Harvard admissions officers bear a weighty responsibility—they must sift through tens of thousands of applicants and select the chosen few who will be welcomed into the 375-year-old Harvard community.

Some view the Admissions Office’s decisions with cynicism, accusing Harvard of actively working to inflate the number of students who apply and of failing to enroll the nation’s poorest students.

Others see Harvard as a leader and innovator working to diversify its applicant pool by intensifying its effort to reach out to disadvantaged high school students.

After a four-year absence, administrators announced this year the return of early admission—a program thought by some to diminish college access for lower-income students. The decision, which shook the admissions world, represents a dramatic shift in policy and offers a window into Harvard administrators’ decision-making processes.

The 2006 decision to end early action—like the move to drastically increase Harvard’s financial aid in 2004 and other initiatives before it—was meant to improve the accessibility of Harvard College for disadvantaged students.

But while Harvard administrators hoped these decisions would help to improve the College, they also meant for their efforts to pressure other universities to diversify their student bodies as well.

THE EARLY QUESTION

Five years ago Harvard announced that it would eliminate its early admission option, claiming that students of lower socioeconomic status often did not have the resources or knowledge to file an application early.

“Early admission programs tend to advantage the advantaged,” then-interim University President Derek C. Bok said at the time. “Students from more sophisticated backgrounds and affluent high schools often apply early to increase their chances of admission, while minority students and students from rural areas, other countries, and high schools with fewer resources miss out.”

But this February, the University shifted direction. The previous concerns, officials argued, had been mitigated by recruiting efforts and the strength of the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative, a landmark merit-based aid offering.

Furthermore, some low-income students desired the certainty of a decision early in the process, since many universities retained their early programs, Harvard officials argue.

Some admissions experts said that Harvard was correct to eliminate its early action program.

“Harvard did the right thing several years ago by trying to make the system more equitable and eliminating early action,” said Richard D. Kahlenberg ’85, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation.

“I’m not sure why that would change dramatically over the last few years.”

Others are less certain that bringing back early admission will have a negative impact on the number of students Harvard accepts from underrepresented backgrounds.

Christopher N. Avery ’88, author of The Early Admissions Game, said that students who are admitted in early admission programs are typically more advantaged than those admitted from the regular pool.

Still, he said that eliminating the program does not necessarily increase the diversity of the applicant pool.

Harvard will continue to accept the same number of wealthy students with or without early action, said Avery, a professor at Harvard Kennedy School. But, he said, without early action, Harvard would not receive applications from some high school students who opt to apply early at other top tier institutions.

Regardless of whether Harvard made the right decision when it eliminated its early program, it is clear that Harvard failed to motivate many other universities to do the same.

“We obviously hoped that a significant number [of other institutions] would join us,” Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons ‘67 said during an interview Friday. “Unfortunately, we did not set a trend. We are disappointed and we think it would have been have a strong statement [about early action].”

In the end, only Princeton University and the University of Virginia followed course.

“I think the goal was, ‘let’s see if we can start a revolution.’ That was a valiant effort, but it didn’t happen,” said Avery, who said he believes that the situation would be different today had other schools followed Harvard’s lead.

Since few schools moved to abandon their early admission programs, Harvard was forced to compete with schools that could offer students admission guarantees earlier in the school year.

FINANCIAL AID

While Harvard administrators failed to push other universities to eliminate their early programs, other initiatives have had more success in altering the admissions landscape.

In 2004, when the University adopted the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative, Harvard was the first top university to institute an expansive financial aid program.

Today, acceptance to Harvard guarantees a full ride to applicants with families that make less than $60,000 a year. Families that earn up to $180,000 a year are expected to pay no more than 10 percent of their family income in tuition.

Harvard’s leadership on financial aid pushed many universities, competing for the same top students, to create comparable financial aid programs.

“Harvard is doing about as well as it possibly could,” said Matthew M. Chingos ’05, a fellow at the Brookings Institution. “Harvard has in recent memory always had pretty generous financial aid.”

When Harvard announced the introduction of its financial aid initiative, peer institutions were quick to follow suit. By 2006, Yale and Stanford had unveiled similar programs with guaranteed free tuition for lower-income students.

Now, other Ivy League schools also offer generous financial aid, and universities in England are beginning to structure financial aid offerings in the likeness of Harvard’s program, according to Fitzsimmons.

“You always hope that Harvard will be a leader not just in the size of its endowment but in actually initiating enlightened policy,” Bok said, speaking about Harvard’s admission policies.

RECRUITMENT

As Harvard continues to pursue socioeconomically diverse applicants, the Admissions Office has stepped up its recruitment efforts.

Harvard admissions officials travel the country, holding panels that Fitzsimmons said demystify the process for students who would not necessarily think of Harvard as a viable option.

Reaching out in person is important to any effort to recruit, according to Graduate School of Education Professor Emeritus Charles V. Willie, who has been critical of the lack of diversity at Harvard, particularly in the faculty.

“There needs to be more talking. I know people who would have been good people at Harvard but went elsewhere when they would have done great here,” he said.

According to Fitzsimmons, while it is obvious that not everyone who receives promotional materials can be admitted to the College, the letters are essential to reaching students who would not consider Harvard otherwise.

About 70 percent of the students who ultimately enroll at Harvard were among those sent recruitment letters, according to Fitzsimmons. He said that 90 percent of minority students at Harvard received such a letter.

But Harvard’s recruitment policies have their critics.

Earlier this month, Bloomberg News published an article that featured a number of students and high school guidance counselors criticizing Harvard for the number of promotional mailings that it sends each year.

“The overwhelming majority of students receiving these mailings will not be admitted in the end and Harvard knows this well,” Jon Reider, director of college counseling at University High School in San Francisco, said in the article. He is also quoted as calling the mailings “not honorable.”

EVOLVING

Harvard’s efforts to diversify its applicant pool have improved dramatically in the last decade, beginning with African Americans in the 1960s.

In a 1961 report that garnered national attention, Harvard Director of Admissions Wilbur J. Bender ’27 argued that students would benefit from a more diverse college.

“What I am trying to say is that a deliberate policy of one-factor selection might produce in our student body not more students of first-rate intellectual power, but fewer,” Bender said.

In the same report, Bender warned that if Harvard failed to improve its economic diversity, the school would become an antiquated university. Over the years, the College’s admission policies have evolved and Bender’s goals were realized, at least in part.

“We’re getting talent from all over America that was not even close in the classes of the 1960s,” Fitzsimmons said.

GOING FORWARD

While education experts acknowledge the improvements Harvard has made, they say there is room for growth.

“Harvard has made substantial progress on socioeconomic diversity, but still has a long way to go. It’s clear that the students eligible for Pell grants have increased,” said Kahlenberg, from The Century Foundation.

A letter sent to the New York Times by Fitzsimmons and Director of Financial Aid Sarah C. Donahue said that 16.8 percent of students at the College are eligible for Pell Grants, which are given to students in the approximate bottom half of the income spectrum.

Kahlenberg said that studies suggest that the percentage could be higher without diminishing the quality of the student population.

Fitzsimmons does not deny that there is room for progress.

“We know there are still plenty of very talented students out there from poor and modest economic backgrounds,” he said. “Just because we made progress over the past five to six years is no indication about whether we can make progress in the next five to six to seven years.”

—Staff writer Justin C. Worland can be reached at jworland@college.harvard.edu.