Thursday, 4:30 PM
H-Day: Harvard accepts just 9 percent of applicants
By Andrew Ryan, Globe Staff
Almost 23,000 anxious applicants will begin checking their in-boxes at 5 p.m. today for that fateful e-mail: Did they get accepted at Harvard University?
For about 90 percent, the answer will be no.
Harvard College will send acceptance letters today to 2,058 people for the class of 2011. By taking just 9 percent of the 22,955 people who applied, it has broken its own record for its lowest admission rate in school history.
This year’s pool of applicants included almost 3,200 people who got perfect scores on their SAT math test; 2,500 who scored perfectly on their SAT verbal test, and more than 3,000 high schoolers who were ranked first in their class.
That means hundreds of students who graduated number one or nailed their SATs with scores of 800 will learn today they still weren’t good enough for Harvard.
The school will send e-mails to applicants after 5 p.m., but warns students to be patient -- the message may take several hours to reach them. The school said 92 percent of all who applied to Harvard requested email notification.
A handful of students, however, will not learn their fate no matter how many times they hit refresh on their in-boxes. Harvard warns that about 2 percent of admission e-mails bounce back as undeliverable.
The school also sends hard copies of acceptance of rejection letters, which should arrive in a few days.
