Makeup of the Class
After an application period unlike any other, the Class of 2024 will start their tenure at Harvard on Wednesday.
It was only a few weeks prior to receiving their acceptance letters that they saw the Harvard undergraduate population evacuate. Their only impression of the college was oblique, since a virtual equivalent of Visitas, the college’s annual weekend for admitted students, was held virtually. In the end, they chose their autumnal college without having a clear idea of how the college would reopen.
Harvard declared in July that all undergraduate courses would be offered virtually and that first-year students were welcome to reside on campus and attend classes from their dorm rooms, but they did not issue their autumn schedule until then. A few weeks later, the College made it clear that due to federal visa requirements, freshman from other countries would not be able to visit campus.
Many freshman expressed that they believed their situation was not ideal, even though some expressed gratitude for being accepted to campus. Many stated they would consider taking a gap year if they didn’t have access to upperclassmen mentorship, the opportunity to mingle with their new classmates, and the dynamic of in-person classes. In the end, a record 20% of admits chose to postpone their admission offers.
This year’s freshmen class shares several characteristics with past classes despite their difficult beginnings.
Similar to previous years, they hail from predominantly affluent backgrounds in relation to the nation as a whole. In response to a poll concerning parental income, nearly thirty percent of freshmen in The Crimson’s class of 2024 said that their families earn $250,000 or more annually, which is more than ninety-five percent of American households.
The class’s racial makeup, however, differed from that of the incoming class of the previous year; the proportion of Asian American and Black or African American students both hit record highs.
on 76% of freshman took the time to answer a Crimson email questionnaire on their histories, views, and lifestyles while most of them settled into their dorms and a small percentage got ready for three months of remote learning from home. They answered questions regarding anything from political ideologies to alcohol intake to viewpoints on the world in the anonymous poll.
on 76% of freshman took the time to answer a Crimson email questionnaire on their histories, views, and lifestyles while most of them settled into their dorms and a small percentage got ready for three months of remote learning from home. They answered questions regarding anything from political ideologies to alcohol intake to viewpoints on the world in the anonymous poll.
Demographics
According to previous admissions rounds, the majority of this year’s freshmen are white, heterosexual, well-off, and from suburban areas. The biggest class of Asian American students ever admitted to Harvard was made possible by the autumn ruling of a federal court that the university’s racial admissions criteria do not constitute unlawful discrimination against Asian American applicants. Compared to the record of 22.6 percent set previous year, the number increased by more than 6 percentage points. Additionally, compared to the previous year, the percentage of Black or African American pupils rose by approximately 5%, setting a new record of 15.8%.
Approximately 52.1 percent of students who answered The Crimson’s survey identified as female, 46.9 percent as male, and 0.7 percent as non-binary. In addition, about 0.7% of people identified as transgender.
Regarding ethnicity, 49.8% of participants said they were white, 29.1% said they were Asian, 13.4% said they were Hispanic or Latinx, 15.8% said they were Black or African American, 4.8 percent said they were South Asian, 1.8 percent said they were American Indian or Alaska Native, and 0.5 percent said they were Pacific Islander.
On the first day of classes this past week, 73.6 percent of the freshmen surveyed were 18 years old. 13.7 percent were under the age of 17, 1.1 percent were between the ages of 17 and 20, and 1% were beyond the age of 21.
When asked how they identify their sexual orientation, 78.0 percent of respondents said they are straight, 9.6 percent said they are bisexual, and 5.9 percent said they are gay or lesbian. Approximately 2.7% of students reported having doubts about their sexual orientation.
3.1 percent of men and 14.4 percent of women, respectively, identified as bisexual. Just 3.1% of women self-identified as lesbians, compared to 9.1% of men who said they identify as gay.
37.4% of students who identify as non-heterosexual claimed they have not
As in previous years, the majority of Class of 2024 poll respondents (41.3%) are from the Northeast. The Midwest accounts for twelve percent of the total, followed by the Southeast at thirteen.7%, the West at fourteen.7%, and the pathetic states of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma in the southwest at seven.3%.
