While the admissions officials say they rarely make clerical errors, they make no bones about admitting they may make mistakes in their decisions. It's a subjective process that works without any formal criteria, making decisions by the majority vote of a committee composed of administrators and faculty. The process of evaluation of an applicant, however, has been thoroughly systemized and computerized over the last few years.

Once an application is complete in all respects (i.e. teacher reports, test scores, etc. are in), it is removed from the office's "dead file" and released to be read by admission officials. An application generally gets two, sometimes three preliminary readings. An official is put in charge of applications from each area of the country and is responsible for reading all the cases from that section.

Each reader fills out a sheet containing a few comments on the applicant and perhaps more importantly, a set of one-to-six ratings on the basis of his academic, extracurricular, athletic and personal qualities. It is four numbers that constitute the applicant's "profile" and provide a handy numerical system which can be used to compare even the most diverse pair of candidates.

Reardon described what some of the figures mean: In the extracurricular field, for example, "a one means you're really super. Bob Portney '74 is a 'I' violinist; a '2' and you're student body president or a newspaper editor; '3' means you're pretty involved; '4' means you go home in the afternoon and watch TV; a '5' or a '6' and you never move."

A 'one' academic rating goes to fewer than one in a hundred candidates and, according to the department's forms, indicates someone with "true creative intellect. Summa potential," and unusual accomplishments, top grades and mid-00 or above test scores." Most students at Harvard received a 'one', 'two' or 'three' academic rating.

The scale for personal qualities ranges from a 'one' for "outstanding character and personality. Tops in all respects" to a 'six' for a "Poor impression, unstable or offensive."

Despite the written detailed interview report and thoughtful comments by guidance counselors and teachers, admission officials have been able to reduce each case to one line of ratings and numbers. Every person who reads an application or submits recommendation is asked to supply some kind of ratings. The interviewers and readers use the one-to-six profile and school officials now rate each applicant "for academic, promise" and "character and personal promise" on one-to-five scales.

Dean K. Whitla, associate director of admissions, codes this information computer use and spins out a computerized "docket" listing each candidate's name, his ranking from readers and school officials, test scores, race and alumni connections. When each case is considered in committee, only the official presenting it will have the file, but every one has the docket in front of him, supplying him with hard numerical information about the applicant.

But before the committees consider the cases, admission officials at both Radcliffe and Harvard draw up "target figures" indicating the number of applicants they expect to take from each geographic region of the country.

At Harvard, the admission pool is divided up into 26 areas; some regions cover several states, others include only a few private schools like Andover and Exeter. Basing their decision on the quality and number of the applications from each area, and upon the action they have taken in the past there, top admissions officers at Harvard and Radcliffe get together with Whitla to set a target number of admits from each region. Though Reardon declined to release the targets because of the disputes they might cause with alumni, and only allowed a quick look at this year's figures, they reveal that while admissions from the Boston and Cambridge areas have remained high, the quality of the applications has fallen off drastically. Reardon acknowledged that if you come out of the Boston public schools, it's easier to get into Harvard, hard though he pointed out that Boston Latin is really the only city school Harvard is drawing students from.

The admissions committee then meets to consider and approve the targets before breaking up into regional subcommittees. At these meetings, which usually start around March 1, the group of administrators and faculty considers every case in the region, trying to come in on target. Reardon stressed that the targets aren't hard and fast if a subcommittee decides it just can't get its group down to target without throwing out some good candidates, it may insist on raising its target. But if an area is going to try to get more applicants in, it must lower the targets elsewhere and this could be a real sorespot when the entire committee meets again.

After this initial round of subcommittee meetings, the entire staff will meet for the second rung of the process: the targets are thrown out and each case is presented by the chairman of the applicant's regional group. The committee may spend any where from a few seconds on a case with a 'six' profile to an hour and forty-five minutes on a toughone Occassionally, Reardon said, tempers get out of hand in the committee. "I've seen one person take a poke at another person. It doesn't happen very often...When you're dealing with that kind of stress over a number of days, there are some disagreements that get sort of personalized."

The committee even discusses the occupation and education of the candidates' parents. As Missy Holland '73, a member of the staff, said "We don't want to fault a kid because of the family background she has had. Different kinds of support at home are taken into consideration along with what they've accomplished. We will take a ship-fitter's daughter who has done less in extra-curricular activities but has also held down a 20 hour a week job, before a corporation's lawyer's daughter who didn't do anything with her time."

In the committee, everyone has an equal vote, from the director of admissions to the most recent addition to the group. A recent graduate who works for the staff might concede on some points to another member of the committee with more experience. But having been a member of the Harvard-Radcliffe community only last year, Hollond's voice carries a lot more clout than the other members' on some issues.

Admission to the College requires only a simple majority vote of the full committee. A student who didn't get accepted in the regional group might get in if someone else on the committee really felt strongly about him. And if the committee rebuffs an area man on a case, he can continue to bring this case back to the committee over and over again until the letters go out.