After seeing a record number of applicants for the Classes of 2008 and 2009, Harvard’s figures plateaued this year as Byerly Hall netted 22,719 applications for a spot in the Class of 2010.

The College received 77 fewer applications than last year, according to Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67. The slight decrease in total applicants follows a larger drop-off in last November’s Early Action pool.

In an interview, Fitzsimmons tied the figures to last year’s 15 percent increase in total applications.

“I think usually when you have one big increase there is a tendency to level off,” Fitzsimmons said.

With last year’s increase came more rejections, which Fitzsimmons said may have made some students and guidance counselors wary of trying their luck with Byerly this year.

“That kind of thing can also drive people not only into other colleges’ application pools, it can drive them into Early Decision pools” at schools like Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania, Fitzsimmons said.

Early applications for both schools were up nine and 21 percent respectively from last year, according to The Daily Princetonian and The Daily Pennsylvanian.

Bruce J. Breimer, director of college guidance at Collegiate High School in New York City, said he disagreed with Fitzsimmons’ reasoning.

An increase in rejections the previous year is “not going to scare away someone for whom an application is appropriate,” Breimer said. “You don’t make it a negative self-fulfilling prophecy by refusing to apply.”

Total applications hit record highs this year at Penn, Princeton, and Yale—which for the first time topped Harvard in early applicants—though none of the schools scored as large a pool as Harvard.

FIE HFAI!

Fitzsimmons also said that tweaks to the recruiting efforts for the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative (HFAI) contributed to this year’s dip in applicants. The highly-touted program, introduced by University President Lawrence H. Summers in 2004, exempts families earning under $40,000 from any financial contribution, and sharply reduces costs for families making less than $60,000.

Last year, the admissions office used geographic and demographic data to guide their 12,000 recruiting calls to high school students.

Many who received calls were neither qualified financially for HFAI nor academically for Harvard.

This year, however, potential HFAI candidates were asked to reply to a postcard sent out with search letters from the College. The new process yielded a more realistic list of potential applicants and allowed Byerly to call only 5,000 students, a decrease which resulted in fewer applicants, Fitzsimmons said.

Though the admissions office is not certain how many applicants will qualify for HFAI, the “results from Early Action bode well for another economically diverse class,” Director of Financial Aid Sarah C. Donahue said in a statement.

Fitzsimmons said the admissions office also uses fee waiver requests to gauge the prospective number of HFAI-eligible applicants. The College received 2,353 requests, the exact number it received for the Class of 2009, a coincidence Fitzsimmons called “eerie.”

A record 51.6 percent of this year’s pool is comprised of women, a number that has been rising since the Class of 2008, when female applicants first overtook their male counterparts. International applications also increased slightly.

There were no major changes in the geographic distribution of the pool, but applications from “African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans, and Native-Americans were all up from last year,” Fitzsimmons said. An exact ethnic breakdown of the pool will not be released until the end of the month.

Harvard accepted 821 students to the Class of 2010 last December under its non-binding Early Action program, deferring 2,828 and rejecting 149.

Applicants will be notified of Harvard’s decision on March 30. Admitted students must respond by May 1.

—Staff writer Benjamin L. Weintraub can be reached at bweintr@fas.harvard.edu.