President Bok said yesterday he has asked admissions personnel to give high priority to increasing the number of blacks applying to both the College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Bok said he told L. Fred Jewett '57, dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, "that we ought to get on top of [the situation] right away," when he first learned last Spring that black applications had declined. Bok made a similar request to the GSAS, which also experienced a decrease.

Applications from black high school seniors declined 20 per cent last year, causing a 13 per cent decrease in the number of freshmen blacks. Seventy-eight blacks registered in the incoming class this semester, compared to 99 and 89 blacks for Fall 1971 and 1972, respectively.

Eight blacks entered the GSAS this year out of a class of about 550. Both the number of blacks applying and admitted declined 40 per cent last year.

David L. Evans, associate director of Admissions, said Monday that "less enthusiastic" recruiting by alumni and admissions personnel partially caused last year's decline in black admissions to the College.

Bok said he has not detected any decreased alumni enthusiasm toward recruiting blacks. Minority recruiting is a more severe problem on the graduate-school level than at the College, Bok added.

Jewett disagreed with Evans's contention, but called the recruiting last year "less effective." Last Spring Jewett said the lower number of blacks applying constituted "a signal to us that we've got to get out and work harder."

Reversing declines in black applications has "a very high priority" at the GSAS, Peter S. McKinney, administrative dean of the GSAS, said yesterday.

The GSAS will obtain the names of potential black graduate students from the Graduate Record Exam Locator, and McKinney said, many of the blacks will be sent application forms and urged to apply.

The undergraduate Committee on Admissions and Scholarship has taken a similar step, purchasing from the Merit Corporation the names of 4000 black high school seniors who performed well on the Merit test. The Committee will ask about half of these to apply, Evans said.

McKinney said that the GSAS, whose recruiter was murdered last year, is still "trying to figure out what the best approach to this problem is." Because individual departments evaluate applicants, McKinney added, "we must draw departments more into this process [of recruiting blacks]."

McKinney said that he is reading the applications of blacks not accepted at the GSAS last year to determine the quality of the application pool. "It could be that Harvard is not getting the best," he commented