Harvard's New Delayed Opening

Aditya Balasubramanian had finished seeking counselor recommendations and prepping his personal essay this past fall. He decided to apply early to Yale. By the time Harvard admissions officers got to his application in the January 1 pile, the Bethesda, Md. native had already been accepted to the other Ivy, had enrolled in Yale’s “adopt-a-prefrosh” program, and had the chance to wear a Yale 2012 t-shirt.

While Balasubramanian basked in his Yale acceptance, he and over 27,000 high school peers were faced with the choice of applying regular-decision to Harvard during the most competitive year of college admissions in history.

Harvard was not alone in its quest to eliminate early action. Princeton and the University of Virginia announced their decision to end early action soon after Harvard’s 2006 announcement.

Balasubramanian said he knew that Harvard was his best fit school from the beginning but had to find an alternative school to apply to early after Harvard eliminated its early action program.

“When Harvard dropped its early action program, it was a bit of a roadblock,” Balasubramanian said. “It made me consider a lot of other schools more seriously.”

Instead, Balasubramanian’s application was one of the 4,820 early applications that Yale received this past November that contributed to its 36 percent increase in early applications. Yale was not alone in seeing a jump in early application numbers. Georgetown reported an increase of over 30 percent in early applicants, and University of Chicago saw an increase of over 40 percent.

As these schools reported skyrocketing application numbers, Harvard officials were unsure of what to expect a few months later. In early fall, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 raised the possibility of a decrease in yield or a decline in total application numbers. While students were waiting for early acceptance letters, Harvard waited for its applicants.

RECORD NUMBERS

As early decisions arrived in the mail in mid-December, high school seniors had to decide whether to send in their Harvard application by January 1. And though the admissions office expressed concern over the number of applications only a month prior to the regular decision deadline, over 27,000 students applied to Harvard—an 18 percent increase from the previous year.

Harvard, Princeton, and Virginia were not the only schools to report a jump in total applications. Yale, which kept its single-choice early action program, saw a 16.6 percent increase in the number of total applicants, from 19,323 to 22,528.

With the regular decision process finally underway, colleges still had to reevaluate yield estimates.

To complicate the admissions round, Harvard unveiled an unprecedented financial aid initiative in October. The initiative, which will take effect next year, will ask families making between $120,000 and $180,000 per year to pay 10 percent of their income. Families with incomes between $60,000 and $120,000 will be expected to contribute between 0 and 10 percent of their income.

With this added uncertainty, Harvard admissions officials decided to offer 110 fewer spots to freshmen than the previous year. As a result, Harvard had the lowest acceptance rate in its history at 7.1 percent.

But by the time Harvard sent Balasubramanian one of 1,948 acceptance letters, Yale had been courting him for months.

“Initially I was a bit stunned when I found out that I was accepted to Harvard; this was something I had been dreaming about for several years,” Balasubramanian said. “The decision was not quite as amazing as Yale though since that was the first school I got into.”

Ultimately, Balasubramanian chose Harvard.

ELIMINATING EARLY

According to Fitzsimmons, the admissions office had been uneasy about the early admissions program since it began 30 years ago.

Fitzsimmons said that his office viewed early admissions as a means to “advantage the advantaged and disadvantage the disadvantaged.”

Most often, early applicants are students from affluent families, while students from lower-income families often wait until the regular decision round sot that they can compare financial aid offers. By creating a single deadline, admissions officers hoped to make the process more equitable.

This year, without the burden of convening for admission decisions in November, Harvard’s admissions office was able to join forces with the admissions offices of Princeton and Virginia to continue recruiting into November. Previously, recruiting trips had to finish by October so that early applications could be evaluated.

Harvard, Princeton, and Virginia went on four major joint-travel trips in November. On a stop in Washington D.C. this fall, over 1,300 students, parents and guidance counselors attended an information session. Fitzsimmons said that in the almost 20 years of recruiting travel leading up to this year, the largest turnout Harvard had ever seen was 1,000.

The Class of 2012, which will enter next fall, is the most economically diverse in Harvard’s history—one of the admissions office’s stated goals. As of early May, 55 percent of the incoming freshman class are expected to be on financial aid, an increase from from 49 percent the previous year.

Fitzsimmons said that in eliminating the early action program the College also considered the distortion of the secondary school experience that accompanies the presence of early admissions.

“I think many people have talked about how colleges and universities seem more concerned with their own competitive advantage and college ratings than the well-being of their students, as well as fairness and equity,” Fitzsimmons said. “I think eliminating early action can act as a symbolic signal that higher education is trying to serve its constituents in a more humane way.”

THE WAITING GAME

With a slight drop in yield—from 78 to 76 percent—and a smaller number of admits, 200 high school seniors on the waitlist received thick envelopes from Fitzsimmons’ office late this spring. This raised the acceptance rate from the initial 7.1 percent to 7.8 percent. (Last year just 50 freshmen were admitted from the waitlist.)

Kriti Lodha was one high schooler to benefit from all the uncertainty.

On May 19, Lodha, who had been waitlisted, received a call from the Harvard admissions office to offer her a spot in next year’s freshman class.

“I was also genuinely surprised that Harvard actually acted upon their wait list candidacy,” Lodha said. “[I had] previously incorrectly assumed that at selective schools the waitlist is more of a consolation than anything else.”

Lodha expressed uncertainty as to whether she would have chosen to apply early to Harvard had she had the option.

“Although Harvard chose to accept a reduced number of individuals initially, it was nice to know that the wait list candidates who were left with undecided fates could still hold realistic hope,” Lodha added.

Fitzsimmons said that the high numbers of students taken off the waitlist is expected to decrease in the future. The slight change in yield has given the admissions office a benchmark for future years.

“I think people will look back in 5, 10, and 15 years from now and see this as a benchmark year where higher education finally became so much more affordable for the entire population,” Fitzsimmons said. “This was a year unlike any other, and I think people will look back on this as a year that has really changed the whole conversation on accessibility and affordability.”

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