Fred L. Glimp '50, director of Admissions, reported yesterday that the Class of '66 will split 57-43 in the public school-private school percentage break-breakdown.
The '66 public schoolers will be only one per cent more numerous than in '64 and '65. Since 1957, the public school representation has been growing--but very slowly; '66 has only five per cent more public school students than '61 had.
Radcliffe, on the other hand, announced last week that its '66 public school group will be 10 per cent higher than last year. Next year's class ratio is 59-37 with four per cent foreigners.
Remarkable Transformation
Refusing to speculate on Radcliffe's "big shift," Glimp said that Harvard's public-private ratio "is staying pretty constant because both sectors have improved equally." It is well known that the College is getting a wider and higher quality applicant group from the high schools, he said. What is less well recognized is that the private schools "have undergone a remarkable transformation in the last few years. The same fellows who came here from Andover and Exeter five years ago just aren't even applying now," he said.
He added, however, that the public-private figure "is not an ideal number which we set before the applications start coming in. We evaluate candidates individually on their records. All we can do is try to improve the candidate group in the areas in which we feel we're underrepresented."
Ford Committee Report
The Ford Committee Report of 1960 reveals that in the Class of '62, the private school group scored much lower in general than the public school group in the Predicted Rank List ratings, which use College Boards and rank-in-class to forecast Harvard performance. The public school students were predicted to place 34 per cent of their numbers in the top quarter, and 13 per cent in the bottom quarter of the class. The corresponding figures for the private school group were 12 and 39 per cent.
On the basis of these statistics, the report says: "The Committee cannot escape, nor does it wish to avoid, the conclusion that Harvard should continue to admit an increasing proportion of its freshmen from among qualified graduates of public schools. To ignore or seek to minimize the pool of talent which such applicants represent would be to fly in the face of all our current performance studies."
Glimp defended the present ratio by pointing out that "PRL isn't the only thing we admit people on." He added that the admissions committee is looking more and more at personal qualities and extracurricular achievements than at the sacred "top one per cent." Many of the private schoolers with relatively low PRL's contribute to the intellectual and social atmosphere of the College, he maintained.
Not Only Summas
Dean K. Whitla, director of the Office of Tests, said that "we expect the public school group to outperform, and they do. If academic standing were the only criterion, we should take more public school students. But it isn't: we wouldn't want to admit nothing but "summa" candidates."
Whitla feels that one important criterion is achievement after graduation. In a study he did four years ago on Harvard public-private records in medical school, both groups were very close, with the prep school students slightly higher academically.
He is presently beginning a study of the occupations and community activities of the Classes of '47 and '52. "One of the first things we'll look for is the private-public breakdown," he said.
Glimp admitted that the College's preference for Harvard sons and New England schools colors the PRL scores. Although the percentage of rejected Harvard sons has increased, the group has held its own at about 17 per cent of the class. As for Harvard's ties to New England schools, 330 of the 526 registered private school students in '65 came from New England Institutions
