Admissions Institute Meets in Quincy House

A conference of high school college counselors and college admissions officers will conclude a six-day annual meeting in Quincy House today.

The Summer Institute on College Admissions, sponsored by Harvard and the College Board, has met at Harvard for all of its 34 years, according to the Harvard Office of Instructional Research and Evaluation.

The Institute provides a forum for high school college counselors and college admissions officers from all over the world to discuss the latest issues in counseling and college admissions.

According to William R. Fitzsimmons '67, dean of admissions and financial aid at Harvard and Radcliffe, Harvard's admissions office led several seminars which dealt with everything from recommendations to relations between college and secondary school.

He said that his office presented a sample casebook of real Harvard applications with applicant names erased. Harvard officials used the book to illustrate the process they use for selecting students to admit.

Fitzsimmons said the admissions office also gave the guests a general tour through Harvard's admissions process--which, according to Fitzsimmons is one of the "more thorough" types of processes that is used.

In Harvard's admissions process, dubbed an "advocate" system, admissions officers have different geographical areas which they are responsible for representing in front of the admissions committee.

With a membership of some 45 people, Harvard's admissions committee allows for "many points of view," creating an elaborate set of "checks and balances," Fitzsimmons said.

But the large number of people involved and the minimum of four reads of each application makes the process long and labor intensive, he added.

Dean K. Whitla, the director of the office of instructional research and evaluation, associate director of admissions and the director of the Institute, could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Budget Cuts

Those attending the meeting also discussed more general concerns of counselors and admissions officers. The main issue facing both colleges and secondary schools is across-the-board budget cuts, Fitzsimmons said.

He said that in the 10 largest cities in the United States, 4 of the cities had an average ration of 740 students to 1 high school counselor.

The city of Boston, according to Fitzsimmons,has an average ratio of 430 students to 1counselor. And with the personal and emotionalsupport that counselors must give, counselors arebeing "stretched like never before," he said