Harvard’s reputation has taken a major hit in recent months. First came the University’s atrocious response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and how it handled the radical anti-Semites present on campus, then came former president Claudine Gay’s disastrous congressional testimony during which she failed to say whether calls for genocide against Jewish people violated the campus’s harassment and bullying policies. The headaches for Harvard only continued, however, once multiple plagiarism allegations came forth for Gay, eventually leading to her stepping down into a faculty position while retaining her nearly $900,000 salary. The troubles at Harvard have been so bad one Townhall columnist, Alan Joseph Bauer and a group of other Harvard alums, sued the school for destroying the “Harvard brand,” and thus the value of a Harvard degree.
What impact did all of this have on the University? According to data recently reported on by The Harvard Crimson, though it was the fourth consecutive year Harvard received more than 50,000 applications, the 54,008 it got this year marks a 5.14 percent drop from last year. Harvard accepted 3.59 percent of applications for the Class of 2028, which is the highest acceptance rate in four years, the Crimson notes.
Notably, this was also the first admissions cycle where race was excluded due to the Supreme Court striking down affirmative action.
Students who accept and do not receive financial aid will have to cough up $82,866 to attend, a 4.3 percent increase from last year when tuition was $79,450.
The recent application figures come months after early application totals saw a 17 percent decline.
At least one college admissions consultant expressed his “complete shock” at the time over students rejecting their early acceptance to Harvard.
"Virtually every student I've ever worked with who got into Harvard early pretty much stopped [looking elsewhere]," Christopher Rim, CEO of New York and Miami-based Command Education, told "FOX & Friends First" in December.
"This is the first time and first application season where I've seen a student who got into Harvard early that I've worked with for almost three and a half, four years now, starting in ninth grade — we're seeing them say, ‘You know what? I want to apply to other schools because what if I graduate and this stigma and this reputation of Harvard stays the same?’ That's their true concern."
The New York Post editorial board warned over the weekend that the application drop should be a warning to other elite universities in the U.S.: "If you don’t kick the radicals off campus and off the school’s board, shut down the DEI offices and focus on offering an education worth the cost of tuition, you could be next."