Admissions Office Asks More New Scholarships

The Financial Aid office will seek a substantial increase in the number of freshman scholarships next year to counter the effect of the $240 tuition rise this September. The increase would be in addition to a necessary rise in financial aid for current scholarship holders.

Fred L. Glimp '50, dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, said more scholarships are essential if the College is to maintain its present socio-economic balance in the face of rising costs. He voiced concern that "at some point the total cost of a Harvard education would really be discouraging to applicants," but said the current price tag--now estimated at $3345--did not seem to be having this effect.

No figures were available on the number of additional scholarships that will be requested, but observers felt that a minimum of 25 is needed if the College is to keep the median family income of scholarship holders--an important measure of the economic spread in the College--from rising significantly. The median income for scholarship families is now $8000.

Increased Freshmen Scholarships

When the last tuition rise took effect in September, 1961, the College increased the number of freshman scholarships from 300 to 350. The cost of this increase, added to a rise in aid to previous recipients, raised the College's scholarship budget from a little over $1.2 million in 1960-61 to almost $1.5 million the following year.

Although the College pledges that the impending tuition increase will not force any students to leave school, individual scholarships will not cover the whole increase. To make up the difference, Glimp said, students will be expected to contribute about $50 more a year to their education than at present.

He said that the increased earning power of Harvard students and the rise in available term-time employment made it possible for the Financial Aid office to gradually increase this "self-help" gap. Since 1950 the gap has risen from $450 to the present $300.

Record Scholarships Requests

In addition to finding more scholarship money, the Admissions Office is also preparing for what seems to be a record number of scholarship requests. Though regular applications are running at last year's rate, the Admissions Office has already received 305 scholarship applications, 25 more than at this time last year.

Glimp predicted that as many as 60 per cent of the candidate group would ask for financial aid, a jump of 10 per cent from last year. The previous high for scholarship applications was in 1961-62, when 57 per cent of the applicants sought aid.

The increase in scholarship requests does not necessarily indicate that the College is reaching more students from lower income families, Glimp explained. "We may be getting applications from a range of income we don't consider needy."

The actual number of new scholarships and the total increase in the financial aid budget will be determined in the spring when the budget of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences is put together. Barring any sudden increase in the endowed funds of the Admissions and Scholarship Committee, most of the money to cover the tuition rise and any increase in number of scholarships is expected to come from Faculty income. At present Faculty funds account for about 15 per cent of a total scholarship budget of almost $1.6 million