College Admits 1362, Fewest Since 1930's

The College mailed out letters of admission to 1362 applicants to the Class of 1967 this morning--the smallest number to be admitted to any freshman class since the 1930's.

By reducing the number of "first round" admissions, the Admissions Office is seeking to avoid a repetition of its miscalculation last spring, when an unprecedented acceptance rate of 84.2 percent among admitted candidates produced 50 more freshmen than the College had bargained for.

Target is Higher

The target size for the Class of '67 is 1195--20 more than the target size for '66--but the number of admissions is 80 less than last year's figure of 1441.

Admissions Office officials are counting on an acceptance rate of 84 per cent to produce a total of 1145 freshmen, with the additional 50 students to be admitted from the waiting list. Last year's unexpected acceptance rate prevented the admissions of any waiting-list students.

At the same time that it made the admissions decisions, the Admissions and Scholarship Committee approved awards totaling $510,000 to 415 admitted freshmen. The Admissions Office hopes to wind up at its target figure of 350 freshman scholarships worth $440,000.

Last year, the same miscalculation which produced 50 additional students also produced 25 more freshman scholarship holders than the target of 350. The Committee therefore reduced the number of initial awards by 30.

Included in this year's group of admitted students are 95 National Merit Scholarship winners, the largest number ever to designate Harvard as their first-choice school. Last year 89 Merit Winners were admitted, and all 89 decided to enroll.

In other respects, the Class of '67 will not differ very much from its predecessors, Humphrey Doermann '52, director of Admissions, explained yesterday.

Fewer Foreign Students

The number of students admitted with advanced standing and the geographical distribution of the class will remain roughly the same, he said, although next year's freshmen should have a stronger delegation of students from the South, and a somewhat reduced number of foreign students.

Although final figures are not available, Doermann said he expected "no marked shift in the public-private school distribution or the range of test scores" for the freshman class. The ratio of public to private school graduates has remained at 56-44 for four classes.

Doermann said that a recently initiated program to get more qualified Negro applicants from Southern schools did not seem to have produced any immediate results.

A total of 5047 applications were received by the Admissions Office for the Class of '67, compared with 5059 last year. This is the fourth straight year that the total has remained between 5,000 and 5,200. A total of 2760 students--about 50 less than last year--applied for scholarships.