Sans Early, Admissions Hits the Road

As Yale, Columbia, and Stanford officials busily sift through their early applications, Harvard admissions officers are still traveling the country, touting the College to high-schoolers.

With early admissions eliminated this year, Harvard has extended its recruiting trips through November and into December to focus on rural and urban areas. In previous years, recruiting trips generally wrapped up by Nov. 1.

“In many parts of the country, there are many good students who are just now beginning to focus on the whole college process,” said Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67. “I would rather respond to this great need rather than be back in the office deliberating on early applicants.”

Harvard’s only admissions deadline this year is Jan. 1.

This fall, Harvard joined with Princeton and the University of Virginia, which have also eliminated early application options, to do four joint-travel trips throughout November. Two of these trips have recently been completed, one in the South and another in the Midwest. This week, members of the admissions staff began recruiting trips to Virginia, West Virginia and the West Coast.

Fitzsimmons said the trips have been fruitful. At last night’s event in Bluefield, W.Va., 45 students and parents had registered but more than 100 attended.

For next Sunday’s joint recruitment event with Princeton and the University of Virginia in Washington, D.C., an unprecedented 1,747 people have registered to attend, Fitzsimmons said.

“The biggest turnout we have ever had was 1,000 in close to twenty years of doing joint travel,” Fitzsimmons said.

The number of students attending Harvard’s spring and early fall the joint-travel trip with Georgetown, Duke, University of Pennsylvania, and Stanford has also been on the rise, Fitzsimmons said.

Throughout the spring and fall, program attracted 35,206 people, 16,816 of them students, Fitzsimmons said. By comparison, in 2005, the trips drew 28,757 people, 13,464 of them students.

Last year, Harvard had 4,005 early action applicants. Without early action, Harvard has received almost 4,000 applications so far, Fitzsimmons said.

Harvard has worked to improve search methods for prospective applicants who qualify for the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative (HFAI), under which the college requires no payment from families that make less than $60,000.

This year, the university has used a College Board pilot program which cross references zip code and census block information with search lists to find students who may qualify for HFAI.

—Staff writer Arianna Markel can be reached at amarkel@fas.harvard.edu.