Harvard: Applications Down?
Consider these two headlines from Harvard news organizations:
Early Admissions Return to Past Levels
—Harvard Gazette, 12/15/05
Number of Early Admits Drops
—Harvard Crimson, 12/15/05
What's going on here? Well, it's virtually impossible to tell from either article, since Dean William Fitzsimmons is the master of the confusing applications-related statistic, but it appears that the number of applicants to Harvard is dropping.... 800 students just received early admission, down from 892 last year, from a pool of 3827 applicants, down from 4212 last year.
Some of that drop may be due to changes in the admission procedures to prohibit students from applying early to more than one college. (Although that rule change took place three years ago, which prompted a very substantial fall-off from something like 7,000 early applicants a year.)
Fitzsimmons tells the Gazette: "Our return three years ago to our long-standing policy of 'single-choice' Early Action has helped to abate some of the frenzy that has beset early admission programs across America over the past decade or so. The pattern of the past three years suggests a return to a better era, when students could take the time during their senior year in high school to make more thoughtful decisions about where they wanted to spend the next four years," he said.
Huh.
I have great respect for Fitzsimmons, but that sounds like spin to me. Universities don't usually think it's a good thing when the number of students applying to them drops substantially. And since Harvard puts out a press release every time the number of applicants hits a new high, it's hard to credit this turn in the other direction as a positive development.
What's also interesting is that given Larry Summers' worthy free-tuition program for students from families with incomes lower than $40,000, you'd expect applications to be way up. But so far, they're not—they're down about ten percent from last year.
I'm not sure what this all means, quite, because I don't have enough data. Except that alumni giving is down, and so now is the number of early applicants....
The Crimson, by the way, reports two very salient facts that the Pravda-like Gazette conveniently omits.
(And I quote...)
Harvard was the only Ivy League school to report a decrease in its early pool this year, receiving 3,872 early applications, down from 4,212 for the Class of 2009. Yale received 4,065 early applicants this year, topping Harvard for the first time in recent memory.
Despite Fitzsimmon's portrayal of the numbers as a return to normalcy, this is not good news.
