Harvard Orders Alumni Interviews to Delete Past and Current Applicant Data

Harvard alumni interviewers must now certify that they have deleted all applicant data from their personal devices — including interview reports from past admissions cycles — and must delete it after each cycle ends, according to two regional Schools and Scholarships Committee chairs.

The requirement stems from a review of privacy and security policies, according to one of the chairs. Previously, interviewers were only required to confirm that they watched a training video to continue interviewing, but this year they will also have to check a box stating that they deleted their reports and personal information about the students they have interviewed — not just this year’s applicants.

Alumni interviewers typically receive minimal information about applicants — only their name, contact information, relative proximity to the interviewer, and high school. Interviews may send students a pre-interview form to share more about their extracurriculars or interests, but interviewers have not been allowed to ask about GPA or SAT score since at least 2019, according to three chairs and one other interviewer.

Harvard has not told alumni interviews why it implemented the policy, and a Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesperson declined to comment.

Chairs of the Schools and Scholarships Committee act as liaisons between alumni interviewers and the admissions office. They recruit alumni, host kickoff events for each application cycle, assign interviewers to students, and review interview reports before they are sent to the admissions office — checking their quality and flagging any mention of race or ethnicity, which can disqualify a report.

Under guidance the College issued last fall, interviewers may not ask about or reference an applicant’s race, ethnicity, or national origin in their reports. They also cannot name an applicant’s religion, country of origin, the language they speak at home, or affinity groups, and the admissions committee disregards reports that include such information.

The College reaffirmed the restrictions in a training video for interviewers this September, just over a month after more than 1,600 alumni signed a petition urging Harvard to rescind them.

The deletion requirement comes as Harvard faces federal scrutiny over its admissions records. The Justice Department sued the University in February for applicant data — including race, grades, test scores, and essays — as part of an investigation into whether Harvard still considers race in admissions.

The department expanded the suit in May to include a parallel Education Department probe, and Harvard has asked a federal judge to dismiss the case in June.

The certification requirement is the latest in a decades-long narrowing of alumni access to applicant data, according to five current and former Schools and Scholarships Committee chairs.

The chairs said that as recently as the 2000s, the admissions office gave them additional information about applicants before interviews, including admissions’ officers preliminary ratings, the student’s application or profile, and their parent’s education.

One chair said that in addition to admissions officers’ preliminary scores, she would also hear about what students’ high school guidance counselors thought of them.

The admissions office cut back that information over time, first dropping its own ratings and the student’s application, and later details such as parent’s education and the student’s gender.

Roughly 15 years ago, an alumni interviewer in San Diego accidentally sent the full list of applicants themselves, according to a current Schools and Scholarships Committee chair. Since then, the chair said, the office has been more careful about the information it gives alumni and now requires interviews, once held in interviewers’ homes or private offices, to take place in public.

—Staff writer Alexa M. Schmitt can be reached at [email protected] or Signal at alexaschmitt.15. Follow her on X ​​@alexa_m15_s.