Ladd says the International Office discussed improvements to the visa process at its student orientation meeting this fall.

Margot Gill, administrative dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS), says that she and her colleagues plan to try to boost declining application numbers by spreading word of improvements before the next admissions cycle begins.

“GSAS will be stepping up our efforts to communicate with colleges and universities, with faculty members, with funding sources and with Harvard clubs to present a message about this improved visa processing activity,” she said.

But Verdery said the DHS was working to solve widespread visa problems even before delays elicited outrage from the higher education community.

“I’m not sure if you want to call it a chicken-and-egg thing, but people were calling us as we were looking at things anyway, giving the ammunition that we needed to take our proposals to other government agencies,” he said.

Verdery cited adjustments to SEVIS, a notoriously bug-ridden database of international students launched in 2003, as an example of the department’s improvement. Last year 300 visa-holders were detained at airports as a result of problems with the processing of their records, he said. Only 80 have reported problems so far this year.

Verdery also cited US VISIT, a program that gathers biometric information about all non-citizens as they enter the country, as a success story. So far, 10 million visitors have passed through the system.

“About 300 people have been turned away for being inadmissible for prior criminal violations, connections to terrorism, prior immigration violations,” he said. “Finding these needles in the haystack is what the system’s designed to do, and it’s working extremely well.”

—Staff writer Nathan J. Heller can be reached at heller@fas.harvard.edu.