that admissions officers attribute chiefly to the College’s new financial aid program.

Nearly 18 percent of next year’s freshman class hail from families earning less than $60,000 in annual income—a 3 percent increase over figures posted in recent years.

With a record-high 22,276 applicants, admission to the College became more selective than ever. Of that pool, 2,074 were accepted, driving down the acceptance rate to 9.1 percent, the lowest in the school’s history.

Harvard’s yield rose slightly to 78.5 percent, a 1 percent increase over last year’s level.

“It’s just a resounding success,” Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 said last month.

TAKING THE INITIATIVE

The record numbers come on the heels of a year of heavy recruiting from Byerly Hall. The admissions office placed a special emphasis this year on the new Harvard Financial Aid Initiative (HFAI), which University President Lawrence H. Summers announced in February 2004.

The program waives the parental contribution to tuition for families earning less than $40,000 a year. In addition, it lowers the contribution for parents with annual incomes between $40,000 and $60,000.

The admissions office has not yet calculated final numbers for the cost of HFAI, but Fitzsimmons says he expects it will be just over $2 million.

“It could turn out to be more than that,” he adds. “Clearly we’re up in terms of the expenditures.”

Last year, HFAI cost Harvard slightly more than $1.9 million in aid to members of the Class of 2008.

According to recent estimates from the admissions office, 290 HFAI-qualifying students have accepted offers of admission to Harvard, generating a yield of 79 percent for that group—4 percent lower than the figure for last year, when the initiative first took effect.

Fitzsimmons attributes the decrease to the heightened competition among universities following Harvard’s lead in expanding their own financial aid packages to attract lower-income students.

In March, Yale unveiled a plan that eliminates the parental contribution for families earning less than $45,000 a year and lowers the cost to families earning between $45,000 and $60,000.

“We had more competition out there, and that’s good,” Fitzsimmons says. “Everybody wins in the end...if these students are able to go to good colleges.”

Fitzsimmons says that Harvard will allocate nearly $85 million for undergraduate financial aid next year. This record-high level marks a 56 percent increase over the past six years, according to the admissions office.

As full tuition for the 2005-2006 academic year rises to $41,675—the highest ever—the average student aid package will approach $30,000.

“The underlying message is that this place is open to everybody,” Fitzsimmons said in April.

In a recent interview, Summers expressed his contentment with the effects of HFAI on this year’s admissions process.

“The financial aid initiative, on the strength of the applicant pool and the people we were able to accept, has been a great success,” he says.

For all the recent advances, Harvard’s undergraduate body remains wealthy on the whole. According to Fitzsimmons, more than 80 percent of the College’s students come from the top half of the national income distribution, and among students receiving financial aid, the average household income is well over $80,000.

Although the Class of 2009 exhibits greater socioeconomic diversity than any other class in Harvard’s history, ethnic diversity changed only slightly from recent years, according to figures from the admissions office.

African-American students comprise 9.2 percent of the incoming freshman class, a slight increase from 8.9 percent in the class of 2008. Asian Americans make up 18.7 percent of the class of 2009, down from 19.9 percent. Latino students constitute 7.4 percent of the incoming class, falling from last year’s figure of 8.8 percent. Native Americans hold 0.9 percent of the spots, slightly down from 1.1 percent last year.

COVERING EVERY BASE

The controversy surrounding Summers’ January remarks about women in science appears to have had little effect on the College’s admissions numbers this year.

The yield for female students interested in the sciences is higher than last year’s figure. Overall, more women who were offered admission to Harvard will arrive in Cambridge in the fall than men who were accepted—specifically, 79.3 percent of women and 77.8 percent of men.

During the spring, the admissions office made concerted efforts to address any possible fallout from the Summers controversy—which made headlines across the nation.

In mid-April, the office enlisted more than two dozen female math and science concentrators to make phone calls to all accepted female students who had expressed a strong interest in science on their applications.

“We...want to make sure we cover every possible base,” Fitzsimmons said in April, noting that the office had received “almost no questions” about the issue.

Throughout the spring, Fitzsimmons told The Crimson that he did not expect Summers’ comments to have an effect on the College’s yield.

THE ROAD AHEAD

According to Fitzsimmons, the admissions office is working to refine the HFAI program for current students and for future recipients.

“One of the things we wanted to work hard on was not to be too rigid,” he says in response to concerns that students whose families make just over $40,000 or just over $60,000 a year might not receive benefits comparable to the aid given to families earning slightly less.

The College is also planning to assign an adviser to all incoming freshmen who receive aid from HFAI.

Fitzsimmons says that the admissions office is also considering ways to expand the scope of Harvard’s financial aid program.

Over the summer, he says, the office will discuss how it will address the concerns of the “middle-income group”—that is, students whose families earn between $110,000 and $200,000 a year.

“If there’s a vulnerability for us, it’s with...the middle-income group,” he says.

According to Fitzsimmons, about 1,300 Harvard families make more than $100,000 a year.

The admissions office is already on its way to courting potential members of the Class of 2010. In the coming months, the office will send more than 70,000 letters to high-school students across the country.

—Staff writer Daniel J. T. Schuker can be reached at dschuker@fas.harvard.edu.