Admissions Committees Test Equal Access on N.J. Applicants

The Harvard and Radcliffe admissions offices this year considered New Jersey applications without regard to sex, in an experiment that one admissions official termed a "preview of equal access."

Dwight Miller, associate director of Harvard admissions, said that the committees worked together to reach tentative admission decisions for the state's candidates.

The two committees then re-assessed their decisions and admitted the applicants separately, he said.

Miller said the experiment "worked out very well."

"Every candidate was discussed and the strongest ones were admitted regardless of their sex," he said.

Miller said that approximately 75 people from New Jersey were admitted to next year's freshman class.

He said the male-female ratio of the New Jersey applicants was approximately two-to-one.

"It pleased me that the people were voting and making decisions as to quality and letting the chips fall down where they may" Miller said.

Suzanne Sato, assistant director of admissions for Harvard and Radcliffe, said she believed New Jersey was chosen as a test area because its applicant pool was diversified" and "a manageable size."

Miller said the "vast majority" of the final decisions remained "basically the same" as the tentative ones reached under the equal access experiment.

Harvard's 25-1 male-female ratio was not a factor in the committees' decisions, Miller said.

He said that one purpose of the experiment was to see whether "the male-female ratio would come out even or unbalanced.

Sato said that officials from the Harvard and Radcliffe admissions committees agreed on most decisions.

"There was no great difference between the Harvard and the Radcliffe people on the committee," she said.

Members of the committee said that the equal-access experiment made little difference in individual admission decisions.

"We did New Jersey the same way we always had," Miller said. "Basically, he discussions didn't differ."

The Strauch committee report, issued in February proposed that the two admissions offices be merged and that an equal-access admissions process be in stituted for the Class of 1980. The Faculty approved the report last week.