At least when it comes to early applications, it’s hard out there for a WASP.
A larger, more diverse group of early applicants to America’s most elite universities has made early admission more elusive, especially for students from Northeastern prep schools, according to a New York Times article Friday. In the past, prep schools dominated the early rounds, but times are changing. At Princeton, for example, the majority of students accepted last month come from public high schools, and 37 percent are minorities. At Harvard, 20 percent of this year’s early admits are black or Hispanic.
Last year, Harvard, Princeton and the University of Virginia reinstated early admissions policies, ushering in more deferrals and rejections. Yale admitted 15.7 percent of its early applicants to the class of 2016.
Cornell University has won a bid to build an engineering campus in New York City, Bloomberg reported today.
The competition began in July when New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg invited proposals for a campus for engineering and applied science. Bloomberg announced that Cornell won the competition — which featured proposals from 15 other schools, including Stanford and Columbia — during a press conference this afternoon, according to a statement from his office.
Ronald Ehrenberg, director of Cornell’s Higher Education Research Institute, told Bloomberg that the campus was crucial for tying the Ithaca, N.Y. university to America’s largest city. Cornell’s proposed campus will be 2 million square feet and house 2,000 students on Roosevelt Island, one of the land-grant properties offered by the city. Cornell’s medical school is already located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
“The trustees and the president have long wanted to have a bigger presence in New York City,” Ehrenberg said. “The notion that you can be a great international university in the 21st century if you’re located in rural upstate New York doesn’t work.”
A major factor to Cornell winning the competition was an anonymous $350 million gift made to the school, announced on Dec 16. Cornell may also receive as much as $100 million for infrastructure improvements on the island, according to Bloomberg.
“It is a tremendous boost in morale and recognition for Cornell,” said Yale’s Vice President of Development Inge Reichenbach, who held the same role at Cornell for a decade. “It is an amazing opportunity.”
As Cornell plans its expansion into the city, Yale is currently seeking a $500 million donation for the naming rights to West Campus, a roughly 6 million square foot property in West Haven, Conn.
Yale purchased West Campus from Bayer Pharmaceuticals for $107 million in 2007.
Yale admitted 675 of the 4,304 early applicants for admission to the class of 2016, yielding a 15.7 percent acceptance rate for early action candidates, according to statistics released to alumni interviewers. Of the early applicant pool, 2,394 students have been deferred for regular decision and 1,180 were denied admission.
The 15.7 percent early acceptance rate marks an increase from last year’s 14.5 percent and the 13.9 percent early acceptance rate for the class of 2014.
Yale accepted 50 fewer students than Princeton and 100 fewer than Harvard in this admissions cycle, the first in four years in which all three schools have had early action policies.
The breakdown:
Total applicants: 4,304
Number of applicants accepted: 675 (15.7 percent)
Number of applicants deferred: 2,394 (55.6 percent)
Number of applicants rejected: 1,180 (27.4 percent)
A 27-year-old man named Abe Liu was escorted out of Harvard’s Weld Hall last week after pretending to be a member of Harvard’s freshman class for months, the Harvard Crimson reported Wednesday.
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Liu, a student at Harvard’s Extension school, reportedly attended North Carolina State but dropped out. He joined Harvard’s Class of 2015 Facebook group this past summer, and began interacting with students and creating a false persona for himself.
The Harvard Independent first broke the story in a article published online on Tuesday evening. The Independent’s story adds that Harvard’s freshman class was alerted to Liu’s situation on Sunday afternoon via a student-created meme featuring the “Y U NO” Guy asking Liu, “Y U NO WHO U SAY WHO U ARE?”
The Independent claimed Liu had on occasion told students he was a former Olympian, but he told the paper in a Tuesday evening interview that their facts “were entirely incorrect.”
In addition to publishing the story about Liu, the Independent’s story calls into question why the Crimson had not yet run a story about Liu. In a follow-up article today, the Independent quotes Liu as claiming that he had personally convinced the Crimson‘s managing editor, Elias Groll ’12, not to run the story although the Crimson had been working on it for a week.
The Independent has claimed that Liu participated in the Crimson’s induction rituals, but Liu has denied this claim. The Crimson published their story one day after the Independent released their version.
