Harvard didn't flinch.

Officials pointed to a steady yield inlower-income brackets where its Ivy peers hadfaltered but Harvard had always done well.

Rudenstine lauded the benefits of "investing inone's own education" through loans and work-studyrequirements, self-help that was reduced inPrinceton's proposal.

Then Yale and Stanford Universities, which havetraditionally battled with Princeton over a commonpool of applicants, stirred, reducing familycontributions and self-help.

Their increases cost $3.5 million and $3.8million, respectively.

After Yale changed its policies, Harvard wasfinally moved, replacing its refusal to changewith a pledge to make its offers competitive on acase-by-case basis. This pledge--to keep packageswithin "shouting distance" of the competition--wasa vague label for what would become a silent,case-by-case bidding war with its rivals.

At other schools the aid revolution continued.MIT dropped $1,000 from student self-helprequirements, and the University of Pennsylvaniastrengthened a system of merit-based "preferentialpackages" by eliminating loans for 100 outstandingstudents.

In Byerly Hall, officials quickly learned thatHarvard's name was being pitted against otherschools' increased generosity.

In the estimation of Director of Financial AidJames S. Miller, 70 percent of those offered aidcalled in with a question or request for anadjustment. In previous years, only about 30percent of students called Byerly Hall.

According to Miller, this record number ofrequests was met with between $750,000 and $1.5million in extra spending on financialaid--bidding money that no one could find in theFAS budget at the beginning of February.

The effects of this low-profile outlay wereobvious when admissions yield figures wereannounced late last month.

Harvard's yield rose 4 points to a schoolrecord of 80 percent while other schools hoverednear their recent averages. Without even formallyjoining the fray, Harvard seems to have won thisspring's bidding war for high school students.

All Aid is Local

A senior this year at Central High School inPueblo, Munoz is a perfect example of a "shoutingdistance" success story.

Three years ago, Munoz's father was laid offand then worked various temporary jobs. Withoutsignificant financial assistance, the Munoz familywould not be able to pay the sky-high costsrequired even after financial aid at some schools.