Admissions Yield Is Steady, But Good News for Wait-Listers

Four-fifths of the students who were offered a place in the Class of 2011 have agreed to join it, putting Harvard's much-watched admissions yield at a nearly identical percentage as last year's. This spring, however, wait-listed students lucked out.

According to figures released by the undergraduate admissions office today, 1,630 of the 2,058 students who were offered the chance to matriculate next fall accepted it. The College is aiming for a class of 1,662 students, meaning that about 30 wait-listed applicants will be offered admission, as well. Last spring, slightly more students accepted admission than what Harvard had hoped the class size would be, and only a handful were accepted from the wait list.

In percentage terms, this year's 79.2 percent admissions yield matches up with last year's figure of 79.8 percent, continuing to hover near 80 percent as it has for the past few years, according to Dean of Admissions William R. Fitzsimmons ’67.

“This time of year, I seem to say the same things about the class we’ve just admitted…every year through the work of a lot of people…we’re able to assemble these amazing classes,” Fitzsimmons said. “We as an institution should feel very fortunate.”

Harvard’s rate tends to be well above that of other highly selective institutions. Last year, Princeton and Stanford both reported yields of 69 percent, and Yale’s yield was 71 percent.

The statistics released today seem to reinforce the notion that academic politics have little to do with where most students decide to go to college. The contrast between how Harvard fared in the media this spring and last could hardly be greater: in February 2006, while high school seniors were gearing up to pick their future school, Harvard's president resigned after a protracted battle with Faculty of Arts and Sciences professors that made headlines around the world; this February, the national press largely cast Harvard in a rosy glow after the University selected its first woman president in its 371-year history. And yet, the admissions yield figures for 2007 and 2006 were separated by just six-tenths of a percent.

According to Fitzsimmons, students usually attribute their choice to come to Harvard to a few defining factors—the eminence of the faculty, the excellence and diversity of the student body, the school’s location in the Cambridge-Boston area, and the range of resources available in terms of laboratories, libraries, and other facilities.

“It’s very hard to find something in the world that you can’t do here—academically or in terms of the extracurricular environment,” Fitzsimmons said in an advance interview for this article.

The admissions office points to the expansion of the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative—which will cover about 25 percent of the incoming class—as well as extensive recruiting efforts as major factors in the College’s high yield rates. The College expanded the initiative this year, making a Harvard education free for students whose families make less than $60,000 and lessening the required contribution for families that make between $60,000 and $80,000.

With the end of the Early Action program next fall, the admissions office will be expanding its recruiting efforts in the months of November and December both in the United States and abroad, Fitzsimmons said. He added that recruiting for next year’s class has already begun—this being the second week of a three week, 60-city tour by admissions officials.

—Staff writer Aditi Balakrishna can be reached at balakris@fas.harvard.edu.