CORRECTION APPENDED

As Harvard College admissions officers scramble to determine the final list of students who will be offered admission to the Harvard Class of 2011, there is one group of students that will feel the squeeze of the expanding freshman class—transfer students. The number of transfers students offered spots at Harvard is expected to be cut in half for the coming year, according to Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71.

During the 2006–2007 school year, 75 transfer students entered Harvard—55 in the fall and 20 in the spring, according to Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ’67.

But in an interview on Thursday, Gross said it was no longer feasible for Harvard to absorb as many transfer students in the wake of a spring 2006 decision to increase the size of the freshman class.

Prior to the Class of 2010, the size of Harvard’s freshman classes had wavered around 1640. But the Class of 2010 had 1684 students, and administrators hope to have about 1675 students enter the Class of 2011 in September, including newly admitted students and students on leave.

Although the target number for the freshman class has been set, Gross said that he and Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles will decide in the coming weeks on a target number of transfer admits.

Fitzsimmons said that his office is used to an ever-changing number of transfer admissions.

“I started admissions in 1972,” he said. “Some years we were given a target of zero [transfer students], and one year we were given a target of 132.”

The number of transfer students at Harvard has climbed since 2004, following a five-year downward trend with no transfers accepted in the spring of 2003.

While Gross said that the number of transfer admittances would be cut in half for the 2007–2008 academic year, he did not expect the number to drop further in following years.

“We always want to have space for some exceptional transfer students,” Gross said.

Transfer admissions vary widely across the Ivy League, from Princeton which doesn’t admit any transfer students to Cornell, which accepted more than 600 last year. While the number of admits varies from year to year at Harvard, Yale has aimed to have about 24 transfer students matriculate each year for the past 15 years, according to Yale Dean of Admissions Jeff Brenzel.

DIVERSE EXPERIENCES

With a freshman applicant pool reaching upwards of 22,000 compared to 1,000 transfer applicants, the College faces two markedly different pools of applicants each year.

Fitzsimmons attributed the different composition of the two pools to Harvard’s intensive recruiting process for incoming freshmen.

“We recruit around the world very aggressively for the freshman pool,” he said.

In contrast, the College cannot do that type of recruiting for transfer students, and Fitzsimmons classified this smaller pool as very good but “self-selected.”

“It is obviously a much smaller pool numerically, and there are more people who applied who perhaps shouldn’t have applied,” added Fitzsimmons.

Transfer students currently enrolled at Harvard generally felt that the new policy was unfortunate.

Angelica W. Nierras ’09, who transferred to Harvard in the fall of 2006 after her freshman year at Wellesley College, said that reducing the number of transfer students could increase the pressure on high school students.

“As someone who transferred, I think it is going to put a lot of undue pressure on people to really make the best decision when they pick a college at the end of their senior year,” said Nierras.

Noah A. Rosenblum ’08, a transfer student who came to Harvard after two years at Deep Springs College in Nevada, said that transfers add a different and diverse perspective to the College community. [SEE CORRECTION BELOW]

“They are able to look at some of the ridiculous stuff here and call it is what it is—ridiculous,” said Rosenblum.

But Rosenblum added that he would be disappointed if Harvard simply viewed transfer students as a way to add some diversity of experiences to the student body. He said that administrators should also consider the importance of a Harvard education to individual transfer students.

The new policy “is almost treating transfer students as an ingredient to make other people’s college experience better,” said Rosenblum.

—Staff writer Madeline W. Lissner can be reached at mlissner@fas.harvard.edu.

CORRECTION: The March 19 story “College To Halve Transfer Admits” listed the incorrect location of Deep Springs College. The college is located in California—not Nevada, as the article states.