I’m Glad Harvard Expanded Aid. Now It’s Time To Increase Access.

To people from my hometown, Harvard seems impossibly expensive and completely out of reach.

What made Harvard real for me was a visit from an admissions officer during my junior year. Even though most graduates of my school district don’t attend four-year college, the cafeteria was filled with students excited to see the presentation. The prospect itself of an Ivy league institution visiting us was thrilling.

It’s also far too rare. Year after year, Harvard fails to admit a truly diverse class in terms of geography and income. The University must refocus its recruitment efforts to identify and reward real merit everywhere it exists.

Harvard’s recent move to raise the income threshold for financial aid is admirable — it signals the University’s commitment to bringing knowledge and mobility to all. In a time where higher education is under attack, Harvard’s willingness to expand access is a step in the right direction.

Still, the University fails to truly represent America’s demographics in many ways. “Feeder schools” — a majority of which are private and located in the Northeast — remain vastly overrepresented in the student body. Despite a series of financial aid expansions over the last 20 years, a study from Harvard’s own Raj Chetty ‘00 found that only 4.5 percent of Harvard students come from the bottom twenty percent of the income distribution.

The fact of the matter is that students from such elite schools and high-income communities are often the ones least in need of the benefits of a Harvard education. Their families and cities already tend to provide more than enough opportunity to promote mobility and long-term educational success — without the added benefits of personalized college counseling or long standing connections to prestigious universities.

Athletic preferences only deepen this divide. One study suggested that recruited athletes have at least an 86 percent chance of getting into Harvard — leagues better than the average applicant. According to a recent Crimson freshman survey, most recruited athletes in the Class of 2027 are white. And in general, recruited athletes at elite schools skew wealthy, especially those who play exclusive sports.

If Harvard can use its time and resources to identify student athletes — especially at feeder schools — it should do the same for high achievers in non-traditional communities. For the most recent financial aid change to make a significant difference, Harvard must make greater efforts to seek out low-income and middle class applicants from across the country.

Harvard needs more applications from hometowns unheard of at the College, from communities that lack the resources to support their top students, from the dreamers of the family, and from the students whose ambitions are rarely understood at home. These students stand to gain the most from the connections and access that elite education provides.

Student organizations like the Harvard Eritrean and Ethiopian Student Association and the Generational African American Students Association have done valuable work to promote applications from qualified, historically underprivileged groups to the College through application mentorship programs and annual college application webinars.

Harvard, too, has made some progress in encouraging students of diverse backgrounds to apply. The University participates in the Small Town Outreach, Recruitment, and Yield program and facilitates its own Undergraduate Minority Recruitment program, where admissions officers directly engage with prospective applicants.

Still, Harvard should work far more with counselors from geographically underrepresented, low-to-middle income public schools to attract applications and make information about financial aid widely available. Making these students feel capable of applying to and attending a school like Harvard is just as vital of a step as financially supporting their time here.

These students don’t just enrich Harvard. They encourage others in their communities to dream big. They create a legacy for their families and role models for generations. And if they choose to return home, the knowledge they gain is priceless in its power to change the course of their communities.

I’m excited for Harvard to fund high achieving students. Now, it must make an effort to seek them out.

Ira Sharma ’28, a Crimson Editorial editor, lives in Matthews Hall.