Education: Class of 2018 - Harvard Makes Admissions Offers To Only 2023 Applicants

by Benson Agoha

Havard College has revealed it will admit far less than the number of those who applied for a place for the 2018 academic session.

Yesterday, the school said that of the 34,295 applicants, it only accepted 2,023, or 5.9%, keeping the admission rate low, although it represented a slight increase from previous years.

In a statement released on the Harvard Crimson, the college said after seven years of continuous decline in admissions rate, it has accepted 2,023, or 5.9 percent, of 34,295 students applying for admission to the Class of 2018.

Harvard which uses differen admission methods was set to send out emails at 5 p.m. on Thursday. "The Office of Admissions and Financial Aid will send emails to 1,031 regular applicants receiving offers. Nine hundred ninety-two students were also admitted to the class through the early action program," the statement said.

According to the Crimson, the admit rate for applicants considered under regular decision, including the 3,197 early action candidates who were deferred to regular decision, was 3.1 percent, down from last year’s rate of 3.4 percent.

Early applicants were also favoured as twenty-one percent of students who applied early action were accepted in December, according to the Crimson.

The admission statistics, according the statement, showed that those accepted to the Class of 2018 represent record levels of diversity, with African American and Latino students comprising 11.9% and 13% of the admitted students, respectively. Of students offered admission to the class, 19.7% are Asian American and 1.9% are Native American or Native Hawaiian. International students compose 10.5% of the class and 7.7% of admitted students are U.S. dual citizens.

Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid William R. Fitzsimmons said of the admissions in a press release “The Class of 2018 reflects the excellence achieved by the students of an increasingly diverse America,” adding “Attracting such students to the College is vital to Harvard’s mission of educating the future leaders of our nation.”

Clarifying further, College Dean of Admissions said that more than 63 percent of admitted students and 81 percent of admitted minority students appeared on College Board and ACT search lists that Harvard uses to identify qualified potential applicants from diverse backgrounds.

And although there was no deliberate attempt on gender bias, the statement said more males than females were admitted for the session as 55% of those admitted are male, owing to reasons that bothered on number of applicants and available courses.

Fitzsimmons said in an interview that although the gender breakdown is more tilted towards males than in previous years, he added that the Office of Admissions received more applications from males than females.

He also added that growing interest in concentrations at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences that are more frequently studied by men than women, such as engineering, physical science, mathematics, and computer science, have generated more applications to Harvard from males.

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* Source: The Harvard Crimson.