64% of Freshman Class Get First-Choice House

Sixty-four per cent of the Class of '66 have been admitted to their first-choice House, Dean Watson announced yesterday. The figure is the highest since 1969, and represents a 15 per cent increase over last year, when 56 per cent of the freshmen gained entrance to their first-choice House.

A similar rise occurred in the percentage admitted to one of their first three choices. The figure this year was 15 per cent, compared with 80 per cent last spring.

Freshmen received the traditional sealed envelopes containing House assignments early Saturday morning, there-by ending a six-week selection process which began April 1.

Dean Watson said that a more equitable distribution of House applications had been responsible for the rise in the percentage of students who got their first choice. "The freshmen went about it much more intelligently than they had before," he explained.

For the first time since the construction of Quincy House and Leverett Towers those Houses were not deluged with first place applications. Leverett House remained "oversubscribed," Watson said, but an increase in first place applications to other Houses helped balance the selection process.

"It's a much healthier situation than it has been in the past," Watson said. "The Quincy-Leverett situation threw everything into a cocked hat for a few years."

Watson did not reveal the order of popularity of the eight Houses, but College sources reported that Quincy again received the second highest total of first-place applications.

Eliot, Lowell, and Winthrop Houses all received more first place applications than they had last year. Adams reportedly experienced a decline in first-choice applications, although it remained among the more popular Houses. Kirkland House again received the fewest first-place applications.

This is the second straight year that the number of students gaining admission to their first choice has increased.

Selection of students is made by individual Masters, who fill 70 per cent of their vacancies from first-, second-, and third-choice applications, if enough of these applications are available. Each Master must choose comparable numbers of students from public and private schools and in different positions on the rank list. A Committee of Review headed by Dean Watson checks the distribution, and fills the last 30 per cent of each quota from a pool of unassigned freshmen.