In the fall the office will mail informationabout Harvard-Radcliffe to about 5000 students whohave high board scores and who have high gradepoint averages, he says, adding that admissionsofficers will also try to find out the students'interests from the guidance counselors.
The office plans to continue its minorityrecruiting program, which involves sending currentHarvard undergraduates around the country to talkto interested minority applicants.
Diana Rodriguez '89, who works as a minorityrecruiter for the Admissions Office says theundergraduates receive minority search lists fromaptitude tests and achievement tests and then tryto contact students they feel would make acontribution to Harvard. They then decide whatsecondary schools to visit based on the number ofinterested minority applicants and the AdmissionsOffice's past experiences with those schools.
"We make two trips. We go in the fall and inthe spring, mainly to large areas of applicationlike California and Florida. We find out who theinterested students are, and we hold meetings todiscuss what they need to do to apply, like takethe SAT, etc," she says. "It's good for us to talkto them, because especially if we are from thesame city, we have something in common and canreassure them that we like school and that theymight as well."
Rodriguez says that she recruits where shelives, New York City, where many minority studentsare really not aware of higher educationalopportunities and that she works to make themaware of Harvard as well as of collegeopportunities in general.
"We want them to know that there is life afterhigh school, and that they can apply to college,"said Rodriguez. "In a sense we serve as advisors,getting in touch with them over the year to seehow their senior year and how their collegeapplication is going."
Once students complete the applications,however, the work is not over, for the admissionsoffice or for the student. For the applicant'spart, he or she must try to maintain his or heracademic and extracurricular performance, but forthe Admissions Office the arduous task of paringdown the 14,000 applicants into 2000 diverseacceptances begins.
Fitzsimmons says that once his office receivesthe application, at least three people read itbefore coming to any acceptance decision. Oneperson, who represents the applicant's region,serves as an advocate for the people from thatarea, and is also a member of a subcommittee,which, depending on the number and quality of theapplicants from an area, makes recommendations tothe final decision committee.
"A lot of times we have faculty as well asadmissions officers coming in to readapplications," Fitzsimmons said. "If a student hassent us some computer program or music tape, andwe want to know the quality of that sample, we aska professor to look at it. They include theirwritten opinions along with the other threereaders."
Occasionally the officers ask students toresubmit various parts of their applications, inorder to facilitate the decision process. Becausethe various committees and subcommittees are knownto debate applicants for days at a time, extrainfomation, such as another essay or secondsemester grades can make a significant differencein helping narrow the semi-definite acceptee groupto a specific number per region.
Fitzsimmons says that once the target number ofapplications has been sent from the subcommittee,they join those of the full committee, a body of30 to 40 people, that votes on the remainingapplications.
He says each application is thoroughly reviewedagain, and then elections are held. The officersmust choose the final 2200 acceptances, whichoften means eliminating several students who hadbeen elected by the entire committee. This yearthe college had to eliminate an extra 209 from thesemi-final figure.
Once the black and crimson acceptance papersare mailed, the office waits for the May 1responses before deciding on admitting studentsfrom the wait lists. Some years no one gets in offthe wait list at all, but usually there are a fewstudents who, once deferred, gain acceptance in asecond round of admissions conferences.
And while many applicants will inevitably endup disappointed, they have at least one reason tobe happy--the process of applying is over. For theAdmissions Office, though, the whole arduousprocedure starts up again.