HARVARD HAS LONG ADHERED to an admissions policy aimed at producing a diverse student body. Diversity, however, is more than a function of the selection process. Since a student body can only be as diverse as its applicant pool, the Admissions Office actively recruits people from distinctive backgrounds as well as people with special talents in athletics and the arts. As Michelle Green, an admissions officer, says, "If we ever stopped recruiting, we would wind up with an all-white, all-prep, all-brain student body."

In response to racial turmoil in the late sixties, Harvard for the first time decided to include minority students in its concept of diversity. Until then, as Daniel Steiner '54, general counsel to the University, recalls, "Diversity at Harvard simply meant an all-white student body." Today, Harvard has a fairly active minority recruitment program, one that supplements the efforts of regular admissions staff members with those of alumni and students. This program reflects the understanding that recruiting minority students requires a different kind of effort from recruiting, say, football players, or students coming from a prep school background.

At the present, however, the number of minority students at Harvard--particularly those coming from disadvantaged backgrounds--remains relatively low (see table), and the question persists, how successful is Harvard in meeting the acknowledged need to recruit these students? While Robert F. Young '74, an admissions officer who coordinates the activities of undergraduate recruiters with the Admissions Office, says the low number of minority students at Harvard is not a reflection on the recruitment program, he adds, "The fact is, the minority applicant pool is not that deep. There just aren't enough talented minority students right now."

Nevertheless, Harvard clearly believes that some disadvantaged minority students--in addition to those who have the benefit of prep and private school educations, or who come from middle and upper class backgrounds--would make "attractive" candidates--in Young's terms--were they to apply to Harvard. Otherwise, the admissions office presumably would not send student recruiters to high schools in low income areas with predominantly minority student bodies. Yet many of these students will not apply, mainly because they expect their low or mediocre grades and test scores to keep them out.

Although grades and test scores do figure in the admissions process, the role of such statistics is limited, and many students unfamiliar with Harvard's admissions policy incorrectly assume that poor scores and grades alone will keep them out of Harvard. As admissions officers note, one of the major purposes of recruiting is to uncover the student who does not realize that he may be "in the ballpark."

The difficulty in recruitment lies in channeling efforts in directions that have a reasonable chance of turning up "ballpark" candidates. Harvard's minority recruitment program utilizes a variety of techniques, but its first step is a selection process, a winnowing out based on Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores.

Harvard receives from Educational Testing Services (ETS) a "Search List" that contains the names of all students who identify themselves as minority members with certain grade averages and SAT scores. The ETS search service enables the individual admissions office to determine the criteria for its own Search List, such as grade averages, college board scores and geographical distribution. Harvard sets its minimum levels at a B-minus grade average and a 900 SAT score. The Admissions Office treats the Search List as a starting point for recruitment, sending letters to all students on its Search List. Oscar Rodriguez '80, one of the student recruiters, says the function of the letters is both "to tell the Search students what Harvard is about, and to try to sell Harvard to them as best we can."

With high schools around the country potentially warranting a recruitment trip, the Admissions Office depends strongly upon the Search Lists to locate potential applicants. As L. Fred Jewett '57, dean of undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid says, "The Search List provides the initial contact. If we didn't use the Search List, we'd have nothing."

Harvard introduced the Search List into its recruitment program two or three years ago, Jewett said.

If the Search List is a preliminary step, Harvard's actual recruitment program has three components--alumni, staff and students--which Jewett describes as being "pretty balanced in importance." Of the three, only the student group works specifically on minority recruitment (although two part-time admissions staff members primarily work with the minority candidate). The alumni and staff efforts in minority recruitment are integrated into the general admissions program.

With respect to the alumni, this means notifying local Harvard Clubs and their members of the Search List names from their areas, and hoping these alums follow up on the list in addition to their other recruiting and interviewing responsibilities. But as Jewett says, "In some areas there's been very active alumni participation, and in other areas, there hasn't been."

The minority recruitment program, as regards the staff members, is also loosely defined. "Each staff person is encouraged to include minority recruiting as one of his responsibilities," Jewett says, adding that the amount of recruiting varies with the locale and the given staff member.

The minority recruitment program may have a random quality because of this division of responsibilities among alumni and staff members. Brad Richardson, a Harvard admissions officer since 1969, says that of the roughly six weeks he spends on the road recruiting each year, he does some minority recruitment work "just about every day. For example, every school in Miami where I recruit has a certain number of blacks and Spanish-speaking people, so you're bound to run into some of those kinds of people there."

But, Richardson continues, he never goes to a school just to recruit minority students. "That's not our purpose. We haven't got time for that," he says.

The places where Harvard does spend its time and money may reveal something about the priorities of the admissions program. Like Richardson, most staff members are on the road between six and eight weeks a year, both to recruit and to conduct interviews. While Jewett says he cannot be precise about the kind of effort that goes into minority recruitment, he does say he has a clear picture of other segments of the applicant pool.