The enrollment system is an important guarantee for the selection of outstanding talents, the promotion of discipline development and the improvement of the quality of higher education. January 1 is the application deadline for Harvard's regular admissions program, which means that applicants need to submit all their personal application materials by this date, including transcripts, application forms, personal statements, letters of recommendation, etc. Harvard's undergraduate admissions policy emphasizes the comprehensive examination of applicants and pays attention to the diversity of the student body, but there are also some controversies about fairness, which may provide some reference and reference for the adjustment of the admissions system of other universities at home and abroad.
Multi-party participation in the review
Harvard's undergraduate admissions process involves a variety of institutions, programs, and people both inside and outside the university, with the participation of students, faculty, staff, and alumni.
Multiple institutions and people participate in the recruitment. The Office of Admissions is Harvard's specialized agency for undergraduate admissions and has approximately 70 employees (40 admissions officers and 30 staff). The College Committee, made up of more than 10,000 alumni, helps the school interview applicants nearby, submits interview reports to the admissions office, and convinces top students to apply for admission to Harvard. A Standing Committee of faculty and staff assists the Office of Admissions in reviewing application materials, with a focus on academic or artistic submissions. In addition, undergraduate students will also participate in admissions publicity and communicate with potential applicants by writing letters, typing **, etc.
Training for new admissions officers. The admissions office is highly mobile, and new admissions officers are rigorously trained. Harvard provides them with written guidelines for the review process, requiring them to evaluate applicants with uniform criteria and to consider race as permitted. The onboarding casebook, which contains processed application materials from previous years, is used to guide the new admissions officer in grading applicants. Typically, senior admissions officers review the first 50 or 100 applications reviewed by new hires and provide feedback on how to improve them so that new recruits can quickly grasp the same criteria.
Ensure the objectivity of the review. The Admissions Committee, which consists of 40 admissions officers, has discretionary authority to review applications and participate in the admissions process. In general, the application materials submitted by students are divided into about 25 geotagging groups, and a subcommittee composed of 1 senior admissions officer (who serves as the chair) and 3-6 admissions officers will review the application materials at the high school level, and each member is responsible for reading all the application materials of a certain high school to ensure that the standards are consistent. In order to avoid too much variation between the groups, each admissions officer is required to participate in the review of more than 2 groups at the same time. The admissions officer may review and discuss any applicant's application materials. Open discussion and face-to-face voting procedures are an effective way to avoid bias or stereotypes from affecting admissions outcomes.
Conduct a comprehensive evaluation
The Harvard Admissions Committee believes that students with different family backgrounds, academic interests, life experiences, extracurricular talents, and career goals living together and exchanging academic Xi in a collision of ideas and perspectives are essential to achieving Harvard's educational mission in an increasingly diverse society.
Therefore, Harvard University comprehensively evaluates each applicant's academic performance, athletic activities, extracurricular activities, personal statement, family background, character, conduct, imagination, judgment, leadership, intellectual curiosity, alumni or staff interview reports, and letters of recommendation from teachers and guidance counselors, etc., to look for applicants with excellent academic performance, outstanding extracurricular activities, and good personal qualities. Admissions officers believe that it is impossible to truly understand a student's achievements and potential without understanding the impact of external factors such as life environment, socioeconomic status, family background, etc. on a student's growth.
Applicants are thoroughly evaluated through alumni and staff interviews. The vast majority of applicants are interviewed by an alumni or staff member of Harvard University, and the interview usually lasts between 45 minutes and 1 hour. The interviewer fills out an assessment** that rates the applicant's academics, personality, extracurricular activities, sports, community involvement, etc., as well as writing comments explaining their conclusions. When organizing alumni interviews, Harvard provides alumni with an Interviewer's Handbook, reminding them to avoid bias and not to advise applicants about admission opportunities.
Conduct a comprehensive review of the application materials. At the end of the sub-committee's review, an overall rating, four sub-ratings and three school support ratings will be awarded. The overall rating reflects the reviewer's overall impression of the applicant's strengths, and in this section, the reviewer may give the applicant extra points by noting that he has extraordinary intelligence, has a strong overall character, has outstanding creative or athletic ability, etc. Harvard University allows admissions officers to consider the racial factor of applicants when grading them overall. The three school support ratings reflect the applicant's submissions of letters of recommendation from 2 teachers and 1 guidance counselor, as well as other letters of recommendation.