He has admitted to forging a Harvard ID, but denies stealing another student’s ID.
From Liu’s interview with the Crimson:
“The first lie is like, ‘Oh, I’m a student at the College.’ They always want to know more, so you start telling a lot of little white lies. And then you find yourself integrated into that society.”
“You get so deep, you don’t know how to stop it.”
“I made a mistake. My mistake was being lonely.”
“At the end of the day, all I wanted to do was to be friends. The people that met me, the people that knew me, know that I never asked them for anything. I never coerced them into anything.”
Liu’s Facebook account is now unsearchable, and his posts on the Class of 2015 Facebook group are gone.
The University’s decades-old effort to remove systematically the ivy from its buildings (stemming from the belief that the roots damage the old facades) has some catching up to do in Branford, where the vines have crept up on several walls.
Facilities workers typically prune the vines wherever they start to climb up from the ground.
There are almost no words: Harvard University is launching a line of menswear clothing that looks as if it were ripped from the pages of Details magazine.
The über-preppy line, called Harvard Yard, will range from $160 to $495 for items including garish short-sleeve plaid shirts and slightly-too-tight seersucker shorts. Apparently the fact that Harvard can barely pay its bills as a result of the economic downturn did not occur to anyone as a hint that now might not be the best time to start peddling overpriced sport coats.
It’s official: Emma Watson is going to Brown University.
Pity.
Watson has been quiet about what school she will attend in the fall, although her “Harry Potter” co-star, Daniel Radcliffe, let slip earlier this month in an interview with The Guardian that the actress had decided on Brown. Watson herself confirmed the decision in an interview with Paste Magazine, saying she will study literature at the school.
Prosecutors in Massachusetts say they will drop the disorderly conduct charge against former Yale professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. ’73, who was arrested last week for, in his words, being “a black man in America.” The Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office and the Cambridge Police Department released the following statement a few minutes ago:
The City of Cambridge and the Cambridge Police Department have recommended to the Middlesex County District Attorney that the criminal charge against Professor Gates not proceed. Therefore, in the interests of justice, the Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office has agreed to enter a nolle prosequi in this matter.
The City of Cambridge, the Cambridge Police Department, and Professor Gates acknowledge that the incident of July 16, 2009 was regrettable and unfortunate. This incident should not be viewed as one that demeans the character and reputation of Professor Gates or the character of the Cambridge Police Department. All parties agree that this is a just resolution to an unfortunate set of circumstances.
One can only hope that the Rev. Al Sharpton didn’t already book his Acela ticket to Boston.
(Photo: Cambridge Police Department, via The Harvard Crimson)
Updated Tuesday 11:17 a.m. Former Yale professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. ’73, the director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research at Harvard and one of the country’s most prominent black intellectuals, was arrested Thursday by Cambridge police officers investigating a reported break-in.
The only problem: The house Gates was accused of breaking into was his own.
According to a police report, Gates told an officer that he was being targeted because “this is what happens to black men in America,” which seems like a pretty prescient observation considering the officer arrested him on the spot despite the fact it was Gates’ house that the professor was accused of burglarizing.
Except now that ice cream cone is now melting, or something.
For a profile published Sunday by The Associated Press, Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust was asked how the economic downturn and the subsequent collapse of Harvard’s endowment has changed Harvard in her two years as president.
Her explanation went something like this: Think of Harvard like an ice cream cone. Two years ago, when the school (ice cream parlor?) wasn’t tight for cash, you could get any flavor you wanted for your ice cream cone. But not anymore.
“We can’t have chocolate and vanilla and strawberry,” she said. “We have to decide which one.”
Alas, Faust did not indicate which flavor she foresees the future Harvard tasting like.
Might the economic recession not be as bad as we think — at least as far as university endowments are concerned?
An article in the August issue of Vanity Fair, a preview of which has been posted to the magazine’s Web site, says that according to a source on the board of Harvard Management Company, Harvard’s endowment only declined an estimated 23 to 25 percent in the fiscal year that ends today, rather than the 30 percent that officials had projected.
That could be good news for Yale, considering its endowment (which is projected to fall 25 percent) is invested using strategies similar to those employed by the Harvard Management Company. Or, of course, it could mean absolutely nothing.
Except now that ice cream cone is now melting, or something.