By JACQUES STEINBERG

With many of the nation’s most selective colleges and universities scheduled to inform applicants of their decisions on Thursday, The Choice has been reaching out to those institutions in pursuit of some statistical context.

Though the figures I have in hand so far are the equivalent of early returns on election night, one trend already appears to be emerging: applications to elite private colleges rose again this academic year, despite the economic constraints on many families, and admission rates often fell to record lows.

Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth, Cornell, Stanford, M.I.T. and Duke are each reporting sharp increases in applications this year in comparison to last year. Undergraduate applications to Harvard, for example, rose nearly 5 percent to 30,489, according to an e-mail from William R. Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions and financial aid. Only 6.9 percent of those applicants, or 2,110, were admitted, Mr. Fitzsimmons said, down from 7.5 percent in 2009.

The admission rate to Stanford, which received 32,022 applications this year, was nearly identical to that at Harvard: 7.2 percent. (Overall, applications to Stanford climbed 5 percent and the admission rate fell from 7.6 percent a year earlier.) The University of Pennsylvania, which had an 18 percent rise in applications this year — for a total of nearly 27,000 — admitted 14 percent of its applicants compared with 17.6 percent in 2009. At M.I.T., applications rose 6 percent to 16,632, while the admission rate fell to 10 percent from 10.7 percent.

It will be another month, of course, before we know just how many of these accepted applicants choose to attend particular schools.

As I gather data in the coming hours and days, I’ll be pasting it into a running tally I am keeping. Please check back for updates. Those colleges that wish to send me data can do at thechoice@nytimes.com.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1268000&forum_id=1#14561251)

2,110 Students Admitted to Class of 2014

By JULIE M. ZAUZMER, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Published: Wednesday, March 31, 2010

UPDATED 8:25 p.m.

A record-low 6.9 percent of applicants have been accepted to the Harvard College Class of 2014.

The coveted fat envelopes will be mailed tomorrow to 2,110 students, the Office of Admissions announced earlier this evening. Applicants will also receive their decisions via e-mail after 5 p.m. tomorrow.

Applications increased by about 5 percent this year, topping 30,000 for the first time. While the acceptance rate dropped by 0.1 percent, 64 more students received a ‘yes’ from Harvard this year.

More than 60 percent of the accepted students are eligible to receive need-based financial aid from Harvard, with the average award totaling $40,000. Although some students’ financial aid applications are still incomplete or subject to change, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 said that “there will almost certainly be a record percentage on financial aid.”

Next year’s financial aid budget will reach a new high of $158 million.

This year’s accepted class contains slightly more students who self-identify as Asian-American and African-American—18.2 percent and 11.3 percent, respectively—while the portion of students that identifies as Latino dropped marginally, from 10.6 percent last year to 10.3 percent this year.

The percentage of Native Americans in the admitted class saw the sharpest increase, jumping from 1.1 percent last year to 2.7 percent this year.

Fitzsimmons attributed the surge in Native American acceptances to two new efforts of the Harvard University Native American Program—a recruiting tour aimed at Native American students organized in conjunction with several other universities, and phone calls made by HUNAP to promising Native American high school students.

Admitted students hail from 79 countries, and international students comprise 9 percent of the class.

Drawn from an applicant pool that was 50.9 percent male, the admitted class is 52.4 percent male. A majority of last year’s admittees were male as well, but that entering class ultimately contained more women than men, since more women chose to accept the offer of admission.

Fitzsimmons said the growing reputation of Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences caused more students to apply to Harvard this year, and 12.2 percent of the admitted students listed engineering as their intended concentration—up 2 percent from last year.

Roughly one-fourth of admitted students claimed an interest in the humanities—a 2.7 percent increase—while those planning to study the social sciences dropped from 24.6 percent last year to 21.3 percent this year.

Admitted students will receive invitations to visit campus from April 24 to 26. The admissions office predicts that 1,100 prospective students will participate in the April Visiting Program and another 200 will visit campus during the rest of the month.

Students may also be contacted via telephone by faculty, admissions and financial aid staff, and members of the Undergraduate Admissions Council, Undergraduate Minority Recruitment Program, and Harvard Financial Aid Office over the next month as they evaluate their offers of admission.

An undisclosed number of students will be sent letters tomorrow telling them that they have been wait-listed. Fitzsimmons said that “we hope very much to take a substantial number” of students off the waitlist in May and June.

Fitzsimmons urged these students to provide the admissions office with additional information for the upcoming round of waitlist deliberations.

“If something good has happened to them since they applied, we would love to hear about it...from them and maybe from their counselors and teachers,” he said.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1268000&forum_id=1#14561989)

Smaller class admitted, though.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1268000&forum_id=1#14562556)

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/04/a-historic-year-for-harvard-admissions/

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1268000&forum_id=1#14567445)

Chances are that you’ve heard the names of famous people who graduated from Harvard. But what about the ones who never made it past the admissions process?

Harvard rejected the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, who ended up going to New Haven Community College/bulldog animal shelter. While running for President isn’t so bad, maybe if he had gone to Harvard he wouldn’t have lost.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Meredith Vieira, a host on the “The Today Show," was apparently so shaken by her rejection from Harvard that she visited every Saturday in some sort of holy voyage. It wouldn’t be the first time someone visited Harvard; maybe she just really wanted to rub John Harvard’s foot. But despite enrolling at Tufts University, things seem to have worked out all right for her.

Even though Unofficial Tour guides might tell you that only the Catholic Church and Bill H. Gates, class of 1977, have more money than Harvard does, Warren E. Buffett certainly isn’t doing too badly. Buffet, the third richest man in the world according to Forbes’ rankings, was once upon a time denied entrance to the Harvard Business School.