The four sub-scores refer to the first reviewer's initial assessment of the applicant's academic performance, extra-curricular activities, sports strengths and personal qualities. Academic performance grades reflect an applicant's academic strength and potential, based primarily on standardized test scores, letters of recommendation, academic awards, rigor of coursework, original research, other academic achievements, and the strength of the applicant's high school. The Extracurricular Activity Rating is an assessment of an applicant's participation in extracurricular activities during high school and what contributions the applicant is likely to bring to the extracurricular life of a Harvard student. The sports specialty rating is an assessment of the applicant's distinctive athletic expertise. The personal quality evaluation reflects the admissions officer's assessment of the applicant's courage, leadership, adaptability, judgment, and spirit of cooperation.
In addition, Harvard evaluates applicants' ability to present different perspectives and uniqueness that is not suitable for quantitative measures, and will also give preferential treatment to applicants based on their outstanding strengths, such as outstanding leadership and creative skills. Non-academic factors such as unique life experiences, ability to overcome adversity, special talents, etc., are especially important in admissions decisions.
Clarify the review process
Harvard's undergraduate admissions process includes key elements such as the subcommittee's democratic recommendation of the pre-recorded list, the admissions committee's collective discussion of the admission list, and the fine-tuning of the admission list.
The Subcommittee democratically recommends a pre-recorded list. The subcommittee brainstorms the early decision application process in November each year and the regular admissions cycle at the end of January or February. The Subcommittee reserves the right to hold application materials, wait for additional information, or transfer applicants who participate in the Early Admissions Initiative to the regular admissions cycle. All application materials are concentrated in binders, making it easy to compare them at any time. Once the discussion is complete, the subcommittee will determine the list of recommended admissions and submit it to the Admissions Committee.
The admissions committee brainstorms the admission list. The Admissions Committee discusses the application materials for the early admissions stage at the end of November and early December, and decides on the results of the regular admissions cycle in March. Admissions Committee plenary meetings typically last a few weeks and focus on potential information in the application materials rather than the initial grading results. During this period, the applicant's high school grades, alumni interview reports, and other information for the new semester will be supplemented.
The admissions committee is balanced and fine-tuned the admission list. The Admissions Office determines the number of students admitted based on the annual enrollment plan and expected enrollment rate, etc., and often excludes some students after the admissions committee has confirmed the admission list. If there is a real need to reduce the number of admissions, the Admissions Committee will also initiate a reduction process to revisit the application materials and exclude some applicants. The admissions committee usually prepares a list to be excluded that includes information such as the applicant's financial aid program eligibility, athletic rating, family background, gender, and ethnicity. The Director of Admissions and Financial Aid informs the Admissions Committee of the characteristics of the class to be admitted, and the Admissions Committee collectively decides on the final exclusion list based on a number of factors.
Throughout the admissions process, the head of the admissions office tracks information such as the applicant pool, the subcommittee's recommended admission list, the racial composition of admitted students, and if a certain group is found to be significantly underrepresented, or has dropped dramatically from the previous year, the admissions committee may pay extra attention to that group of students to ensure that they are considered fairly.
After several weeks of extensive discussion and comparison, all members of the admissions committee finally voted for four admission results: admission, rejection, waitlist, and Z-list. Waitlisted applicants will be required to submit updated standardized test scores and other achievement materials in May, which will be reviewed again by the admissions officer. The Z list has been widely criticized in recent years, and it is mainly used to recruit the children of elites, alumni and elite schools who cannot be admitted through regular admissions channels.
Develop a tilt policy
Harvard University places a special emphasis on adequate communication with minority applicants, as scores may not fully reflect their potential. In the 70s of the 20th century, Harvard University established a minority undergraduate enrollment program, which mainly recruited African-American, Hispanic, Asian-American, and other minority students. Race benefits outstanding students, not the deciding factor.
In addition to ethnic minorities, sports students, children of alumni, children or relatives of donors, and children of faculty and staff are the groups that receive the most preferential treatment, accounting for about 30% of the annual enrollment plan. The removal of preferential treatment for such applicants could open up more places to other applicants, but it would not be conducive to attracting and retaining high-quality faculty and staff, nor would it be conducive to strengthening the ties between the university and alumni, which in turn would affect the building of the Harvard campus community. How to deal with these contradictions is a test that Harvard University has to face.
The author's affiliation is the Chinese Academy of Educational Sciences).
China Education Daily, December 14, 2023, 9th edition
Author: Zhang Jiayong.