The breakdown of students reporting to be from rural, suburban, and urban areas was essentially unchanged from the group that was enrolled the previous year. Sixty-three percent of freshmen who responded to the study claimed they were from suburbs, while 7.7 percent said they were from rural areas. Urban areas account for the remaining 29.0 percent of these pupils’ backgrounds.
Compared to the approximately 11.8 percent of respondents who claimed living abroad last year, 10.8 percent of respondents said they were foreign residents.
Families & Finance
This is the third year in a row that university managers have increased tuition more quickly than inflation, despite the fact that the coronavirus has significantly changed undergraduate education. With accommodation, board, and other fees excluded, the total tuition for the 2020–2021 academic year is $49,653, an increase of 4% from the previous year. Students claim that the pandemic has made them rethink the ever-increasing expenditures of attending classes in person, having access to study areas, and other on-campus privileges and amenities.
Approximately 57.5 percent of students who responded to the poll said they had received financial aid through Harvard’s need-blind aid program. Even though the coronavirus is severely straining many American families financially, the percentage is comparable to the roughly 58.6 percent of responders who received aid last year.
Twelve percent of first-year respondents identified as legacy students, which are those who had one or more parents who were undergraduate students at Harvard College. This figure decreased from the 16.8% figure from the previous year.
More than seventeen percent of first-year students who self-identified as white also said they were legacy students. 9.1% of respondents who identified as Hispanic or Latinx, 8.4% of respondents who identified as Black or African American, and around 10.8% of respondents who identified as Asian said they were legacy students.
When asked about their family income, self-reported legacy students revealed that 53.0 percent of them said their parents earn a minimum of $250,000 annually, with 32.6 percent earning at least $500,000. The percentage of legacy respondents who report having parents with combined incomes under $125,000 is less than 7%.
This year, the proportion of respondents who stated they are the first in their family to attend college increased once more, rising from 17.3 percent to 22.8 percent.
First-generation students self-identified as approximately 49.6% of Hispanic or Latinx respondents, followed by Black and African American students (283.3%), Asian and Asian American students (19.1%), and White students (15.7%).
In this year’s poll, first-generation freshmen reported significantly lower family earnings than non-first-generation matriculants. Of those surveyed, 45.0 percent claimed an annual family income of less than $40,000, while 6.1% reported their parents make a combined $125,000 or more annually.
96.5 percent of first-generation students who responded to the poll indicated they receive financial aid from Harvard.
The Path to Harvard
Of the 40,248 applicants to Harvard College this year, 4.92 percent were accepted into the highly sought-after Class of 2024. The rate of admission increased by about 0.5 percentage points from the record low of 4.5 percent last year, while it is still among the most competitive in the country. This is the first increase in six years. The increase observed at Harvard and several other Ivies was ascribed by experts to declining candidate pools. For instance, the pool of applicants to Harvard dropped by 7% from the year before.
When Visitas went online owing to a coronavirus, prospective freshmen contemplating their Harvard offer were left without a vital decision-making tool. However, 84 percent of Harvard admitted students accepted their offers of admission by the May 1 deadline, the greatest percentage since the 1970s. More than 20 percent of those who accepted their offer—340 freshmen—decided to postpone enrolling until the following year. As per the College’s website, this group is significantly bigger than the average cohort of gap year students, which typically consists of 80 to 110 individuals.
For a significant portion of polled freshman (80.6 percent), Harvard was their top choice for higher education.
38.3% of those surveyed applied to Yale as well. 39.8% of these students were also accepted to the institution in New Haven.
Fifty-one percent of survey respondents were admitted to Harvard through its early action program. Merely 4.6% of those pupils stated that Harvard was not their first choice.
Roughly 25% of participants mentioned that they got assistance from a privately-employed advisor in completing their college applications. Of these pupils, 8.2 percent reported having parents with an income of less than $40,000, while 42.9 percent of those who disclosed their parents’ financial situation said that their family earned a combined total of $250,000 or more.
More than 62% of respondents to the study claimed to have attended a public high school that wasn’t chartered. More over thirty-three percent said they attended a private school, and two percent said they were homeschooled.
More than 67% of those surveyed claimed they went to secondary schools where class rank was disclosed. Of these, 74.8 percent reported to have graduated in the top 2 percent of their respective graduation classes.