Leslie A. Munoz '02 was hooked on Harvard. But Byerly Hall needed an extra $2,000 to reel her in. A middle-income public school student from Pueblo, Colo., Munoz was admitted to Harvard, Stanford and several state schools in her home state earlier this year.

In years past, her decision might have been a walk for the world's most prestigious University. But Harvard's original offer was low, and it took a last-minute gift to win her away from a free ride elsewhere.

Like first-years for decades, Munoz is now looking forward to Yard life, but the effort it took to attract her this year signals a change in the way both Harvard and the rest of higher education deal with financial aid.

Five of the nation's top universities announced increased aid this spring, aiming to increase middle-class enrollment.

At first, Harvard did nothing, with University officials saying low middle-class yield was a problem they weren't facing.

But within two weeks, the University quietly began a million-dollar financial counterattack--upping its offers on an individual basis and giving the class of 2002 just enough to win them away from competitors.

And at the end of this semester, President Neil L. Rudenstine and Byerly Hall promised to replace this skirmishing with a more formal program this fall--reforms which likely would reduce self-help requirements for many students.

But then financial aid officials and Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles reneged on this promise, committing themselves only to a summer-long review of aid policy.

Still, before the reversal Harvard officials admitted that prestige can only go so far and that other schools' money is a factor to be reckoned with.

In quietly making bids for individual students like Munoz large enough to win them over, Harvard faced the reality of financial aid's importance without rashly and publicly following its rivals.

And similarly, while University officials still say aid must change next fall, over-the-top generosity will probably also not mark formal aid changes, whatever form they may take.

Harvard seems to know that its prestige is a powerful voice in college decisions. This spring at least, it seems to have assigned financial aid the role of bringing Harvard just close enough that prestige can do the rest.

The Pressure Builds

At the end of January, Princeton started a war.

The university, which in recent years had seenits admissions yield drop in middle- andlower-income brackets, announced a bold break fromdecades of cooperation between Ivy financial aiddepartments.

It allocated an additional $6 million tounilaterally cut student self-help and expectedparental contributions for the class of 2002,replacing these with outright grants.