"Admissions is a terribly intangible process, very unscientific. We do it on feel as much as anything else...I have nightmares about people we haven't admitted. I've had a nightmare about one girl three nights in a row now. I'll have to do something about her."

Mary Anne Schwalbe '55, director of Radcliffe admissions, had difficulty trying to pin down exactly what it was she looked for in applicants. The admissions officers have no hard and fast rule or method they use in evaluating prospective Harvard and Radcliffe students. The final decision is made in committees where the staff members spend long hours debating candidates qualifications. But before reaching that stage, the application has undergone a process that began months earlier...

The Interview: At the Boardroom of U.S. Steel

The scene is the board room of the United States Steel Corp. in Pittsburgh, Pa., a few years ago. Seated at the table that usually accommodates the directors of the nation's 13th-largest corporation are four or five Harvard alumni. Seated way down at the other end is a high school senior, seeking admission to the College, about to begin his interview, a half-hour question-and-answer session that would leave almost any applicant a bit shaken.

But Harvard and Radcliffe admission officials do not believe that an interview should be a highstress situation and John P. Reardon '60, director of Harvard admissions, has ended the grilling of students at U.S. Steel. Both Schwalbe and Reardon said last week that they favor interviews with a friendly atmosphere that will give applicants a favorable impression of the school. The interview, they noted, may be the applicant's only personal contact with the College, and he should be allowed to come across as something more than a few pieces of paper and test scores.

An interview that allows a candidate to "come to life" can help him get in, but occasionally interviews also serve to reveal serious personal problems that destroy a candidate's chances for admission. Reardon told of a recent interview with an applicant who had "a lot of wacky things to say-I don't know what he was high on, but he was just spaced." Reardon followed up on the interview and discovered the candidate had problems that "the guys in the school were not going to say in writing."

If an interview report differs substantially from the other information in a student's file, the admissions committee may disregard it. If the candidate was nervous or too quiet and reserved to come across well, Reardon said, "there is no way we are going to put a lot of concern on a 20-minute talk."

Radcliffe places much less importance on the interview, primarily because it lacks the network of 2000 alumni who assist the Harvard admissions office. Unlike at Harvard, the Radcliffe admissions staff enters the interview "cold turkey," completely unfamiliar with the applicant's record. As one interviewer. Kathy Kleeman '74, said, "We try to get to know her as a person, what she is interested in and what she wants....We don't look at their grades and board scores and often don't know them at the end of the interview. That might bias our impressions." Radcliffe also sets a standard half-hour time for each interview, intended to prevent the applicant from guessing at how interested the interviewer is in the candidate by the length of the interview.

Alumni interviewers have more influence in the admissions process at Harvard than at Radcliffe; they are better organized, have more information on the applicants, can set their own interview style and even submit a list ranking all the applicants in their area.

Some alumni, Reardon said, hold some "quite unusual" interview sessions. An alumnus, an auto company president, once complained to him about an interviewer in his area: "Do you know what this fellow does? He calls kids up at 9 o'clock and tells them to come over and doesn't let them out until 3 in the morning. When this one particular kid got home, his mother asked. 'What in the world happened?' and the kid replied. 'I can't tell you. I am sworn to secrecy.'"

When they encounter an alumni interviewer who is sending back inaccurate reports or damaging the school's reputation. Reardon and Jewett said they work subtly to have him switched to another kind of admission work. They can't "fire" anyone, since the alumni are all volunteers, but they can offer suggestions to the local alumni officials. Though they acknowledged that the committee must frequently compensate for the personal biases of an alumnus (i.e., a retired army colonel who can't stand anyone with more that 1:4 of an inch of hair), they said "bad" interviewers were fairly rare.

The interviewees vary in style as much as interviewers. Some come across quiet and withdrawn while others, such as Boston City Councilor Larry DiCara, make an unforgettable impression Reardon recalled his interview with DiCara at Boston Latin. "I said My name is Jack Reardon and he said [in a deep voice while giving a firm handshake] 'My name is Larry DiCara' and sat down One hour later I had not opened my mouth and I had to physically put him out the door. We both knew he was going to come here, but I couldn't believe he was for real."

After conducting an interview, an alumnus or staff member rates the candidates on the academic, extra curricular, athletic and personal qualities that form his admissions profile. He also writes a summary of his impression of the candidate. The summary, which may range in length from a paragraph to several pages, usually includes a physical description of the candidate, an evaluation of how well he thinks and articulates, and an assessment of how the candidate will do at Harvard. An excerpt from a typical interview drawn from an actual case read: "Robert Edwards [pseudonym] is one of the most likeable people I have ever met. He is a slow talking, relaxed young man with a tremendous grin...he is a warm, natural guy and should get along well here...he's a hard worker who has done reasonably well through hustle and determination...I think we would be crazy to pass him by and, by the way, I almost forgot, he's a Harvard son." The candidate was admitted.

The Process: The Big Committee

The processing of an application for admission begins when a secretary in Byerly Hall goes through a set of elaborate procedures to prevent the application's misfiling and possible loss. The admissions office rarely loses a file, but occasionally a clerical error will result in a mistake that, if undetected, could have cost a candidate admission. "I can think of a couple of people who got reject letters who were admitted." Reardon said in an interview last week. "I would think that if we admitted a guy by mistake, we would have to live with it."