The Real 1%: Harvard Admits 15 Transfer Students

Colleges & Universities Harvard University
1

<p>[The</a> Real 1%: Harvard Admits 15 Transfer Students | News | The Harvard Crimson](<a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2012/6/21/transfer-admissions-one-percent/]The”>The Real 1%: Harvard Admits 15 Transfer Students | News | The Harvard Crimson)</p>

<p>From a pool of 1,448 applicants, 15 students were admitted to Harvard College in the 2012 transfer admissions cycle, putting the acceptance rate for students who start their time at Harvard as sophomores or juniors at approximately 1 percent.</p>

<p>“The admits are a fantastic group,” said Christine Gibbons Mascolo, the director of transfer admissions. “We think that they can really add to the [Houses] and College as a whole, even in small numbers.”</p>

<p>The applicant pool shrunk slightly from last year’s admissions cycle, when 1,488 students sought to transfer to Harvard. Fifteen students were accepted last year as well.</p>

<p>Mascolo said that the College, still within memory of its two-year moratorium on all transfer admissions, will probably accept a similarly tiny number of transfer students again next year.</p>

<p>“It’s done by a committee and we’re looking for the same kinds of excellence. I don’t expect any changes right now,” Mascolo said.</p>

<p>She added that the transfer admissions process mirrors the process for freshmen admissions, though with a much smaller applicant pool. This year, 5.9 percent of the 34,302 freshman hopefuls were accepted.</p>

<p>Rishi Goel ’15, an admitted transfer student from the University of Texas at Austin, said he was in disbelief when he first read his acceptance email.</p>

<p>“I couldn’t even call my parents because it was too surreal,” Goel said.</p>

<p>Goel said that he was attracted to Harvard because of its biomedical engineering degree as well as its liberal arts curriculum. But he is also looking forward to the New England environment.</p>

<p>“The cold weather is going to be such a relief from the Texas heat, and I cannot wait to get rid of my cedar fever,” he said of an allergy that plagues many central Texas residents but is nearly unheard of in Cambridge.</p>

2

<p>Wow. My class had 55 fall and 15 spring admits out of 1200 applicants.</p>

3

<p>:S wow. This makes me want to cry.</p>

4

<p>Mine was in 06-07, and was about 45 in the fall and 25 in the spring. So similar numbers to Hanna’s class.</p>

5

<p>According to the Crimson, 6 of those admitted were Harvard “affiliates”. That is the Harvard way of saying that someone in their family had a Harvard connection.</p>

6

<p>@uk2066: </p>

<p>That’s not surprising. There were quite a few children of Harvard faculty members in my transfer class (though I can say without a doubt that they were all highly qualified to be at Harvard. You can argue that they’re privileged, but certainly not that they are academically or intellectually unqualified) I’m willing to bet that “Harvard affiliate” means a tie to a current employee or overseer/corporation. I think if you were to broaden the definition to ‘ANY Harvard tie’, it’s probably more than 6.</p>