The Harvard degree has lost its luster.
The crown jewel of the Ivy League announced this week that undergraduate applications shrunk by 5% this year — while other selective elite schools soared to record highs. (Dartmouth, Columbia, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania all saw spikes.)
Despite a long-held reputation as the most prestigious university in the world, the news comes as no surprise after a devastating year of PR nightmares that exposed rot from within.
Since the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, the Cambridge, Massachusetts, campus has erupted with antisemitism: swastikas on campus, chants of “Intifada” from student protesters, and Jewish students mobbed by pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
Things got so bad that Jewish students even slapped the school with a lawsuit, alleging violation of the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
Despite mounting pressure from alumni, donors and US congress members, former Harvard president Claudine Gay proved unable to condemn campus antisemitism — testifying on Capitol Hill that “it’s when that speech crosses into conduct that violates our policies against bullying and harassment.
That speech did not cross that barrier.”
For a university that ranked dead last in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s (FIRE) free speech rankings last year, receiving a score of -10, suddenly hiding behind the defense of free expression fell flat for many.
It also, ultimately, led to Gay’s resignation in January, following a host of plagiarism accusations.
The rampant antisemitism wasn’t lost on potential applicants.
As a result, some high school seniors are reportedly weighing alternative schools and even declining offers of admission from Harvard — something virtually unheard of in prior admissions cycles.
Nor was anti-Jewish prejudice lost on employers and influential voices in the corporate world — like prestigious law firm Edelson, which boycotted Harvard recruiting events this year, and Harvard alumnus Bill Ackman, who sought the names of Harvard students who publicly blamed Israel for the Hams attacks. Meanwhile, law firm Davis Polk rescinded a job offer for one such student.
Even Barstool Sports owner Dave Portnoy said he wouldn’t hire from Harvard.
But campus antisemitism is not the only glaring issue driving away potential students.
Last June the Supreme Court blew the cover on Harvard’s now illegal race-based affirmative action practices, which were found to violate the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protections Clause.
Not only did that case reveal discrimination against Asian American students — who were systemically scored lower on subjective “personality” ratings by admissions counselors — but it also exposed the school’s nepotistic favoritism toward the ultra-elite.
A shocking 43% of white Harvard students, the court’s discovery revealed, are legacy admissions, children of faculty, relatives of donors, or recruited athlete.
Three quarters of them are statistically unlikely to have gotten in without that special interest status, according to analysis of admissions data by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Is it any wonder Harvard’s applicant pool shrunk from 56,937 to 54,008 this year, defying a trend of record-high applications across academia?
The school still pulled off an eye-watering 3.58% acceptance rate.
But keep in mind that, between 2009 and 2014, a legacy applicant to Harvard had a one in three shot of getting in.
And a child on the “dean’s interest list” — a term used by admissions officers often to denote a relationship to donors — had a 42.2% chance of admission.
If an acceptance letter to Harvard is only as good as your last name or your parents’ bank balance, does it really hold as much weight as society lends it?
Perhaps not.
Who can blame high schoolers and their families for questioning whether weathering antisemitism, anti-Asian bias and rampant nepotism is really worth the hype.
