Faculty Increases Scholarship Fund

Chase N. Peterson '52, dean of admissions and financial aid announced yesterday that the Faculty of Arts and Sciences has voted an increase of $65,000 in its contribution to the admissions and financial aid committee.

Faculty funds available to the committee this year will total $750,000, Peterson said in an interview yesterday. Gifts are also used to finance scholarships, he added. The College should now be able to meet the financial needs of all students admitted this spring, he said.

Twenty-five additional scholarships will be awarded each year beginning with the Class of '72, bringing the total number of College awards in each class to 500, Peterson said. Increases in upperclass scholarships, to offset next year's rise of $70 in room and board fees in the College, will also be made possible by the Faculty's vote, he said.

Vote of Confidence

Peterson termed the Faculty's action "a tremendous vote of confidence in our policy of finding boys and permitting them to come here despite financial problems." The Faculty voted "for diversity and for our search in the ghettos despite this year's trend toward financial belt-tightening in the University," he said.

Because of a reduction in a grant from the Ford Foundation, the National Merit Scholarship program will be phased out within two years, Peterson said. Sixtyfive of this year's freshmen hold National Merit Scholarships worth up to $6000, he said.

The new Faculty grant will help take care of future Harvard students who might have received National Merit Scholarships under the previous plan, he said.

The use of revised College Scholarship Service Tables to compute financial need will increase the value of many scholarships awarded to incoming freshmen, Peterson said. But the new tables will not be applied in reviewing the scholarships of students already in the College, he added. He said that many Harvard awards have been above the values recommended by the College Scholarship Service's old tables anyway.