So, rejects from Harvard’s class of 2014, rejoice! Your rejection letter might be putting you on the path to fame and fortune. And for those who don’t believe us, well, hopefully you are on the waitlist.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1268000&forum_id=1#14576607)

By JULIE M. ZAUZMER, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

Published: Friday, April 02, 2010

Admissions officers hoisted box after box of decision letters—2,110 acceptances and over 28,000 rejections and waitlist letters—into the back of a waiting mail truck yesterday, then celebrated the completion of this year’s first round of decisions.

A chain of about 30 admissions officers, staff, and students who work in the office passed the boxes of letters from the basement of Byerly Hall into the mail truck just before noon yesterday.

“That’s 28,000 broken hearts,” one member of the chain said nonchalantly, passing trays stuffed with rejections down the line.

Another staffer responded reassuringly, “There’s always graduate school.”

After applauding the loading of the final box and waving goodbye to the departing decision letters, the staff proceeded inside to celebrate.

Multimedia

GALLERY

Accepted: Admissions Decision Day 2010

While the admissions officers enjoyed cheese, crackers, and champagne (donated by a grateful alumnus), Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ‘67 toasted the newly admitted class—who would learn of their acceptance via email after 5 p.m. that evening—and extolled the admissions officers’ work.

He praised the increasing diversity in university applicant pools and urged the officers to continue to spread the message that Harvard is accessible to all talented students.

In reference to Harvard’s record-low acceptance rate of 6.9 percent this year, Fitzsimmons said, “That is a tough thing....Today it is a lot more difficult to get into all universities, but I think that is a great thing for America and frankly for the world. We’re using the talents of not just a small group of white, relatively rich men. It’s a great time.”

“In my generation a lot of these people would never even have thought about applying to college,” Fitzsimmons said.

Dwight D. Miller, who said that he has worked in the admissions office longer than any other officer, said that the largest change he has seen over his 42 years on the job is the increasing diversity of accepted students.

This diversification, he said, began with the merging of the Harvard and Radcliffe admissions processes in 1976, eight years after Miller came to Harvard.

The number of applications has skyrocketed as well—Miller says that there were 5,000 or fewer applicants for the 1,200 spots in the Class of 1972, the first year that he worked in the admissions office. This year, applications topped 30,000 for the first time.

The mood in Byerly Hall was jovial today, but Miller said that emotions often run high one step earlier in the process, at the final admissions committee meeting.

“We have to finally cut out so many kids, and we’re tired from working day and night,” he explained.

When an officer has made a personal connection with a student, perhaps on a recruiting trip, and that student is not accepted, Miller said, “that can be very hard on an admissions officer. I’ve seen tears in the committee room more than once.”

—Staff writer Julie M. Zauzmer can be reached at jzauzmer@college.harvard.edu.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1268000&forum_id=1#14576992)

Published by Julie M. Zauzmer on April 02, 2010 at 2:59AM

At 5 p.m. yesterday, about 30,000 high school seniors had an e-mail from the Harvard College admissions office arrive in their inbox. Of those 30,000 or so students, only 2,110 were lucky enough to be accepted to Harvard. And of those 2,110, only 5 were lucky enough to be interviewed by FlyBy just hours later. Here are their stories.

When Randi B. Michel of Cleveland, Ohio learned she had been admitted she was speechless. “I had to show the e-mail to my parents instead of saying anything,” she said.

Ralphie A. Haro, a student body president from Miami, was at a friend’s house when he looked at his phone and saw that the e-mail had arrived. When he told his friend he was too scared to open it, his pal went into the next room, opened the e-mail for him, and announced that he had been admitted.

Although Haro was also accepted at Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Duke, and University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, he said he is “90 percent sure” that he will come to Harvard.

Amanda R. Rodrigues of Monroe, CT, is even more certain that she’s coming to Cambridge for the next four years. “Obviously I know I’m going to Harvard,” she gushed. “My parents are sending in the check tomorrow. We’re going to visit on Saturday.”

“I just love the environment” at Harvard, she said. “Everyone is so different and so good at something. When I stepped on campus I just got this feeling that all I wanted was to be at this school.”

Daniel B. Cooney of Westchester, NY, was attracted by the surrounding area as well as the campus. “Boston is great. It’s the best place to go to college in the world,” Cooney said.

Another new admit said Harvard’s ballet company drew her here.

“One of the reasons I applied is that your ballet company is so sick. It’s amazing. I definitely want to be a part of that,” said Paula M. Maouyo, a Baltimore native who plans to study linguistics and Romance languages. “All your dancers are fierce.”

Echoing a grievance raised by many Harvard admits before her, Maouyo gently complained, “The first paragraph [of the admissions e-mail] failed to mention the word accepted. It said ‘we offer you a place in the Harvard Class of 2014.’ I reread it, like, five times.”

Nikhil R. Mulani of Lake Forest, Ill., agreed. “I thought I must have misread the e-mail,” he said. “So I read it again.”

Mulani, who serves as Governor of the Midwestern Region in the Junior State of America program and wishes to study classics and computer science, says he will be choosing between University of Chicago, New York University, Williams, and Harvard.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1268000&forum_id=1#14575645)

See, for example:

http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/national-most-international

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1268000&forum_id=1#14588902)

People need to get a life.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1268000&forum_id=1#14603964)

They are in ORDER:

University Applied Admitted Admit Rate

Harvard 30,489 2,110 6.92%

Stanford 32,022 2,300 7.18%

Yale 25,869 1,940 7.5%

Princeton 26,247 2,148 8.18%

Columbia 26,178 2,397 9.16%

Brown 30,136 2,804 9.3%

MIT 16,632 1,613 9.69%

Dartmouth 18,778 2,165 11.53%

UPenn 26,938 3,830 14.22%

Duke 26,770 3,978 14.86%

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=1268000&forum_id=1#15576039)