Overall, however, the coaches and admissions officers tend to lean on each other for information and advice. Each year the coaches submit to the committee a list of students they would like to have in their programs, and the committee in turn asks the athletic department for an evaluation of the applicant's athletic capabilities. Calvin N. Mosley, associate director of admissions, says the process is similar to the committee's practice of asking member of special departments to rate the ability of an applicant who is an artist or musician. "'You measure excellence in a variety of ways, and athletics is just one," Mosley says. The committee still reviews the athlete-applicant by the same criteria it applies to other students, he says; there is no formula to weight athletic ability, and the fact that Harvard does not award athletic scholarships makes it imperative that each student be able to make it through on his or her own ability. "They're not about to fold up their tents because they're married to the Athletic Department," Mosley notes.

Coaches have come to accept the fact that they will not get their entire list accepted every year, he says. Lee, like most of the coaches, says the committee does a good job. Still, some coaches seem to be able to get a higher percentage of their lists accepted than others. No coach will admit to bureaucratic politicking to gain favor with the committee; in fact, Restic notes, "I don't sense any of that--the committee has always been very fair." But as Lee says, "The sports that get more publicity, you expect to have more clout with admissions." When one coach has an especially successful year--whether he has picked well, or perhaps because he strategically pushed the right students by putting them on his list while allowing stronger applicants to fend for themselves in the admissions process--other coaches are bound to notice.

Some coaches take a while a get used to the Harvard system, while others fit in right away. Don Gambril, who coached the Crimson's swimming team from 1971-1973 and now coaches at the University of Alabama, says he spent his first season bucking the admissions process. "The first year I just didn't understand it--how they accept a certain number of applicants from geographical areas when everybody I wanted was from one or two places. Then I realized there was never any way I was ever going to be able to push the people I wanted into Harvard, so I just had to adjust." By the time Gambril had adjusted he had decided the picking were better at Alabama, and was off to Tuscaloosa.

But Harvard's latest swimming coach seems already adjusted to the Harvard way of life. Joe Bernal, who is coming to Harvard from Fordham next year, says he realizes recruiting is not his job. "The committee made it quite clear it's their responsibility to do that end of it," he notes. Bernal, however, has already had a stroke of luck: the admissions committee last month accepted his star pupil, Robert W. Hackett '81--an Olympic silver medalist--a month after notifying the rest of the incoming freshmen.

Though coaches may say they find the admissions process frustrating, Jewett says it still aims to attract talented athletes as well as others with exceptional extracurricular talents. The different, he points out, is that Harvard does not distinguish between athletic skills and other talents when considering its applicant pool. Other Ivy League schools are more explicit in their consideration--ranging from Penn, which is reported to reserve a certain number of spots in its freshman class especially for "athletes," to Princeton, which only considers athletes as a separate group when judging the applications its admissions committee considers marginal. Jewett maintains that athletes do not need special consideration: "We consider them like future members of the glee club or orchestra--with an eye toward making Harvard a more attractive society."

Jewett adds, however, that athletics play an important role in attracting not only new students but alumni dollars. He says he has never felt "any inordinate alumni pressure" to take more athletes, but says this might result from the fact that Harvard has "never had a big string of losing teams." If Crimson athletes were suddenly to falter, if the lure of Harvard were suddenly to fade, Jewett concedes the future might bring more pressure.

In fact, the pressure may already be starting to build. The NCAA recently reduced the amount of scholarship money that each Division I school can award by 40 per cent--a move that will make other Ivy League schools that much more competitive for the truly "blue-chip" athletes. With rivals stepping up their recruiting, and with the "Harvard mystique" inevitably fading as the school drifts further away from the Roosevelt-Cabot era, Harvard may decide it has to change its admissions process.

As Princeton's Flippin notes, "Everybody wants the same people, and in the long run the recruiting school is going to have a big advantage." Whether Harvard will be able to respond to the competitive athletic pressure off the field as well as on and still maintain its current admissions standards remains to be seen.